Training is over! This horrible thing of coddlesome time-wasting is over and I am in the process of writing a formal and well-formatted letter to the director about all the things that need to be different. But that isn't really happening fast or much because I have more breathtakingly interesting things to do with my time. Nest, for example. Being as I am more selfish than Virginia Woolf, I need an entire house of my own before I become self-actualized. Actually, all I really need is a large open space in which to dance without being watched or having my music criticized and a kitchen. I need many things for my kitchen, and they are accumulating slowly because I have to buy things as time permits and in amounts of weight I am willing to carry a long distance up a hill.
Also, I have a new job that I think I will love once I get over the initial awkward phase. I am working at a teacher's college and I have three servers! Three! The fact that I think one has a dead motherboard is entirely beside the point. I have three servers! Downstairs there is an actual real library with both children's books in Kiswahili and novels by Sir Walter Scott that look fair to swashing my buckles! And I have three servers! Before I came two weren't working and I fixed one* so I am useful! And also, I have a dress with butterflies. The two are unconnected. I had purchased fabric with butterflies on it and taken it to my fundi right before leaving for swearing in, tried to retrieve it after returning, had to have it altered because my fundi overestimates my skinniness, and then kept trying to retrieve it at times when the fundi had stepped out for chai or something. While waiting for her return the other day I tried to feel the great frustration I would normally expect to feel, but really, I don't have a tight schedule as yet, I don't have any curfew due to homestay family, I don't have silly training activites, and I do need groceries. I can chill out in the market, greet people, text my fundi in Kiswahili asking when she will return, and buy tomatoes while I wait. I now have my dress. It is pretty and it has butterflies, and I wore it while trying to figure out how to configure a Cisco 870 router for the college. I have no idea how to do this, but I have the ability and free time to look up stuff on the web, which seems to make me the expert in the absence if anyone who knows where this router came from or where documentation for it might be found.
In today's agenda, I have a cold, and it is Eid, so I am taking a sick to stay in bed communing with my laptop and all the anime saved to my hard drive.
*By turning it on. Either it didn't actually have a problem or I haz teh Holy Hands of Dijkstra.
Hey! Where's the coffee? I've read all 4 of the blogs and you haven't mentioned coffee once! You need to immediately brew a pot and drink it down. Then brew another pot and drink it too. Then you will be ready to write a proper blog. The current blogs indicate that you've got waaay too much blood in your caffeine stream.
ReplyDeleteOnce you are fully caffeinated, then write about:
* Tanzanian music. There is an active jazz scene in Tanzania - have you met any jazz musicians? Are there any minimalists? Do they like ABBA?
* Tell me some Tanzanian jokes. Are they funny? Are they ironic? Are they sad?
* Tell me about Tanzanian recreation. Do they like baseball, as all God-fearing, right-thinking people do?
* Write more haiku - you're good at haiku!
* Post a picture or 2 - we want to see what things look like.
* Tell me about some of your students, not just funny stories about people who faint during the introductory ceremony.
* Tell me more about why you are proud to be in the Peace Corps.
If you continue with the current direction of your blog, you run the risk of it turning into one of the mind-numbing, soul-destroying blogs that talk about "see how cute my children/pets/spouse are? And aren't a precious person to present it all to you?"
I'm working on it! bandwidth is hard to come by and I've been overscheduled. And sick. And Tanzanians don't drink real coffee so it's hard to come by. And I don't like having my camera out all the time because I'm worried that I'll look touristy. I will, however, attempt to prevent blogginess from turning mind-numbing and soul-destroying.
ReplyDeleteButterflies..image is delightful, lol!
ReplyDelete