Tag: Life in Tanzania Page 19 of 26

We interrupt the Christmas posts for another adventure…..

I’ve always been the one in charge of paying the bills in this family. I remember the good ol’ days when paying bills consisted of sitting down with the checkbook one evening every month and writing a bunch of checks.

Not so anymore.

Everything is paid in cash, in person in Tanzania. For example:

Cell phone: Pre-paid phone cards. This is pretty easy because phone cards are sold everywhere.

Electricity: Purchased in cash at the Luku shop. They give me credit on a little card which I then insert into a small box in our house, and we are then recharged with electricity.

Internet: 4O minute drive into town, over to the PPF Towers building, go up to the 15th floor, pre-pay for the next three months in cash.

Water: This is the only utility that isn’t pre-paid. Someone stops by our house every month and delivers the bill. Then I go to the water company and pay…in cash.

Garbage: The garbage men honk at the gate once a month and I bring them their fee.

I’ve gotten pretty used to all of this. But yesterday threw me for a loop.

Our yearly car registration is overdue. I mistakenly assumed the wrong due date, so I realized a few days ago that we passed the deadline. Oops….praying, praying every time I pass a police officer that we won’t get pulled over [happens a lot for no particular reason].

In the past, we’ve had the ‘go-fer’ at school take care of our registration renewal for us. But since it was overdue, I decided to tackle it myself, even though I had never done it before. Hey, I thought, if I can handle the process of two adoptions, I can certainly get our car registration renewed.

So Gil helped me look up the location on a map, since I have absolutely no sense of direction. No problem, I thought, I can find it.

Drive downtown. It wasn’t in the place I assumed. No problem, I thought, I’ll go down the street in the other direction. Oops. One way street. I turn and take the parallel street. Oops. Another one way street. Now I am hopelessly lost.

But the traffic downtown is so congested that I can’t pull over for a while. Finally I find a place, and a kind parking attendant points me in the right direction.

I park at two places and someone tells me I can’t park there. Finally I park way down the street and walk to the building. It had already taken me one hour and 45 minutes to get to this point.

The place is teaming with people. I am the only white person, and the only female. I find the right window and get the right forms. Then I notice that everyone around me already has receipts. I spot the only female customer and notice that she is also renewing her registration.

‘Can you help me?’

‘Sure!’ She is pleasant. ‘You first have to go to the bank next door, pay, and get a receipt. Then you have to go to the third floor and get a stamp. Then you can come back to here and turn it all in.’

Sigh. I go next door to the bank. There are 4O people in line. I get in line and look at the form I’m supposed to fill out. I can’t do it. It’s even in English, but I have no idea what to write down. Plus I notice people around me with different paperwork than I brought with me.

At this point I am near tears. I call a friend who is Tanzanian and is the facilities manager for our school. ‘What do I do?’ I ask. ‘You should get George [the go-fer] to do it,’ he tells me.

Yep. I don’t care how much time I’ve wasted, or whether the police give me a ticket. Having George do it sounds like a great idea.

Last night another friend told me about a different location that is much easier to get the job done. So maybe next week I will be brave enough to try again.

But hey…on my way back to my car I found a great little bookstore with some kids’ books in Swahili for Grace. So it wasn’t a total loss. 🙂

I have loved reading other people’s blogs and Facebook status’ about snow, freezing cold, going out to look at Christmas lights, peppermint lattes, fireplaces, and warm jammies that all occur this time of year.

It’s pretty different for those of us in the Southern Hemisphere. [It may not have occured to some of you that the seasons are reversed down here. Thus, Christmas=summer.]

So we don’t have any of those things I listed above. But that’s okay. We still have fun. Examples:

1. Christmas tree: We have one. Up until this year, we only had a little tabletop tree. But earlier this year we bought a large tree from a family who was leaving. We hadn’t taken it out until last week–and it’s huge! About 8 feet tall. Definitely very, very fake. But once we put all the lights and ornaments and such on it, we think it looks pretty darn festive! Grace is absolutely enthralled by it.

