An entertaining rainy day in Arusha

This is nothing deep or revealing, but maybe entertaining. I got a few laughs out of it...

Mon 8/20 there was rain all morning continuing from the night before. The CCS van would drop me off on the main road at the top of the dirt road where I'd walk about ~3/4 mile down to the Kitumusote office. That day it was a mudfest. I had no rain gear, the one major oversight in my packing. I had bought a hideous, large (probably mens), ill-fitting, shit-brown and navy blue checkered fleece-ish atrocity of a coat in town the first week. I got it for extra warmth at night, especially in anticipation of camping in the Maasai village. I chose that as my best defense and wore sandals reasoning that they'd be easiest to clean and dry.

Down I went, a backpack on my back, holding an umbrella borrowed from the van driver in one hand, and carrying Kesuma's laptop bag in my arms like a baby in 2 big sealed plastic bags I'd packed some of my clothes in. It was slow going as I tried to minimize damage. Every step was calculated and cautious to try to keep my feet relatively clean and dry. I made it all the way to the office gate and 5 steps from the gate one of my deliberate footsteps was a bad call and I sunk one entire foot past the ankle into thick mud. I found the gate locked from the inside, which it usually is not. I knocked several times but the warriors who are usually around either weren't or didn't hear me. Kesuma was in Dar Es Salaam for a few days, his Kitumusote sponsors having arranged TV and radio interviews for him, which was very exciting.

I decided to just go back to CCS where I could do some things for him online, so I turned around to head back up the road. Slurp went my other foot into the exact same spot I somehow misjudged once again for solid ground. I continued my ascent with 2 mud-caked feet, a skirt hemlined with matching mud, a plastic-covered baby laptop, a pink flowered umbrella from a guy named Richard, a dripping backpack, and a now soaked but still ultra-fashionable giant man's coat. This was my Kili in Africa.

When I summited I decided I'd earned a taxi ride over a daladala ride, and I found shelter in front of a store on the side of the road. I had bought a pay-as-you-go cell phone and tried calling some of our regular taxi drivers but found that cell phone service was down. Daladala it would be.

Knowing I needed a van with a green stripe headed leftward, I stood while several vans fitting that description stopped. But each time I asked for Tengeru, where I was headed, they said no. This confused me as there is only one road. It goes in two directions, as roads do, and one of them was the one I needed to go. Finally a local couple who spoke English assured me that I was in the right place and told me to keep waiting. The girl kindly took me under her wing as she was headed the same way, and I followed her onto the van that finally got me to my destination. Sweet success.

Later that morning I accomplished sending 3 emails because attachments took so long to upload and were almost lost when the connection dropped. After that was one of my less successful trips to try to print brochures, from which I left with one piece of paper with a few ink spots on one edge.

As they say, "This is Africa!" I still would do it all over again.