7/1: My Weekend

I think we’re settling into life in Kigoma. This weekend was very pleasant, although not particularly eventful. Friday night we had dinner at Gibbs (the first hotel we stayed at that has the widest selection of food), and only waited two hours this time – last week we waited three.

Saturday was an errands running day for me. I left the hotel early with the mindset of getting everything done and getting back to the hotel before the heat of the day. Didn’t particularly go as planned. I walked the mile and a half from our hotel to town, and dropped off our questionnaire to be photocopied. I realized I forgot to bring the consent form, so I knew I would have to walk back to the hotel and then back to town again at some point that day – bummer. The next hour I spent trying to find a small voice recorder. Apparently, all six places I went had “just sold the last one”, which is Tanzanian for “I had one once and sold it at some point in time, possibly five years ago.” I finally found a small radio/tape player that has a record function which I figured would work (we need to tape in-depth interviews), but then had to search all six stores again for blank tapes, finally finding them at the last one. Phew! Then I walked back to the hotel to pick up the questionnaire and Kristina, and ran into Molly, Betsy, and Terry (the MPH students working on the Michigan survey, and a visiting boyfriend). The five of us went into to town and had lunch at Sun City, where we had tasty pilau (rice sautéed with spices so it turns brown, a big improvement on plain rice) and beans. The best thing about Sun City is your meal comes with a fruit cup – fresh papaya, pineapple, and watermelon, yum! After more errand running I returned to the hotel to nap because being out in the sun for four hours is super draining! At six I met Terry and we had a good run out to the edges of town and back, getting back just as it got dark.

The five of us had big plans to go out on Saturday night. We took a taxi to where we wanted to go, and it was empty. Not just kind of lame empty with one or two people there, but literally empty. We figured Kigoma’s probably the sort of town where there’s certain places you go on certain nights of the week, and apparently Saturday was not the night for this place. So we told the driver to take us to Website Pub, which was pretty busy. It has a big spacious hall and also outside tables. The hall was reserved for a wedding, and we got to peek in and check it out. It was pretty cool – kind of just what you would imagine a Tanzanian wedding to be. We got some food and drank some beer, and had a great time hanging out. We were done by 11, though and headed home.

Today, after a lazy morning at the hotel, the five of us walked into town for lunch at Ally’s Café – again, pilau and beans. The portions are so big that I ate half, was stuffed, and ate the other half for dinner, and was stuffed again (actually, I didn’t even finish it for dinner!). Then we walked around the market, looking at fruits, pirated DVDs, and fabric. Then we headed out to Jacob’s (or as the locals call it, Mzungu) Beach. You have to take a perilous taxi ride their, climbing dirt roads that are meant for four-wheelers in a Corolla (or Corona as their labeled here, I think everything is pirated). It’s a beautiful private beach, and we lounged around in the sun and swam in the crystal blue water. It felt like vacation, and was really relaxing. We shared the beach with monkeys, and had to keep an eye out for them or they would try to look through our stuff. It didn’t help that Betsy had bananas in her bag, so we ended up throwing them to the monkeys so they’d stop trying to sneak into our bags. It was crazy being that close to these cute little monkeys, and I got a few pictures.

Tonight we’re watching pirated movies and going to bed early – a nice finish to a relaxing weekend. It feels good to recharge my batteries because I have a feeling the coming week is going to be a little hectic.