Vom

Well, it has been quite the few days since I wrote you last.  Thursday we took our final test.  It was a little nerve racking but I think we all did ok.  We haven't received the results yet.  I kind of hope we don't until we return from Zanzibar.  Gets the blood going.  A little excitement on our trip.  Thursday night was a huge adventure.  Steve and I went to town and by the time we returned I felt pretty terrible.  I tried to speak Swahili with Moreto and Kadeghe to no avail-chemsha bongo like crazy.  I tried to go to dinner but turned right around and even walked out on the new American student Douglas as he was talking with me.  There is no stopping to talk when vomit wants to make a visit.  Turns out, there is this strand of the flu that passed through the secondary school last week and I was the lucky person to bring it to the language school.  I have never vommed so much in my life.  Happy thanksgiving.  So I skipped out while the other Wartburgers watched this Masai video and vommed until about 2 in the morning.  Friday was spent in bed while I slowly recovered.  It did give me time to think.  I thought about the ways I have been changed and challenged here and decided that it is too early to tell.  The challenges are evident: being faced with solitude and also more community than I am used to, finding help in the stranger, trusting people, living more simply than at home, learning to live in peace with people I may not particularly like, accepting hospitality when my Western self just wants to do it all on my own, seeing flaws in myself like my self absorbed-ness, realizing a little more clearly to where I am called was even hard and the list goes on.  But I am not sure yet how I have been changed by this.  Other students here can easily name a lot of ways in which they have changed but I can't.  Really, I know I have somehow and I will be able to see it and name it eventually so it doesn't bother me.  Honestly. Hamna shida.  It is just interesting.  I guess I am not as introspective as many people.  Different strokes for different folks.  

Today, nimepata nafuu. I am doing much better.  I am certainly not 100%, as it is still a little hard to eat but after an entier day in bed drinking nasty salt and sugar water I am feeling pretty good.  I was a pretty relaxing Saturday.  Read a little in the morning.  Then spent a long time in the afternoon in Morogoro.  I will defs miss the dala dala.  Random community at its best.  Sara and I went to get some money for Zanzibar, but he trip turned out to be super long and wonderful mostly because we didn't want to leave the city knowing that it would be one of our last times there.  So we walked around and came around this kanga shop.  Hung on the door was a yellow kanga with two maps of Africa on the left and right and a huge picture of Obama in the center: "Hongera Barack Obama."  The bottom says, "Love and peace have come from God." HA! Of course, I went in and got this.  Peter and I are going to split either side of it.  It is super good and it led to a really nice conversation about unity between our two continents with the shop owner.  People are so hopeful that there will be an improvement in relationships.  I hope so too.  After this we just spent a long time walking around.  It was really nice.  The dala dala on the way home was the smallest one we had ever ridden in.  Mr. Hand Some was the name on the back.  

This evening, after tea, I just spent a long time in Jimmy's room with him and Moreto and a couple of younger students who I don't know.  We listened to music and talked about Moreto's 400 girl friends.  Way good.  It was a nice room with electricity.  Jimmy's pretty upset about us leaving and I am too in some ways.  

All of us will certainly miss the times like these but I think we are doing a good job preparing to go home.  The reverse culture shock will be something but we are kind of all excited to see how we react to it.  I guess talking to people about the US and hearing from them a few of the good thing that it has done has made me a little more level headed in my criticisms.  I am curious to see if my response coming home will be a loud opposition again to a life style of consumption and fear or a gentler withdraw from participation.  Maybe somewhere in the middle.  We'll see.  This thinking is certainly sparked by the tragedy in Long Island.  I feel more shock than anything.  I just think I don't know how to respond.  This entry was a lot of stream of consciousness so I am sorry if it was hard to follow.

Random culture thing: Luka is trying to play cupid between these two evangelists who tots dig each other.  But a problem has arisen.  There is a dispute between the families about the bride price.  Mch. talked to Sara and I about it today.  Apparently this happens a lot.  There is certainly value in tradition and this one used to be rather playful and brought families together but now it makes it very hard to marry.  There are a lot of children born out of wedlock because of it.  People simply get fed up and they give up and either leave each other or go against their family's will.