Hey Chilly Kids,
It has never felt more unlike Christmas in my entire life. This being my first hot Christmas ever is definitely strange. There are no Christmas tunes repeatedly churning off the radio, getting stuck in my head, no houses lit up like an airstrip for Santa’s sleigh, no men dressed in velour red suits, adorned with clumsy white beards ringing in the alms for the poor. And there is certainly no white, fluffy cold stuff to make my Christmas dreamy.
Instead there are the poor, sitting waiting for alms, like they do every day. There are busloads of people going who knows where and there are dry red dusty roads. It’s beginning to feel a lot like August..in New Mexico.
Lucky for us the tanks refilled themselves with water and our plants are thriving. The bananas are still alive, the tomatoes have lots of fruit and our watermelons are the size of large soft balls. It’s our neighbors I am worried about. Their corn looks dry and thirsty, curling over like seed weed left to dry on the beach rather than like the fine smooth leaves they are suppose to be. It poured rain here in town, but out at the school not a drop had fallen. The town sits at the base of the mountains where the rain is trapped and left behind. Out in the valley it feels like it is coming your way, only to be blown too far to feel it, or evaporated before it hits our dry soils. Thank God for our well. We had two new spickets put in and watering is going much faster.
Jonah designed a kitchen for the school and it is coming along nicely. I have been really bad about taking pictures and have not followed the progress of the construction, but promise to document it before it is done and of course when it is done.
We leave on Wednesday for Mafia Island. The other six volunteers are flying from Dar Es Salaam, while Jonah and I have decided to save money and have ourselves an adventure. We will take an early bus to Dar, 3-4 dalla dalla rides to a small town, and then get on a boat and ride 3 hours to the island. Wish us luck and keep us in your thoughts! We will celebrate Christmas there, snorkeling and swimming. I will write more when we return!
Other than working in the garden every day we have been getting to know our street. We go for Chapattis every day and sit with the two women, who are no more than 20 years old. They cook breakfast, lunch and dinner in a tiny cement room with one table and some benches, seven days a week. There is a bar where we have an occasional beer and dinner (omelets cooked with French fries, and shish kebabs). Down the street we buy fruit from a nice woman who speaks to me in really fast Swahili. Beyond her is a bunch of guys I often stop and talk with. They sit lined up on their motorcycles waiting for customers. Further down the street is a small market where we bought a small folding stool for $2.00 that has a sharp jagged blade attached. You sit on the stool and grate coconut meat. We put the meat in my bandana and soaked it in hot water. Later we squeezed the cloth full of grated coconut and made coconut milk which I cooked with rice (Jonah broke the stool the first time we used it, but we figured out how to still use it anyways). We have also been experimenting with cooking bananas, and fresh fish from town. Our meals are usually vegetarian and delicious. I have made Dahl once. We go to the “white people” supermarket to buy pasta and those long missed items. Today we saw butter and decided it would be our Christmas present to ourselves when we returned. It comes all the way from New Zealand, but I just miss it so much. We buy fresh milk from a neighbor at the school. I boil it and we drink in our tea or make soup. The other day it had already begun separating so I made some cheese from the curds which we added to our omelets-yum! Jonah brought a sourdough bread starter from home, so we have been making fresh bread as well. We also make fresh fruit smoothies everyday with bananas, papaya, mangoes, pineapples and mtindi-a kefir like milk bought by the plastic bag.
I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas, Chanukah, and Kwanza!!! Eat lots of cookies and butter for us!
Miss and love you all!
Linz
Ps sorry no new pics-but i promise to take more! Mostly we have just been at the Gardens!
