Spaghetti in Musoma

When I cook, I like to listen to music. Unfortunately, due to power cuts in Musoma, in order to listen to music, one must have music that works off of a battery! For me, my iPod and headphones suffice. It's a little awkward when the cord snags on a pot handle or something, but thus far I've managed to avoid disaster (iPod flying into a pot of soup, etc.).

Also, when I cook, I like to make tasty things. Unfortunately, due to lack of canned chopped tomatoes in Musoma, in order to make tasty spaghetti sauce, one must peel one's own tomatoes! As you can see in this picture, I'm lifting the peel off of a tomato. I have discovered that peeling tomatoes isn't as difficult as a process as it may sound. If you boil the tomatoes for about 3 minutes, you can lift it off without too much struggle (or losing too much of the tomato). It takes some time, and I highly recommend letting the boiled tomatoes cool a bit before you attempt peeling them, but it works just fine and the spaghetti sauce tastes great.

Fridge-dried gecko

This little dude made a wrong turn one day and scampered right into our refrigerator. Unfortunately for him, we didn't notice. Somehow he ended up on the shelf where I usually keep cilantro, and I, not looking very closely, mistook him for a little cilantro sprig that fell off the bunch.

After a few weeks, I got tired of having a messy cilantro-shelf in the fridge door and took it upon myself to clean up the fallen sprig. Lo and behold, I realized it was a gecko! Not quite freeze-dried, but fridge-dried. Apparently geckos do not survive when trapped in the refrigerator.

Andrew took this picture of him, and then dropped his crunchy carcass on the kitchen floor for Betsy (cat) to consume. She's more used to the fresh and wriggling variety of gecko, but cheerfully consumed this one after a bit of sniffing. Maybe it's like astronaut food for cats - shrunken, aged, and dried, but still food.

Sick Cat

Clive at age 6 months


Clive in a tree (he got stuck in a tree as a kitten, and since then has always figured out how to get down himself)


Clive and his sister, Betsy

We've got a sick little guy, Clive. He's been on antibiotics for a while, but his problem might not be biotic, or he might just need more antibiotics or a different kind. He's hanging in there pretty well, though - despite having problems breathing, he's very active and healthy-seeming.

So what does one do when one lives in Musoma and has a sick cat, you might be asking yourself. Well, that's a good question. I'm still trying to figure out the answer myself, in fact.

When Clive and Betsy needed to be neutered/spayed years ago, I had a vet who lives about three or four hours away travel to Musoma by bus and come do their surgeries on my dining room table. That was an adventure. After he left, I found a couple little male kitten bits on the floor under the table - he had cleaned up the table well, but I guess they, being wee round balls, had just rolled off.

When Clive was bitten by a snake and was in acute near-death misery for a week, I used Skype to call the vet in Olympia, WA, that we used to take our cats to years ago. The vet, after hearing that I had a deathly ill cat in East Africa, gave me advice over the phone. That was helpful, but not the kind of thing I felt I could do unless a cat really was deathly ill.

There are two local vets who can do things like administer rabies shots each year. One year I put Clive and Betsy in a basket and took them to his little roadside shop in town to go get their shots, thinking that would be easier than having him make a house call. When I got there, he hopped on his bicycle and went to go buy a syringe! I was a bit surprised he didn't have any on hand. When he returned, he stuck Betsy with the needle and gave her her shot, and then promptly stuck Clive with the same one for his shot! I have a feeling that vets in American don't usually share needles between animals...

With this most recent sickness, I've relied on a vet in the States, whom I call Dr. Sarah when talking to Clive about her as I shove pills down his throat, who has very kindly sent advice and prescriptions via e-mail. I did have a local vet come to the house to look at him one day, but I think this vet was more accustomed to cows needing vaccines than cats with airway issues. Anyway, Dr. Sarah and I met because she's a very good friend of a very good friend, and she's now my (and Clive's) friend, too. We can get all sorts of drugs here at our local pharmacy, so finding the right medication is rarely an issue, although it's often sold under a different name than in the States, so I have to read packages to figure out the ingredients. What IS an issue is finding them in the right size! Pills here are designed for humans, not cats. Even the worm pills are too big, because they are intended for dogs. But hey, what's a knife and cutting board for, if not for cutting your cat's pills into quarters?

So if you are reading this and you have animals, may I advise you to build up a good relationship with your vet there at home, because you just never know when you might need to call or e-mail them if you should happen to move overseas someday!