2. Christmas decorations: Don’t really exist in the city. Some of the stores have put up Christmas trees. Nobody puts up house lights. All of the decorations available to buy are definitely in the ‘tacky’ category. Stockings are stuck to the wall. Candles are only for power outages. Impossible to keep them lit with so many fans going. But there is a particular kind of tree which bursts into red flowers during this time of year….all over the city…and in my backyard. Love it, love it!

3. Weather: See previous posts. I do have a ‘Let It Snow’ decoration on my door. There’s always hope….

4. Christmas activities: HOPAC Elementary Christmas production. HOPAC Secondary Christmas Carol Sing. HOPAC Christmas Fair. HOPAC Staff Party. Youth Group Christmas Party. There is always a Christmas Eve sunset service at the Yacht Club [yes, there are people rich enough here to own yachts] put on by the International Churches [we used to go to this, but the traffic coming home has gotten so bad that we probably won’t go this year.] The local ‘Little Theatre’ also puts on a ‘Pantomine’ every Christmas. [For those of you Americans, Christmas Pantomimes are a British tradition. They do not involve silent people with white faces. They are always a spin on a fairy tale and always involve audience participation. Loads of fun.]

5. Christmas day: No extended family. Sigh. That’s the hardest part. But we make do. This year we are hosting 17 people here at our house! I am excited. This weekend I will be looking up all sorts of new appetizer and dessert and side dish recipes. We won’t have a turkey; they are too expensive. So I will make roast beef.

6. Holidays: December 25th and 26th [Boxing Day, also in the British tradition] are national holidays. But unlike the States, only Christians celebrate Christmas. Non-Christians often go to the beach. Many Tanzanians go home to their family’s village around this time of year. They usually celebrate with a big feast.

7. Christmas vacation: In years past, we have gone to a lodge in the mountains, about 7 hours away. It is so much cooler there. But we decided that it’s really not very toddler friendly, so we will be sticking around here. We’ll go to the pool, the water park, the beach…etc.

Pictures to come soon!

We have had the rainiest November in the six years we have lived here. I finally got a picture of what the road outside our house looks like when it rains…and this isn’t even as bad as it was the day of the Big Flood.

All this rain has resulted what feels like the highest humidity we’ve ever felt. 100% humidity, to be exact. 100% humidity sort of feels like a sauna…or a steam room…or the bathroom after a hot shower. It’s actually not that hot in temperature–it hovers around 88 degrees. But besides making you constantly sweat, humidity does weird things, especially to food. Like making bread mold if you leave it out overnight. And making mold grow on your leather shoes. And the other day, I went into my pantry and found this:

Can you tell from the picture? The Hershey’s syrup was blown up like a balloon. Hmmm… Checked the expiration date. Not expired. Opened it up. Smelled like beer.

Did you know you can make beer from Hershey’s syrup?

Tasted it. Don’t know if it tastes right. The stuff is vile to me anyway, since my parents forever ruined Hershey’s syrup for me by smashing up malaria tablets and making me take them in Hershey’s syrup every Sunday for all of my young life. So now? Hershey’s syrup forever tastes like choroquine to me.

And now it smells like beer.

Still haven’t thrown it away though. That stuff’s expensive.

….you go into your pantry and look in the candy basket, and you notice that the Tootsie Roll Pops are now just empty wrappers. The actual candies are just little purple and red and brown Tootsie Roll Pop puddles underneath.

I awoke this morning at 4 am to an enormous clap of thunder. I seriously thought we were having an earthquake and just about jumped out of my skin. (People who are not native to California don’t realize how loud earthquakes actually are).

Then the downpour started. But downpours are common, though not really at this time of year. So after the adrenalin let off, I went back to sleep. The power had also gone off, so I slept in later than usual, knowing that I wouldn’t be able to do anything in the dark.

