It's Ellen's Birthday!

06 July 2013 (Saturday)

                Pendo made us breakfast. My favorite part of her breakfasts is the fresh fruit smoothies. Best I've ever had. I also paid her to do my laundry for the first time.

                We went to Mkonoo to meet with Goodluck and the Utukufu group because they had a gift to give all of us for helping them build the chicken coop. They fed us makande and gave us free beaded jewelry. This has definitely made it worth it after the hassles working with Joseph.

                Alysha, Emilee, Ellen, and Aaron all ate whole pilipilis. Everyone died and cried except for Alysha. She ate three unscathed.

                We went to the Njiro shopping center to watch “Monsters University” in 3D and then got dinner afterwards. I got a double cheeseburger in honor of the past Independence Day. One of the best burgers I’ve ever had.

                Aaron gets cluster headaches from his childhood injury. Tonight they were the worst they have ever been and Shaylor and I were asked to give him a priesthood blessing. I’m grateful we have gotten to use the priesthood since being here.

07 July 2013 (Sunday)

                I desperately needed to take the sacrament and feel the Spirit again at church.

                My room with the boys swapped with Melinda and Ellen’s room since theirs is bigger.

08 July 2013 (Monday)

                Emilee reminded me that I have to give her credit for plucking my eyebrows so well. She did them a week ago or so and they look amazing. I actually noticed how much better they looked after she did them.

                This morning Shaylor, Aaron, and I went exploring to find slums for Shaylor’s project ideas.

09 July 2013 (Tuesday)

                 We went to the Impala Hotel to drop off the Utukufu Support Group’s merchandise to be sold at the hotel. They are giving them a three month trial period to see how it goes.

                I visited Goodluck’s school for the first time today.

                We ate at the coveted Immigration Café today also. Lex and Mary eat there often and recommended it to us. I tried kabob for the first time which was like a fried sausage filled with unmeatlike insides. It was okay.

                After that we headed to Michael’s orphanage to play with the kids.

                Tonight we had our first Fight Club! Shaylor faced off against Caroline. I was the announcer. They didn’t really fight but it was funny to watch them play fight and kind of wrestle since he is about 6’2” and she’s 5’2.” It resulted in a tie so as not to pick favorites or be sexist or anything.

10 July 2013 (Wednesday)

                I was supposed to meet up with Goodluck and Joseph at 9 a.m. but they never showed up at our previously appointed meeting location. I waited at the Mnazareti stop for two hours... So instead of getting the chickens with them today I accompanied Aaron and Jeff while they taught the computer class again.

                We watched the “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers” tonight.

11 July 2013 (Thursday)

                We bought most of the chickens and the chickens were actually delivered shortly after we arrived at Mkonoo. A man driving a pikipiki was hauling a plastic crate box with chickens in it. It honestly looked like there were maybe five chickens in it. Aaron and I joked about how funny it would be if they somehow managed to fit all 20 chickens in there. Lo, and behold, they fit 19 chickens in there... Three of them suffocated on the way to us and were already dead by the time they were pulled out and loosed.

We were finally able to pay and be on our way. It was very smooth for some reason. Nothing really goes smooth here in Tanzania. We are ALMOST done with the chicken coop project. We just need to come back one more time to buy the other three chickens, alive. It still baffles me that it has taken almost two months...

                We got a call later today from Goodluck saying that two eggs had already been laid after we left. A bit of good fortune for us!

                Jeff, Brittany, and Lex left today so now it's just down to three of us at the house right now since Melinda is on the safari with her parents and everyone else is in Namanga helping to finish up building the kitchen.

(Lex)                                   (Jeff)

12 July 2013 (Friday)

                Aaron took over teaching English for Lex and Mary. I went with him this morning. It was really difficult to teach them because they wouldn’t respond to any questions we asked. We could tell they were kind of shy but when they don’t answer at all it’s almost impossible to teach them. We weren’t perfect teachers of course, but it was difficult.

                Right after that Aaron taught his computer class.

                Aaron and I found two new places to eat today. I felt like we accomplished something because we normally always eat at the same places.

                We went to the Shoprite area to find some ibuprofen for Aaron’s headaches. Then we headed to the Maasai market so he could do some research on finding stone beads.

                Everyone got back from Namanga and we met them at the Shanghai restaurant again. My deal with Caroline is complete now that I bought her the banana fritters with chocolate topping. She doesn’t like chocolate… so she missed out while everyone else in our group that got that same dish was drinking the chocolate syrup straight up. We’re all deprived and this is what happens to us when get a hold of chocolate.

                Ima, our guard of the past two months, left us because of family issues and can’t really be our guard for us anymore because of it. We have had a new guard for the past couple days and tonight he showed up drunk to work and Ellen caught him. We had a new guard within the hour, which was crazy fast.

