Stories from Morogoro

So I thought I would quickly share some random recent events in Morogoro. This includes getting sick which is one of the not-so-cool things about living in Morogoro (that way you’re not all too jealous)! ;) As I am writing this I have a cold. Which is pretty understandable considering I high-five about twenty kids a day some of whom have snotty noses and no amount of hand sanitizer seems to be able to save me. Of course that is not the worst, after my last “mysterious African sickness” I also have experienced another random illness. About a week ago I woke up at 3am feeling nauseous. I ended up throwing up (in the bucket that now stays in our room) and fell back asleep. The next morning I woke up feeling perfectly fine but it’s definitely unpleasant. Fortunately though my homestay family, all of the YCI staff and my fellow volunteers have been really great helping me when I get sick, checking in on me for regularly for several days afterwards and offering to take me to the hospital.
One cute story, I also had one night where I couldn’t sleep because I had a cup of coffee at 4pm (their coffee is definitely stronger here). Around 4:00am I decided that since I was awake I would go outside, read my book and watch the sunrise. (I think I was expecting some sort of magical Lion King moment which definitely didn’t happen, but the sky changing colours was still very pretty!) So my family regularly wakes up at 4:30am to start their daily activities and was shocked to see me awake. They were immediately so concerned and wouldn’t believe me that I couldn’t sleep because of the coffee. They were convinced that there was some problem that I wasn’t tell them about and Paulo even phoned Godfrey to see if I’d mentioned to him if anything was wrong. Somehow Gasto, the Tanzanian volunteer that we work with here, heard that I had malaria and I got a very concerned phone call from him asking if I was alright. It was very sweet and I felt bad for causing everyone so much worry.
Another story is from when I was walking home the other day. Usually when we walk around we got a ton of people yelling “mzungu” and “mwenda” so we’re pretty used to it. This day though I had a guy come up and start walking with me as I was going home for lunch. He asked my name and where I was from and immediately said that I couldn’t possibly be from Canada because “there’s no one named Melissa in Canada” don’t I know. He then started quizzing me on the capital of Canada and the prime minister’s name as if he could catch me in my lie! It was quite funny actually. Then when he learned I’m a science student started asking me questions about Newton and Einstein. Meanwhile another guy started walking with us who was a lot more annoying. He immediately started asking me if I had a boyfriend in Canada, telling me that I can’t trust him because he must be lying to me. He told me that Africa is my real home and that I need to start having African children. He was also pushing me to give him my contact information (when I lied and told him I didn’t have a phone he tried to get me to give him the contact information of one of my friends in Canada….don’t worry I didn’t give him any!). Finally he told me that as long as he could “get a white girl” then his life would be good. It didn’t matter if she was from Belgium or Canada that he just needed a white girl. This was when I lost patience and told him that I was not that girl and that he and the other guy had to leave me alone.
Fortunately this by no means represents your average Tanzanian who really is just interested in how we are doing and welcomes us to Tanzania. This guy was just an extreme like any pushy guy back home. We were told by Micah to expect some of this and just to be very blunt that we are not interested. So far this seems to have worked because I haven’t seen him since and have definitely not let this one experience affect my view of Tanzanians as a whole. Really now I just share this story because I find it quite humorous. Unfortunately I'm running out of time at the internet cafe so I've got to go but I hope to give you all an update of my programming soon. Also some of the volunteers are going on a safari to Mikumi Park next weekend so expect an update about that as well!
I love my e-mails from home so keep them coming!
Love from Moro,
Melissa