By the time we all got up around 6:15, it had been pouring for hours. Pouring like a spilled bucket. Hard, hard rain. Our yard was already more full of rain than we had ever seen it. We also heard a pounding sound in the distance but ignored it.

At about 6:30, I hear a knocking at our gate. I run out in the rain, and it’s our neighbor-to-the-left. He says, “I just want you to know, the neighbors in back of you are pounding a hole in your wall. Their yard is flooded and they are trying to get the water out. They wanted to put a hole in our wall but we wouldn’t let them.”

Hence the pounding we were hearing. (Note: Yards in Africa are surrounded by concrete walls).

So I start running to the back of our yard, screaming for Gil the entire time. The neighbors in back of us had already succeeded in pounding one hole in the wall connecting our yard with theirs, and were in the midst of pounding another one. Water was pouring into our yard.

“No!” I started screaming. “Stop! You’ll flood our yard too!”

By this time, Gil had joined me in the yelling. He grabbed our ladder and tried to get up on it, but the mud was so thick that it kept sinking in. Finally he managed to get high enough to see over the wall. He yelled and screamed but they wouldn’t stop. By the time they were done, they had put three holes in our wall and our yard was filling up fast.

“They are waist deep in water, Amy,” he told me. “They are desperate.”

By this point we had seen the road outside our house, which was a rushing river instead of a road. And the outside wall of the neighbors-to-the-right of us had completely collapsed. A tree had fallen into the road as well. It looked like a war zone. I ran back inside and called our principal, telling him Gil was not going to make it to school this morning.

So then we started a frenzied attempt to get the water out of our yard. We knew that if we didn’t, our wall would collapse as well. Or the water would come into the house. Neither of which were very good options.

So Gil started hacking holes in our concrete wall that faces the road. The water started draining out but pooling on the other side of the wall. So then he dug a series of ditches to get the water to drain off the property.

All of this was done in the pouring rain. Thankfully, this is Africa and it wasn’t cold. While all this was happening, I was trying to appease my hungry and frightened children in a very dark house. I gave Grace a box of cornflakes and she and Josiah finished it off (by eating and by playing with them) by the time we were all back inside.

At one point I decided to try to go over to our neighbors-to-the-right (who had the collapsed wall) and see if I could help out. I only succeeded in gashing up my foot rather badly and then hobbled home. Eventually the neighbors-to-the-back, who had made the holes in our wall and drained their yard into ours came over and apologized profusely. We forgave them but I’m not sure what our landlord will do!

So now it is noon. Gil finally left for school (I’m assuming he made it unless the car is stuck in the mud somewhere), the power finally came back on, my blood is cleaned up from all over the floor, my foot is all wrapped up, and the kids are napping. The rain has stopped and the frogs are all singing happy songs. Sigh. I am exhausted! But besides a few holes in our wall, we are no worse for wear. I know I have nothing to complain about, knowing that many houses in this city were flooded this morning, or worse.

For now, I am off to make cookies for the neighbors.

Update on Wednesday evening:

I did bring cookies to the neighbors, and in doing so realized that we really should be very grateful for how our house was spared. It seems as if there was a sort of flash flood that came through our neighborhood early this morning. Many of the houses near us lost walls and had their houses flooded. Our neighbors-to-the-right not only lost their front wall, but their back wall as well. The lady described it as a “tidal wave” that came through their yard from the back, knocking over the back wall, all the way through their house and then knocking over the front wall. The house on the right side of them had the same damage done. Yet our house emerged unscathed. Thank you, Lord, for your undeserved grace!

The following pictures were taken a couple hours after it stopped raining. So they don’t really do justice to what it actually looked like at the worst.

The neighbors-at-the-back, the ones who put the holes in our wall.

The view from a hole.

One of the holes in our yard.

Part of our yard

Right outside our gate, looking towards the neighbors-to-the-right

Neighbors-to-the-right

The drainage ditch in front of our house that probably saved us from further destruction. Imagine this ditch filled to the brim, and the road looking like a river.

The road to the right