Friday, January 07, 2011

“I found the perfect man for you.”

Although I’d only been shown the shortcut on one trip to Endasak and back, I was able to remember all of the correct turns to Kristen’s house. She is headed to MST (mid-service training, aka medical check-up) and I needed to go to the bank. Since I hadn’t been to Singida before, it was the perfect opportunity to be shown around by someone who had.

We waited at the “stand” (a seemingly random place the busses will stop at), ate some mango bread, and at one point Kristen said, “I found the perfect guy for you.” I was a little confused until she followed it up with, “That guy has an ‘I love Amanda’ shirt on. He’s looking for you.” The shirt is probably from some teeny-bopper who made the shirt when s/he went to a Mandy Moore concert or some other similar thing, but it made its way to Africa where it entertained us.

Eventually, a bus came that we wanted to take and we paid the guy to get on. We did not pay for a seat. We were mashed in the aisle as tightly as they could pack us. Usually enough people will disembark in Katesh that some of the people standing can sit. This didn’t happen today and I spent the whole 4-4.5 hr trip standing and bracing myself – decent exercise. Unfortunately, Kristen wasn’t feeling so well and had to stop the bus to run off into the brush. Luckily she was feeling much better after we arrived in Singida and rested for a little bit. It was also when the rain had stopped to give us a break to catch a daladala.

Though it was raining when we got to the market, we had coats on and it didn’t last too long. Uma had been able to find Indian spices in powder form at the market but I had a heck of a time. Same thing with lentils. The spices were only in whole form and no one knew what lentils are (I was speaking Kiswahili too). They tried to help me out as much as they could regardless. I ended up with a couple of spices, choroko (green gram), and a mystery small, white, ball-shaped bean thing, At least I know it is supposed to be edible.

Luckily I found some of the spices at the safi stores so I’m only missing a few now. My biggest buy today was a single burner electric hotplate. I’m excited to be able to boil water without having to get my charcoal jiko going. It should also be useful for easy meals like oatmeal, rice, or soup. Moreover, I found the kind of notebook I like writing my letters in, it only took checking over a half dozen stores. At the last safi store, I really stocked up. I got .5L extra virgin olive oil, popcorn, oats, cheese wedges (you know, the processed kind that doesn’t have to be refrigerated), peanut butter, yeast, toilet paper, etc. I basically hit the motherload on this trip and filled my backpacking pack.

After our shopping, we had a little ice cream. Ok, actually, I had 2 because it was so good and we really didn’t have lunch anyway. I wonder how much real ice cream I’ll e able to eat after months of almost no ice cream (these little pre-packaged cones and such aren’t real ice cream). Kait, how do ice cream sundaes sound for a rehearsal “dinner”?

As it was getting dark, we went to a place for dinner where I had some chicken (leg?) with rice and a real ginger ale. All in all a pretty darn successful, if expensive, day.

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