The Windy Village

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Now all the maize has withered, it's left Ihalimba really exposed and even colder than before. I WANT MY BRITISH SUMMER!!!

Oh well, in town today to do shopping for our community festival tomorrow, so I'm taking the opportunity to kutumia internet. I only actually got back to the village last Thursday, after spending a week ill in town, so I haven't really been up to much in the last couple of weeks. It's really wierd being back in the village, because all my stuff is there, and it's familiar, so it feels like home, but I just can't be bothered with all the washing out of a bucket in the cold, going to fetch water, taking three hours to cook anything, lack of electricity, etc, etc, any more.

The bus this morning was completely rammed. It's strange, in a country that prides itself on not rushing, that people on buses and in queues are so impatient. People who stand up, when asked to move further down the bus so more people can get on, point blank refuse to acknowledge they're being spoken to, and then grumble about it when they finally do move. They seem to think they're being held up somehow, when everyone else is being held up waiting for them to move. And then, when it comes to getting off the bus, I've never seen Tanzanians move quicker. It's almost as if they're in the cinema, and the end credits have just begun to roll. If you get in their way you incur their wrath.

I'm becoming more and more convinced that people only make the effort to save time when it's personally important to them, but when other people rely on them they're just lazy. Most of the time you just accept it, but sometimes it's really annoying.

My landlord/neighbour bought me breakfast when we got here this morning. It was very nice of him, but I'm not sure I can say the same of the "soup" we had. The tea and the bread were welcome, but the "soup" was basically the salty, oily water that some meat was cooking in, and I'm not entirely sure what the meat consisted of. There was one identifiable, jelly-esque piece on a bone, but the rest of it was sections of a rubbery tube. I think it was too big to be an artery, so I reckon that leaves the different sections of the cow's intestines. I'm leaning towards oesophegus, and hopefully I'm right and it wasn't colon or anything like that. As long as it doesn't repeat on me I'm not sure I care - I've been regular as clockwork for a week, and I'm hoping to extend that record.

Last night was fun - I was having an impromptu kickabout with some kids that went past with a ball, and then Idi (our neighbour and landlord's brother), noticed a piglet's grunt nearby. We soon discovered that the two piglets of our landlord's family had escaped from their sty and were roaming through the maize. So I tried to stop them running far, while Idi... went to fetch water.

I guessed that it was just assumed that the piglets would be caught and brought back eventually, so I even relaxed when one of them came back, and ran past our front door. Shortly after that, though, our landlord came past with a boy, following it. So, I thought I'd join in, but lost them all within about two minutes, as it had already gone dark.

I came back to the house, and heard the other piglet snouting around, so I chased it back to the sty (they're nippy little beggars) and then it ran away again. My landlord came back a few minutes later, empty-handed, and told me what happened, of which I didn't understand all, but the gist of it was, "We chased it a bloody long way." You'll be happy to know that only one of the piglets is now on the run, and someone may even have caught that by now.

that's all for now

Phil :)