Kipilefti

Snippets: Hanging out at the market on Sunday afternoon, a few friends there are in hysterics over my description of what I imagine my cats are saying to me at various points in the day. Half of the humor is my bizarre personification of these animals that most Tanzanians are afraid of, half is probably […]

I spent the weekend in Bulongwa with Jess and Bret. I’ve been seeing one or both of them every other weekend with some regularity, and it’s a good interval. I walked over, headphones covering my ears, a strange veneer of America over the landscape and greetings of Tanzania. Both of them showed me the places […]

This past weekend my headmaster came back, bringing with him donated technology. About 40 CPUs, in various states of workingness (many missing hard drives, CD drives, many old); several dozen monitors; keyboards, mice, two digital projectors, overhead projectors, office furniture, and, randomly, an antique sewing machine. Although I’d thought classes ended last Friday, it turns […]

It’s Tuesday night. Even before the power goes out, my house is peacefully quiet: the cats entertaining themselves with their toys, the neighbor’s music at a reasonable level since I knocked on the door at 1 A.M. Saturday night and grouchily informed them that we couldn’t sleep because of the music. It’s raining lightly, but […]

My friend who owns a stand in the market went to Makambako yesterday, the big trading-post town, that’s six or eight hours’ drive away, maybe more, and came back with pineapples, tangerines, oranges, some weird things that might be custard apples, cucumbers, watermelons…heaven! I went home with a pineapple, a squash, five tangerines, and a […]

My cell phone’s alarm woke me up at 6.45, as it does every weekday. May 1st is a holiday in Tanzania (their equivalent of Labor Day), so I turned off the phone and rolled over, waiting for the chorus of hungry kittens that accompanies my phone alarm every morning. It never came. Instead I heard […]