Lay Down Your Heart

This week has been good. We have fallen into somewhat of a routine and the days are starting to fly by. On Tuesday we were back at our regular placements. Everything went as usual. One little boy had a huge cut on his hand. Ok well it was like 3/4 of an inch long but that's a huge cut to me. And it was very deep. The kind that probably needs stitches. Sahidi asked me to put neosporin and bandaids on it and I didn't even get light headed! I've been bringing first-aid stuff and wrapping it everyday since. I'm not sure if it's healing though. :-/
I've also had a nasty head cold and cough this week. I'm really not sure how my body is producing this much snot. But I seem to be significantly better today. A lot of the volunteers have been getting sick with fevers and stomach things so I can't complain too much.

Tuesday afternoon Mama Thea told us some of her life story. She is an amazing woman. Mama Thea is the head of all 3 Tanzania programs (Bagamoyo and the 2 Moshi programs). She grew up in an extremely poor family in Northern Tanzania and her mother died when she was 5 and she has 2 younger siblings. Well now she has 11 because her dad remarried 10 years later and had 9 more. Anyway, me telling you the whole story will not have the same effect as when she told it. She's brilliant and very endearing.
"Mama" obviously means mother but here it is used to refer to any woman who is older than you. For example, the children at AMAP call me Mother (well actually it comes out "Mah-da" haha). It was weird at first but now I'm used to it. It's not that they think I'm they're actual mother, it's just a respectful term.

After Mama Thea's story, we all took a visit to one of Bagamoyo's traditional healers. This man was probably about 65 years old and has been in the business since he was 18. Zik translated everything for us. It was very interesting. Some of the stuff is believable. Like he has a bunch of powders and medicines that can be mixed with water or oils and consumed. These are similar things found in our medicines they just don't have the equipment to put them in capsules and package them. But then he went on to show us this stone that looked like amber. He said if you are feeling sick somewhere and the cause is unnatural, like if a witch is using witchcraft to make you sick, then the stone will stick to the part of your body that is being affected, like a magnet...
He also does exorcisms. He told us that the evil spirits often speak through the person they are inhabiting and demand things. So if the spirit wants a chicken, they give it a chicken and wave this magic wand thing around until the spirit leaves. Interesting. He also claims to be able to cure mental illness and I think at one point said he can make you be attracted to the opposite sex if you are not. Umm what else. OH, he has this powder that you can consume and it will make the person of your choice fall in love with you. Give me some of that, doctahh! Hahahah, all in all it was a really interesting experience to see how other cultures view mental illness (evil spirits) and other things of the sort.

Yesterday a few of us took a cooking course to make traditional food. Robert and Chiku, the cooks at CCS, taught us how to make Cibatti (this delicious, oily flat bread), vegetable stew (mboga), and salad for dinner. It was a lot of fun. I really appreciate all of the hard work they do so we can have delicious meals that won't make us sick.

And last night, the same family we visited last week, who put on the performance, came to Hillside (the outdoor bar next door to CCS homebase) to perform again. It was fantastic. They played drums and other cool instruments and danced. At one point they pulled me up to dance and I could tell that no wasn't really an option, I just wished I had more than one glass of wine. But it was fine because they also pulled Doug and Amanda up there. The woman dancing with Doug was doing some weird awkward dance where she kept her legs completely straight, almost hyper extended. And he tried to mimick her. And the whole thing was entirely ridiculous so everyone was focusing on that haha. And someone got a video of it. But anyway, at the end we all went up and danced together and it was fun. Oh also one of the ladies pretty much gave me a lap dance at one point. That was weird. I didn't really know how to react. I don't know how they move their butts like that. It's crazy. But it was a fun night. I took a few videos on my camera so I will post them when I get home.

And today was our last Swahili lesson. We've had 6 total I believe. I know a lot more than I did when I first arrived but I still cannot communicate adequately in Swahili. That would take many more lessons. But Swahili seems much simpler than English or even Spanish. I think it would be fairly easy to learn if I were to live here for a longer period of time.

Tomorrow 7 of us are going on a safari in Mikumu! It is about 4 or 5 hours away and we are leaving at 6 am. We get one Friday off of volunteering for this purpose. I'm very excited to see all of the wildlife and to hike near a waterfall on Sunday. Hopefully I get some amazing pictures. The rest of the group is going to Lazy Lagoon this weekend which is about 30-45 minutes away. It's a tiny island where there is only one resort and apparently it's really relaxing and the food is great. Most of those people are either going to the Serengedi for a safari the following weekend or going on long safaris after their CCS time is over. The Serengedi is about 8 hours away though so it's not really doable in 3 days.

I think that's all for now. I'll post again next week!

P.S.- Bagamoyo comes from Bwaga moyo which means "lay down your heart" in Swahili.