13 July 2013 (Saturday)

                Most of today was occupied by sacrilegious worship unfortunately. Goodluck really wanted us to meet his mom and to have her pray for us. She is a prophetess of her church. First we showed up at her house and she played a homemade-like DVD of one of her sermons. It was kind of awkward because we don’t even speak Swahili and we were waiting for lunch to be served.

                For lunch we had chapati, rice, and what seemed to be heated up peanut butter. She also served Cadburry cocoa powder that you would use for cooking. It was dark chocolate flavored. They had the cane sugar out to balance out the bitterness. It was delicious! I haven’t had that good of hot dark chocolate in a long time. I don’t know if I every have actually.

                After lunch we were all being taught how to shake our hips African style. They even put blankets around our waists to add to the shaking effect. Caroline was about to break out of her shell and twerk in public but decided against it because she got scared. Surprise, surprise.

                We then proceeded to Prohetess Chiapa’s church.

We were serenaded with overly loud music. The speakers were blasting. It was ridiculous. Then we all lined up and received a personal blessing from the prophetess. She would ask each of us our name and what our problem was that we wanted her to pray for. It ranged from health, to doing well in school, to blessing our families, to getting rid of an annoying bird that pecks at the girls’ window at 7 a.m., to me finding my eternal companion. It was very weird because she would lay her hands on our heads, shoulders, chests, or backs and offer up some crazy prayer. Her secretary was also there to help say the prayer. She would mutter her own set of words and they would both pretend like they were crying. She had some of us kneel in front of her but most of us felt uncomfortable doing that.

                It was just so weird. Some of us would laugh. I was trying to be respectful but it did not feel right at all. It was a dragged out occasion that everyone was grateful to be over with. Interesting indeed though.

                We ended up going to the Maasai market again. Followed by a movie at Njiro again. We watched “Despicable Me 2.”

14 July 2013 (Sunday)

                We only had priesthood meeting and sacrament meeting today because the mission president and his wife attended the branch conference today. We sang the lyrics of “Joseph Smith’s First Prayer” to the tune of “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing.” The thing that gets me the most when I sing is I can’t get enough air into my lungs because I get so nervous so it throws my singing off a bit.

                Our final teammate came tonight, Kelsi. So our team loves pranking and of course, we are pranking her. So we are pretending that we all have to help with guard duty every night and that we have three-hour shifts when we are on duty. We had our guard “train” her and teach her some marching drills while we were around the fire tonight. We had some other team members share “scary” stories of guard duty and “close calls.” She totally believes it. We told her she doesn’t have to do it tonight but that tomorrow night is when she is assigned. We’ll break it to her before then though. We’re bad, but we're perfectly good at it.

                We had an exploding fire tonight. There was several times where it would “explode” and pop like crazy and shoot out embers like a shotgun. I got shot! An ember flew behind me and I guess I sat on it because it burned a hole in my basketball shorts. Don’t every underestimate the heat.

15 July 2013 (Monday)

                Some of us slept out on the verandah tonight. Caroline left at around 4 a.m. and four other people woke up and accompanied her to the airport. True friends. Mary departed later this afternoon.

                We met with Martha again this morning. Every time I meet with her I feel of Heavenly Father’s love for her. She is no different than any other person. She has done more good in her life and for albinos than I will ever do in my lifetime. She is a saint in my eyes. She is inspiring because she is so dedicated to serving God’s children and she is so humble about it. She told us today that whenever she is feeling discouraged she gathers strength and courage from knowing that God has a purpose for her and for albinos in this world. And that they are no different than any other person.

                We watched the extended version of the first Lord of the Rings movie. During the movie, Ellen came in to remind us of our “guard duty” schedules. Kelsi confirmed her 4 a.m. shift and immediately decided she needed to go to bed in order to be well rested for it. When the rest of the girls found out she was going to bed and the purpose for her early retire they could not help but break the news to her of our prank. We’re not sure if she’s really upset with us or not. She decided to go to bed early anyways… She called us jerks too. All fun and games in Tanzania with our team.

16 July 2013 (Tuesday)

                We went to Martha’s new office location to check out where a kitchen garden would be built. We went over specifications and budget with her to include in a project proposal. We met Terri there who is a Mennonite woman that has been living in Tanzania for two and a half years now doing volunteer work with NGO’s specifically targeting the albino population. She knows Martha very well.

                Our next destination was Martha’s house where we checked out her chicken coop. She had some thieves in this past week that broke in through some loose boards and stole some chickens. She wants us to help rebuild the chicken coop because it is kind of older but the problem lies in the poor fencing surrounding her home. We might have another project on our hands with upping the defenses of her fence and booby-trapping it.

