Witchy Woman

We’ve figured out some of the sounds Tanzanians feel represent the local wildlife; I feel the most interesting of descriptive sounds to me is the bee. Apparently, Tanzanians think that instead of bees “buzzing”, as Americans would assume, they produce a “sucking” sound; which is best described as the sound you would make sucking on a dry straw. This isn’t a bad thing, just a strange observation that I happened to remember this morning.

Also, we have met some friends; well I have more or less from playing futbol on Tuesdays and Fridays at the hospital. They’re all Europeans but they sort of share our culture, sort of. We coaxed them into meeting up with us at our favorite restaurant, Green View Garden Restaurant. Well, the Green View definitely doesn’t have any green “views” nor does it have a garden. We think it should be called, Cell Tower View Concrete Restaurant, that’s the best description one could make. View or not, it’s the best place in town so we are regulars, John, the owner and Jacob, the maître d' restaurant, are great! Anyway, we met up for a drink with our new Euro-friends this past weekend; Green View is also the only place in town with wine. Well, this wine thing was a spectacle to say the least, luckily they actually had wine glasses to drink from but had a smaller wine glass in which they actually measured the drinks. Jacob came out with the box of wine and the small glass to measure out the glasses one by one, it was quite an experience. By the end of the night, Jacob was falling over drunk (literally); Betsy and I figured he was getting drunk because we bankroll their restaurant so they could afford a drink or seven. On a side note to drinking I’ve noticed that when I drink Castle Lager, my favorite beer here although I probably wouldn’t drink it back home, my ears begin palpitating. We were trying to figure out why this happens, the jury is still out, so if any of you have any ideas, I’d be open to hearing them.

The next morning I decided, since Betsy had recently had a dress tailored, that I would get a nice button down shirt tailored myself. We went into a local tailor that specializes in men’s clothing and had them take my measurements. They said to return in four days and the shirt would be ready. Four days came and it was time to return for my newly tailored shirt or garbage bag, whatever you want to call it. I tried it on and felt as if they took my measurements in centimeters and cut the fabric in inches, the shirt was HUGE! Also, the arms were about two inches too short so we tried to get them to take it in and decided the sleeves were ruined; we had them convert it into a short-sleever. I’ll keep you updated with this but I plan on having a suit tailored while I’m here, should be an interesting process, especially since it will be in local fabric…

To adequately describe the type of care people receive from the hospital here is hard to pin-point. Seems as though the “western” doctors that are here do a fine job but some of the local health-professionals are somewhat lacking. Regina’s (our female research assistant) boyfriend was having what we thought were epileptic seizures, hence one would diagnose him with epilepsy, not here. Apparently, he’s not taking any medication for his episodes, which I’m pretty sure is not a good thing, because the doctor he visited told him it was the work of a witch. They ran tests on him, which were inconclusive, so their only explanation was that someone in Haydom is apparently performing hostile witch-craft towards him. We thought it weird to hear from a hospital, albeit in rural Africa, staffed with western doctors.

Hope all is well back in the States and that everyone had a great Thanksgiving free of witch-craft and hob-goblins!
-Ryan