I love this blog post from TanzaniaI am sitting in an internet cafe and not having much sucess in posting pictures. It's even difficult (not to mention tedious) attaching pictures to email. But I wanted to post some brief stories that just barely scratch the surface of my "story bank" hat builds by the second...Today I walked to the Jesuit parish for their English mass. I arrived quite a bit early (i still have to factor in time for getting lost even though the main paved roads in Mwanza are few). Yesterday I had noticed many people in the marshy area on the shores of the lake. I saw some people hacking at long grass and it looked like some were harvesting something from the very luscious marsh area. With my extra time, I decided to climb down and check it out. I spotted a big pod of orange flowers and thought it'd make for a nice picture. As i walked over there a young man hacking at the grass called, "Mzungu! Mzungu!" Oh yeah, you noticed? I kept going and this guy persisted, "PSST! Mzungu! PSST!" After I acknowledged him with a greeting he said something in Swahili that i didn't understand. But this time as i turned i saw a man with his shirt off and realized that if i continue further down the path I would run into people bathing!!! I thanked the young man an promptly turned around!Another typically "African" thing happened today at church. During the first reading it began powerfully raining down to the point that we could not hear the reader who was using a microphone. The second reader continued and I could barely catch one word. When it was the priest's turn it started raining so hard it sounded like the roof might just lift off! The entire copngregation jumped when the back door slammed shut from the force of the wind. Some people hurried to shut the doors and close the windows to stop the rain from flooding in. All the while the power went out. But we all just carried on as if nothing had happened... the priest continued on with his homily and saying the mass. Good thing we know the order of the mass because we certainly couldn't hear one word!My time is running short, but a quick summary of life in Mwanza: I miss you all a lot. Things are very busy and somewhat overwhelming - Shaloom Care House (my work place) has very ambitious goals for me - and i only know bits and pieces of the language. Hardly anyone speaks English at work and those that do I have to concentrate very hard to understand the pronunciations and then translate from Tanzanian English to American English. I am called "Roreen" as Ls are sometimes hard for people to pronounce.
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