A Few Thoughts on my New Home

I have a balcony in my house.  I like it.  I like to sit and look at the mountains and not have anyone bother me.  Birds are building a nest in the corner.

There is a homeless man without pants who wanders about screaming and eating out of the garbage pits.  What connection he has with the school that brought him here, or has prevented anyone of authority from removing him from the premises, I do not know.  On the other hand, there are no facilities for caring for those who are homeless and/or mentally disturbed.  There are no incidents of his hurting anyone (I really hope.  The two volunteers previous to me report no incidents), and the place is crawling with security guards, so I guess why not?  It's not like he has anyplace more healthy and reasonable to go.  Either his family abandoned him or he's an orphan probably.

I am now in a house that gets an average internet latency of 200ms.  This is awesome.  The fabulous bearded volunteer I am replacing and whose house I am sharing for a week watches American sport tv on a regular basis.  I joined him for an evening of baseball, which unfortunately included a lot of American commercials as well.  At least two products promised, in so many words, that using them would "get girls" or cause one to "get laid."  The advertisers must assume that men are highly gullible or that women (not girls) are contractually obligated to provide sexual favors as a reward for obedient consumerism.  Either way, this is sleazy.

Russian plugs are weird.  But at least the Russians who built the place abandoned plenty of industrial equipment which is just sitting around.  Children and I play on them.

I am suddenly not so much missing one of my hardworking girls in Morogoro, because apparently by failing to forward her text message to 10 people within 60 seconds, I do not love Jesus.  I'm fairly certain Jesus wouldn't care about such things, and I'm having trouble coming up with a deity who would.  This would be beneath the God of the Machine, but perhaps there is some minor network god who really likes counting things who might care.  Possibly this could be seen as a sacrifice to Mark Zuckerburg, greater saint of Empty Gestures Leading to Greater Corporate Profits.

Refrigeration is awesome!  I can keep non-onion vegetables around for more than two days!  Even avocados!  My shopping is going to get so much more efficient.  However, it does seem a bit of a cruel joke that I have a refrigerator in a cool place like Mbeya but didn't have one in the weltering heat of Morogoro.     Regardless, I think I'm in love with this refrigerator.  I have never felt so intensely emotionally attached to a machine since I met the office copier that could also scan entire books and had a built-in stapler.