Mike and Mass (a.k.a. the B-Boys)

I live in a quiet area of Arusha up on one of the hills. The building where I stay is divided into three small houses. Our next door neighbors are some of the coolest people that I have ever met.

Mike and Mass are both 24 and they are professional break-dancers in a group called Contagious. I've seen their group live and it's a pretty amazing show. They mostly perform in Arusha, but they have a good reputation and are sometimes invited to other parts of Tanzania for big shows.

They keep incredibly different hours from us. On Saturday, we can hear them waking up around midnight and heading out to the club (there's a pretty nice club right at the bottom of our hill) and then coming back around sunrise. They always say they are going out to "church" and if the music is no good, they complain about the "pastor".

They are way serious about what they do and spend hours exercising and practicing everyday. Sometimes they even do crazy stretches on our porch. They don't use any drugs or drink or smoke. Their show is break-dancing, but I've also seen them fire-dance and I'm pretty sure that they can do some ridiculous gymnastics too.

They hang out at our house if they are awake at the same time as us. They speak really good English (not always the case in Tanzania) but they also let us work on our Kiswahili with them and they help us a bit and ask us for help with their English. Their house doesn't have electricity (that'll probably be fixed soon), so they come over to charge phones and iPods and sometimes they bring food for us or they'll help us finish the extra food that we've made.

They sometimes buy movies from street vendors and we all watch them over here. One time they were watching a kung-fu film (Heroes Shed No Tears) and some of the neighbor hood children came over to watch too. All of a sudden, there was a sex scene in the movie and we all frantically tried to fast-forward. Let's just hope this hasn't gotten us in trouble with the neighborhood parents.