Wazungu Problems

This week has been fairly eventful, despite having seven hours of monotonous class every day. As soon as we got back from Bagamoyo last weekend, the water at the dorms cut out before many of us were able to shower. We had some water stored in our laundry room but we ran through it pretty quickly. I don’t understand how the plumbing operates, because we seemed to be the only dorm that didn’t have water. After two days it came back, and it was a huge relief.

As much as having water raised our spirits, our group has had some health troubles this week. On Monday, the day before his birthday, my fellow Grinnellian Jake found out that he has malaria. Jake got to bring his 20^th in style lying on our program director’s couch trying not to vomit as he watched us wolf down delicious veggie burgers and icecream in his honor. He has been a trooper though and the medicine is slowly making him feel better. Then, on Wednesday, we learned that every last one of us has scabies. For those of you who don’t know, scabies are little mites that burrow under skin and lay eggs. Gross, right? We think that they are living in our nasty mattresses so it will be a hell of a job trying to disinfect ourselves. Fortunately the bites don’t itch very much, and a lot of us probably wouldn’t have noticed if one of our group members didn’t have an allergic reaction to the bites. They can only get bad if they go untreated for a long period of time, so we bought some soap and cream that will hopefully help. Starting next week we will be moving into home-stays anyhow, so we can escape the mattresses.

On an international level this week has also been eventful. The internet was down for three days, but I heard about the anti-Islamic film that sparked bombings and riots at American Embassies in the Middle East. There hasn’t been rioting in Tanzania, but there is a large Muslim population here so we have been warned to be careful. In general I feel pretty safe here, especially on campus, but it is always better to be prudent. On Wednesday night two American girls from the other program living in our dorm were robbed at knifepoint on their way back from dinner. They were pretty shaken up but they weren’t hurt. We were warned against walking around at night because things can be pretty seedy, and we have tried to take that advice to heart. Usually when we go out at night we travel in a big group.

This weekend we didn’t have any scheduled trips, so I took it easy. We have two tests on Tuesday so I have been studying a little bit and filling out my IRB forms for my research project. We are also supposed to start a pilot study on campus so I have been thinking about the details of that. Today is our group member Nikki’s birthday, so last night we went out to celebrate. We went to this Irish pub called George and Dragon in the mzungu part of town, and it was a very fun and odd experience. I say odd because there was a very random crowd in there. We ended up making friends with a group of middle-aged Chinese and German construction workers, and a bunch of other older ex-pats. It was so strange I didn’t feel like I was in Tanzania anymore.

This upcoming week our class time finally drops down to 3 to 5 hours, which should give us some more free time. I’m really looking forward to being able to do more with my days. This weekend we are going to Zanzibar, which I am SO excited about, and I’ll be sure to post about it next week!