Not all candlelight dinners are romantic

Andrew and I have lots of candlelit evenings. When the sun goes down at 7:00, he lights a few candles (I'm afraid of matches, fire, and generally all hot things) and we have what looks like a nice, romantic evening - just the two of us and a candle and a quiet evening ahead.

However, when this happens every other day, it starts to lose the romantic aura. These days we're having power cuts every other day and every other evening. That means that (when they are following their schedule, which is not always the case) that Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evenings our power is cut from 6:00pm to 11:00pm, and on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays our power is cut from 8:00am to 6:00pm. But sometimes instead of 6:00 it is 5:00 or 7:00, and sometimes it comes back on at 9:00 instead of at 11:00, and sometimes it is cut for a while on Sundays, too. In my mind, the whole point of having a schedule is so that you can follow it, but there seem to be frequent exceptions to that idea when it comes to power cuts in Tanzania!

My computer battery is pretty wimpy; it only works for about 20 minutes. Andrew's has a lot more gumption, though. We can use it for watching TV (downloaded or on DVD, we don't actually have a TV) for about two hours, so that is our entertainment on dark nights. We're careful to not open the refrigerator or freezer too much on days without electricity, and I have to plan my cooking around the fact that we can't put hot leftovers in the fridge several days each week. Also, thawing meat or cheese in the fridge can go much more quickly than anticipated when the power is off, so we have to think through issues like that, too!

We've learned in which position our light switches are on and off, because we're often going around the house at night (in the dark) making sure they are all off so at 11:00 when the power returns, we aren't awakened by the house lighting up. We've learned that African nights can be very, very dark if there is no electricity and not much of a moon that night. There are times when you truly cannont see your hand in front of your face. Contrastively, we've also learned that on a full moon night with a clear sky, it looks like the outdoor lights are on! We've also learned that cooking in the dark (and cleaning up the kitchen in the dark) is a hassle, so we make sure we're done eating by 7:00 when the sun goes down. There have been times, though, when I've been cooking by the light of gas stove - you know that little blue flame under the pan? Turns out it's bright enough to be of some good assistance when one is desperate!

Musoma Airport

The Musoma airport only has a little dirt and grass runway, but it's got quite the departure lounge! There are giant "thrones" like these bordering the walls of a large room. Since there are only four flights a week (when the plane actually comes... sometimes it skips landing in Musoma and passengers have to travel by bus to Mwanza, a city three and a half hours away, to catch their flight!), there is no need for multiples gates and waiting lounges. When you walk into the airport, they put your luggage up on a table and search it by hand, since there are no luggage scanning machines. Then men and women split into two lines and in different parts of the room, male and female airport workers give passengers a pat-down and wave a metal-detector wand around and hand-search their carry-on luggage. Then you are free to go and wait for your plane in the lounge, where you can feel like a tiny little person in a big chair. I can't remember the last time I felt so little! When we flew to Dar es Salaam in May, some of the other Mara Cluster ladies and I felt like we were traveling in pretty high style - it sure beats those little metal row chairs at many international airports around the world!

"Naomi has a son!"

The Ikizu and Zanaki translators and I recently checked their translations of the book of Ruth. In the process of doing so, they taught me something new about the story. I first realized that I had misunderstood the book when we were looking at possible pictures to use in Ruth. One of the Zanaki translators said, “We must have one of Grandma Naomi with the baby on her lap, because that is the climax of the story!”

Personally, I have always thought of the climax of the book being when Boaz and Ruth are married, because I’m used stories that have a goal of the guy and girl getting married and living happily ever after. However, the way the story was intended is that the great moment of the story is when Ruth gives birth to a son. Boaz and Ruth getting married merits about a third of a verse (Ruth 4:13a) and the son’s birth and the joy surrounding that event takes up about nine and two-thirds verses (Ruth 4:13b-22). Boaz was a wealthy man and could provide for Ruth and Naomi while he was alive, but he was probably old and likely to die before Ruth would, which would have left her a penniless widow once again. The inheritance goes to sons, not wives! In this instance of levirate marriage (inheriting the wife of your dead brother/relative and having children that would be considered his), Ruth’s son would inherit her first husband’s property. So the true great moment of the story is the son’s birth, because only then did Naomi and Ruth have a provider.

So even though this idea is not in my worldview, it is how Naomi and Ruth thought about things, and it’s how Ikizu and Zanaki people think, too. In most Tanzanian cultures, women who do not have sons are desperate for one, because without one, they have nobody to provide a home for them if their husband dies or leaves them. So even though I’ve studied the Bible and am supposed to be advising the translators, they definitely understood the story of Ruth much better than I did!