                We then went to her pig pen to see how much it would cost to finish putting a roof over part of it.

                We ate lunch in that same area and I had mtori for the first time. It tastes like potato soup but it’s porridge with fried plantains and beef in it. Aaron’s mtori came with a pilipili mbuzi (goat pepper) on the side. He split it in half and ate the half with the most seeds. He soon found out that pilipili mbuzi are much hotter than the normal pilipilis we eat. I ate the other half of it and it was indeed dreadful.

                The hierarchy of pilipilis: pilipili is the coolest, it is red and elongated like what a normal pepper would look like and can grow to the size of a pinky at its largest size. Then there’s the pilipili mbuzi. It is about the size of the candy corn pumpkins and it’s a yellowish-green. The hottest is called the pilipili kichaa (crazy pepper). It is the smallest of them all. I haven’t actually seen one yet.

17 July 2013 (Wednesday)

                When we arrived in Namanga to help out with the kitchen again the school children were on recess when they spotted us. They charged us like an all-out attack. They were yelling and screaming “mzungu!” Once they got to us about five children latched on to each of our arms. It’s pretty cool being welcomed like that.

                The roof got finished today. Although there was a lot of sitting today, which is typical of Namanga, I was able to finish Congo, the book I was reading.

                At lunch today I ended up eating five chapati! It was a new record for me for one sitting. I was only capable of doing it because we had goat and a delicious sauce to go with it. I realized my favorite meal here though is rice and goat, wali mbuzi.

                I got to take another hot bucket shower tonight. This makes it my third hot shower since being in Tanzania. I also had a room all to myself at the hotel and a two-person bed to boot. I also got the most sleep I’ve gotten since being here as well. It was a good night.

18 July 2013 (Thursday)

                Today the inside walls of the kitchen were plastered with concrete. It was another major sitting-and-not-doing-much day, but it’s always fun being here in Namanga. Emmanuel’s children, Meshack (10 years old) and Noella (7 years old), love hanging out with us. They especially love taking my camera and just going buck wild on taking pictures. They take pictures of everything. They say one of our names to grab our attention and then take a picture. Because they take so many pictures, they end up getting some good shots.

                We played MASH and Caroline was one of my options for a future wife. Unfortunately she was the first to be erased. The final outcome was that I would marry Thira and we would have a marriage happiness level of eight. We would have six children, live in a house, and own a double-decker daladala. Sounds like a pretty dang good life to me! We’ll see how accurate it is.

                We are now good acquaintances with the samosa lady, Katherine. She knows that we pass by her every day and she also knows that we look forward to and will buy many samosas from her. For the five of us, we bought 28 samosas! I bought ten but only ended eating seven of them. I must improve.

                I conducted an experiment today. Emilee and Alysha are under the assumption that the top half of bread tastes different than the bottom half. They claim that they can taste the difference so much that without even looking they could tell the difference purely on taste. I put them to the test. I broke off identical looking pieces from both ends, had Emilee close her eyes, and I fed them to her. She guessed correctly which piece she ate in the right order but I am still not convinced that it is because of taste alone. I have only tested one person so more test subjects will be acquired in the near future indeed.

                

19 July 2013 (Friday)

                Shaylor, Moses, and I explored the town of Arusha searching for poor homes that would be willing to test out Shaylor’s plastic sheet skylight project idea. Most homes here have a door and maybe a window or two and that is all the light available during the day when the light shines through them. Once the sun goes down there is no more light. He wants to cut out sections of tin roofs and replace them with sturdy, corrugated plastic so as to let light shine in and be a natural source of greater light in their homes. The people here are so humble and friendly. I think it’s awesome how they let wazungu they have never met before cut portions of their roof and replace it with what the wazungu think is better and beneficial. They were very eager to help us too. We just did a test piece today, but it confirms that it works and Shaylor can now proceed with his project now.

                Moses is a 29-year-old convert to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He returned from serving a mission to South Africa about a year and a half ago. He served in the same mission as Preston Alder! He is a very dedicated member. His situation makes me grateful to live in the U.S. where there are many LDS people because I have more options of finding an eternal companion. He wants to very badly but the girls in the branch aren’t his type I guess. He is a faithful member when most people in the branch only come because the wazungu come in the summer time. He inspires me. He and Elias, a counselor in the branch presidency, are the first two Tanzanians to receive funding for their education through the perpetual education fund.

                I finished my completed project proposal for the chicken coop.

   Our team normally goes out to eat and does something fun on Friday nights but tonight everyone was being lame and decided to stay home. Only Melinda, Shaylor, and I decided to eat out.