It's Over? Already?

Yesterday we moved out of our homestay and loaded into the trucks. Closing dinner happened last night (in which I won the paper plate award of Dirtiest Feet - it's not my fault! I promise I washed them every day! It was the bug spray that I applied - it just seemed to make the dirt stick and make it look worse than it actually was. The complete worst part was when people in the village would actually stop me on the road to gawk at how much dirt my feet had accumulated that day)... But anyway, today, I leave Arusha for Zanzibar.

Saying goodbyes have been harder this time around. Saying goodbye to my homestay family was hard - I was a lot closer to them than I was to my past homestay fam, mostly because since we didn't have 10 hour work days in this village, I spent a lot more time at home - even enough time to introduce them to the wonderfulness that is embodied in guacamole and spaghetti sauce. The spaghetti sauce was an adventure, mostly because I've never made it from scratch before (Yeah Prego). In honor of me cooking, mama killed a chicken (meat in the village tends to be limited to goat and beef, chicken is saved only for special occasions) and helped mama de-feather it and cut it into pieces, then cooked it with onion and tomatoes and surprisingly, it tasted really good. The chicken here is so different from the chicken you pick up in the supermarket. It's completely free range. It's not that they spend every single minute of every single day running - they actually don't move a whole lot at all, but it still seems super tough because the chickens are actually muscular. It makes you realize that the chicken in the supermarket must have a highly inactive lifestyle to be so tender. The last few days in my homestay were wonderful. Baba, in addition to having a TV, has a VCR, so we spent our nights watching classics such as The Bodyguard and Enough. All of the extended family crowded in to the living room to watch - TV and VCRs are definitely luxury items in the village. Luckily, my Baba is very well off, so he can afford all these things, in addition to a Tsh 500,000 phone ($500) and Tsh 7 million tractor ($7,000) - the next item on the list is a laptop. The more cows, goats and chickens you own, the wealthier you are. Baba traded two of his cows for the tractor, and a goat can command up to Tsh 40,000. Additionally, he sells beans and maize, which is also very lucrative - so much so that they are building a new, bigger house (with an INDOOR choo!!) next month.

The saddest goodbyes are to the people who live here. Homestay families, friends I've made in the village, and teaching partners. People who will probably never come to visit the United States. And I probably won't be finding myself in Tanzania again anytime soon, if at all.
It's so difficult to face the possibility that in spite of the fact that I find these people to be amazing individuals, I'll most likely never see them again. You would think in a program that lasts 3 months, you would have ample time to get to know every single person on the program and spend more than enough time with each of them. But it has been quite the opposite. I feel myself scrambling at the last minute to express how much they mean to me, and how wonderful I think they are. All those things that I have thought, but never said. Because really, who knows when I may see them next, if ever? In spite of the fact that I have spent so many weekends in Arusha, doing the same old things to the extent that I am bored out of my mind if I spend more than one day here, I find myself wanting to postpone Zanzibar - by a day or two, just to spend just a little more time with them. You would think with white sand palm tree lined beaches awaiting me, I would be itching to get the heck out of here, but I find myself sad. Sad that I didn't take more time to get to know them and sad that my time is up.

Enough of this depressing talk. This week in the village, we experienced what Tanzanians call the "light rains." The rain against the sheet metal roof was deafening. In order to communicate with one another, we had to shout. When it first begins to rain, it's beautiful. The dust shoots up into the air as the rain drops hit it and you have little puffs of brown shooting upward all around you. The smell is amazing as well. I love the smell of rain. It rained for 3 hours. After 3 hours, our main dirt road had turned into a rushing muddy brown river with rapids. The water was up to thigh level and it moved fast. It was impossible for the next few days to navigate the roads without accidentally stepping into a seemingly firm patch of ground, only to find two seconds later that your foot and sandal were completely submerged in the wet mud. One time, three children took pity on Gaby and I as we were thoroughly coated up to our ankles in mud and helped us to clean off the sandals - after they stopped laughing at us, that is. The heavy rains occur around March. Supposedly it rains for weeks straight during that time. I can't even imagine how that would be - everything would be either puddles or rivers and the roads would be completely unnavigatable. I'm glad we will be missing the rainy season, not just because it makes travel difficult, but also because we would never get any teaching done. In the village, community teaching attendance hinges heavily on leadership. If you have supportive village leaders who advertise the teaching and tell the villagers to go, then you will have a successful teaching with high attendance. But with the rains, the village leaders refuse to go out in the rain. Therefore, teachings will have few to no people coming - even if you make posters, tell people verbally and announce it yourself (this happened the past week - luckily, the teaching was rescheduled for the next day, and with no rain, the community teaching was successfully advertised, as 90 people came).

So in an hour, I leave for Zanzibar!! Internet only exists in Stonetown, but we will be staying (hopefully! provided the high tourism season hasn't booked every single place) in Ningwi, on the North shore for the majority of our stay, so possibly the next time you hear from me I will be back in California!!