Back in Africa

Okay, well I have a slight excuse for my blog absence. For the past few weeks, my computer has been mostly out of commission as I botched my operating system upgrade. Fortunately, I was able to use the internet at the GCS office and my computer is stronger than ever. Yep, couldn't get it to work on American internet, but just a few minutes on Tanzanian internet and it's all golden. As a side note, I'm a big fan of Lucid Lynx (Ubuntu v. 10.04).

My other slight excuse for recent blog absence has been crippling sleep difficulties. I bit off way more than I could chew in July, and although I made it through the month, I crashed right after that. I couldn't force myself onto a normal sleep schedule, I would wake up exhausted and incoherent and I was having vivid (and haunting) dreams like I used to have back when I was taking Mefloquine (aka Larium, the malaria prophylaxis that is notorious for causing intense dreams). I haven't taken Mefloquine in 16 months, but I took the pills for over five months and I've heard that the pills can have lingering side effects for years afterwards. Joy. Of course, my medical expertise is limited to making random guesses based on various books that I've read, so you can take this diagnosis with a grain of salt. After some unorthodox methods, I'm back on a normal sleep cycle (for my standards, which is different from a typical sleep cycle).

The travel was rather taxing. I never had any concerns about missing a flight, but Chicago-Boston-London-Nairobi-Arusha is quite a trip (and I am never a big fan of passing through Heathrow). I had Marco Polo's The Travels with me, but I didn't make too much progress. I also didn't sleep much and the movies seemed sub-standard, even for an airplane. I left on Monday afternoon (packing was a complete misadventure, and I'm surprised that I "only" forgot four major things) and arrived in Nairobi on Tuesday night. I crashed at a cheap hotel in town before hopping on a bus back to Arusha. The bus ride was nice, since I was sitting next to a friendly Australian named David and we chatted most of the way. The road is still a work in progress, but it's nice to sit next to someone interesting. I arrived on Wednesday afternoon, and my neighbor (Mic) came to the station to pick me up.

It was fun arriving back in Tanzania. The first thing that Glady (the GCS secretary) said to me was "Dani! Umenenepa." I hadn't heard the second word before, but I knew it was related to "mnene" which is fat. I believe I was correct to translate it as her telling me that I have become fat. And it's true, I think I came back about 15 pounds heavier (I actually dropped a bit at the very end, so I could have come back in worse shape). But then I turned around and dropped more than 5 lbs in the first week (enough to move a full belt notch). Part of that was my erratic eating habits, since I didn't bother to restock the kitchen (there's actually a semi-legit reason, but it falls into the "unbloggable" category) and was just living off of avocados, balsamic vinegar, cans of tuna and yellow mustard. At one point I tried mixing all four of those together. It wasn't as terrible as it sounds. But I probably won't eat that again. Probably...

I also moved into a new house. It's a bit closer to town and to the office, which is nice. The sitting room is also the kitchen and the GCS workshop. That is a little cramped. My room is fairly cozy, but we're looking at getting some more storage space, which will hopefully make it a bit more home-esque. The bathroom has a "Western toilet" as opposed to some kind of hole in the ground as well as a water heater on the shower, which are pretty nice amenities. Except the builders didn't understand the principle of gravity, so the drain is not the lowest point on the floor, so it's always a few minutes each morning using a squeegee-like thingamajig to coax the water down the drain. But the water has not been switched off in all my time there (knocking on wood as I type this), which is by far the greatest luxury. Oh, and the house has more electrical outlets, so we're not doing the "plug choreography" like we used to do in the old house.

There are different puppies hanging around outside the office now. One of the neighboring shopkeepers announced that one of the old puppies got run over and died. Sometimes kiswahili feels pretty blunt. And the kids keep harassing the puppies and now these ones whine outside all night. I haven't actually gone back to visit Juju yet or anyone else up the hill. I see Philemon at the office, but that's it.

Hmmmm, I feel like such a downer in this post. I promise that things are mostly comfortable, and I'm really happy to be back in Arusha. I'm really blown away by all the things that GCS accomplished while I was away. The storage room looks a lot emptier with all of the machines that have been sold (including more than 100 to TFA, which is the store that I was working with back in May). And, lest you thought that anything had changed, I'm reading The Economist even more furiously than ever to make up for the issues that I didn't read while I was back in the states.

Yep, it's good to be back.