On Saturday we planted bananas in our cement hard soil….I hope they will grow. It was the first time any of us (Jonah, Sandra, Frank and I) had planted a banana, so we did our best. According to the locals you dig a big hole and give it lots of water. Of course I did other research, but it is all very tricky based on soil nutrients, soil type, the amount of sunlight, the water, etc, etc. Unfortunately I forgot my camera for the digging and planting part-basically you would have seen us sweating a lot, plastered in red dust, and complaining of the many blisters on our fingers and palms-places where we have never gotten blisters before with all our years of using hoes, axes, shovels, pickmatics, or hammers.
Jonah arrived with no problems, other than being exhausted from the long journey. We stayed over in Dar Es Salaam in a simple hotel, with a fan and views of the tops of other high-rise, gray buildings with old school antennas and water tanks standing high in the heat. At 5am the call to prayer seemed loud and long and woke me from my fitful sweaty dreams. Jonah was of course already awake. We talked through the sunrise, catching up on the three weeks apart from each other.
We wake up before 6 am every day, hoping to get to the school by 6, though so far the earliest has been 6:15. We go to water, to plant, to dig before the sun is too high and too hot, which is usually by 9am, though we stay until 10 and then return about 5 pm to do as much as we can before dark. Yesterday I bought cassava plants-basically sticks-which we plant directly into the ground. They will root, send out leaves and eventually produce a nice thick root to eat. We also have been going back to the forest to collect the dust and small pieces of the charcoal to add to our gardens to hold water. We found some old men who have a huge area where they make the charcoal and they agreed to help us in exchange for a pack of smokes. On the way out to their plot, we passed their small mud hut and a hand dug well-probably 50 feet deep! I held onto Jonah and looked down, down, down, the Alice and Wonderland hole to see a small amount of water glistening up at me. A long rope with a plastic bucket attached carries the water up, up, up. One old man told us it was clean and cold. We carried grain bags full of charcoal dust on our heads like true Africans back to the roadside, our shoulders covered in black, our feet tainted red by the dusty ground.
We have ventured into the markets and I am doing my best to teach Jonah how to speak Swahili, shop for the best deal and basically function in African culture. He is doing well despite the jetlag and a raging Sinus infection.
I am a bit worried today as the water has gone dry at the school. We are unsure if it the pump, or the well. Tomorrow we will call the repair man. It had to be over 100 degrees midday today. By 8 am this morning we were sweating through our shirts and into our eyes as we dug a single berm along the garden edges. Frank continues to work by our sides and I am thankful for his help and his awesome sense of humor.
I hope you are all enjoying the winter, the snow and the holiday season. I have gotten many an email about skiing, cold temperatures and plans for Christmas. We hope to be on Mafia Island in a tent come Christmas Day-hopefully Santa can still find us in the sand and slip a little something something into our stockings hung on the Acacia Tree.
Miss you all much and sending lots of warmth and African love,
Linz
