My first day of lasts!

Today was a wonderful day. Almost entirely stress free, yummy food, nice people, and overall it made me really happy to be here! (The Tuesday afternoon group has always been my favourite hahaha)

It all started well when I woke up at about 6:30, well ahead of my alarm. It meant I got to relax and wake up calmly without being jolted awake! To add good news to good news, there was POWER! HOW AMAZING! SO, I GOT TO HAVE A SHOWER! WITH HOT WATER! I might sound a little crazy right now, but I really don’t think you understand hahahaha. Anyway, then I had some brekky…which was…I can’t remember…OH THAT’S RIGHT. Just a fried egg hahaha. Other than the shower (which was really amazing), my morning was pretty uneventful. I took a nice, overcrowded Dala Dala to work (this one didn’t even have an extended roof like some of them do, so I was literally bent over at the hips to fit, and yes I had to stand up since all the seats were taken…I don’t think I’ll be able to get a picture of what the inside of a standard Dala Dala looks like, (because it’s a bit unsafe, and probably pretty inconsiderate) so here’s some I found elsewhere on the internet.

At work, I discovered that Cleo was feeling sick today, so she wasn’t coming in. Marjolein wanted to go over to a shop near the office that she’s been frequenting, so it was just me and Yuta…and the human rights people of course. So, it was a nice small group of us heading off to the Tuesday morning group, Upendo A. There were only 3 or 4 women there, since most of the group was off at a funeral! Elizabeth commented that this group seems to have a lot of funerals…apparently last week they were at a funeral too. Anyway, they were really enthusiastic. Melany was giving a presentation on the legal ramifications on having children outside of a marriage in Tanzania. She talked about things like how to go about getting child support from the father, and how the law treats children born outside of a marriage somewhat as second-class citizens…it was really quite amazing. Then Yuta did Cleo’s presentation on bookkeeping, since she was sick! (keep in mind this is the group that meets inside a small room of one of the women’s houses, where we all have to take our shoes off…so it was pretty nice with half the number of people that are usually in there hahahaha) I checked the bookkeeping of some of the women, which was pretty good. Then we all headed outside to take some pictures!

Rachelle dropped Franca, Yuta and me off at Ciao for lunch hahahaha. I honestly love that place so much…although that’s probably the last time I’ll go there :’( oh well…I got a “Pizza Pollo” which was pretty much just chicken, tomato, mozzarella, and I think a little garlic and some seasoning. It was really nice actually…I couldn’t get through it all though! After we ordered (but before our food came), Lena and Siena joined us! It turns out they always go past Nakumatt for lunch, since they’re on the medical project, and the hospital is nearby. So, that was nice! In the end, Franca and Lena ended up finishing my pizza hahahaha. So, I’ll preface this with saying that, when Rachelle dropped us off, I asked her if she would like an ice cream from Ciao when she picked us up, and she said yeah! So, I said “great! I’ll see you when you come get us”…except they didn’t come and get us. In fact, all of us were blissfully unaware of our phones and everything, since we figured that we would just relax until the car came back past to pick us up, since that’s what has always happened before today…like literally every time. At about 1:30, Yuta checked his phone and found a message from Rachelle, asking us to be back at the office by 1:30…We called them and asked what was happening…it turns out no, Rachelle hadn’t meant that she would pick us up…it was just a massive miscommunication…something that seems to happen really frequently here. Anyway, Elizabeth told us to make our way back to the office and she would take us to the Tuesday afternoon group (Ikusura group) separately…so we got on a Dala Dala and headed back to the office. Luckily, we all got seats on this one.

When we finally got back to office, we piled into Elizabeth’s car and headed off to the afternoon group meeting. Since there was an event on at the local church (probably an exorcism to be honest…HAHAHAHAHAHA), we met at Irene’s house (where George, Marjolein, and I all did the batiki making on Monday last week). Everyone was in a really good frame of mind! I got some pictures of their jewellery that had been all laid out, as well as the 3 batikis that we made last week!

The one that I made, the one that Irene made, and the

one that Marjolein made

Melany delivered her presentation on children born outside of marriage:

While Marjolein prepared her cooking lesson:

And then I delivered my presentation on Customer Relations, which, again, was met with some pretty thoughtful questions and a lot of agreement from the women hahaha. It was a pretty relaxed afternoon. Then, as everyone was eating the minestrone that Marjolein had prepared, Franca, Melany and I all said our farewells! They’re a very cheerful group of women, and I suspect the group that I’ll miss the most. When I was saying goodbye, I said something about why I like this group so much in particular (probably something about them being so happy and smiley) and one of the women chirped in, “AND because we speak English so well!”…hahahaha which I guess is pretty true. It really helps when you don’t have to communicate through a translator 100% of the time. (Elizabeth told me that they were particularly sad at me announcing that I was leaving already hahahaha) They insisted on taking some group photos with us all hahahah.

They also let us pick out one of their items of jewellery as a farewell gift hahaha, so I got a necklace made of local wood…then we said our final goodbyes and headed off home. And that pretty much brings me to now…I suspect it’ll be a nice quiet night for me tonight…the power’s still on…OOOOOOO I MIGHT HAVE ANOTHER SHOWER! Who knows?

Hahahahah anyway, thanks for reading and, as always, I’ll see you in the next one!