Dr.G. told me you called. I'll assume you were just checking to see if I made it here OK, and not call back now. It costs $8/minute to call from here, but it's supposed to be a lot cheaper from your end. So you can call anytime if you want to talk about something, but I will just write, unless it is an emergency.
I don't know if you tried to call Friday night, but we went out to eat, as we hadn't had a good water supply since Wednesday. By Saturday, we had established a tenuous water supply, and I had my first shower in three days. We filled up the water storage tank at the house with buckets, which takes 2 to 4 hours, depending on how slow water is coming from the water main. We had the bucket brigade again this morning. Now I am waiting for John and Mary's laundry to finish, so I can get mine in before the supply of relatively clean water runs out. Filling the tank with buckets stirs up all the silt on the bottom, so water from the bottom of the tank is pretty muddy for a while afterwards.
They have been trying to get a radiator for our 4-wheel drive for weeks. One did turn up, late on Friday, but we made three or four trips to the mechanic for nothing. We made a couple of trips to the Ministry of the Interior for residence visas, and kept getting told to come back. We were supposed to go back Friday, but Dr.G. forgot and went downtown with John and Mary to get plumbing supplies. So I guess we'll go back tomorrow and see what happens. My tourist visa will run out in 10 days.
One more housemate has arrived. They are all rather fundamentalist Christians, but the others are quiet, while the last one is very noisy, and I don't like getting bombarded with all this crap. I think they gave up pretty fast on dragging me to services with them, but I really wish one of them had been an agnostic hell-raiser, to be on my side. When I'm really irritated, I go to my room and put on Janis Joplin singing, "Oh God, Won't You Buy Me a Mercedes Benz?" I'm sure it must raise a few hackles! I think everyone is gone to church right now, so I will put it on for good measure.
Please put 'East Africa'on the address, or your letter may go to Tasmania.
January 29So far this week, we have residence visas, running water, resolution of doctors' strike (I think) and a radiator to go in the car tomorrow (hopefully). What more could I ask for? It is best to visit the national parks to see game asap, as monsoon season will be here any time, and then the animals disperse. WRITE ME-I haven't gotten any letters yet.
Seasons in Tanzania include dry weather from January-March, the long rains from April-May, more dry weather from June-October, and the short rains from October-December.
February 6Your envelope arrived today, along with my other suitcase. It only took two hours at the airport, before they would release it. Which seemed like eight hours, at 95°, in the cargo storage area, with no air conditioning.
Thanks a lot for the recipes. I sort of lost the urge to cook, as the temperature is always 95° now. We have a stove and oven, but no grill or microwave. We get fresh fruits and vegetables, including pineapples, coconut, and papaya. Canned things and diary products are expensive, so they aren't bought much. John fixes pizza and spaghetti. Another roommate fixes fried rice, and maybe stir-fry. Our cook, Gordon, is about 60, and was in the Army. Rumor is that he was an "askari" or soldier for the British. He likes to fix curry, stew, and beans with rice. His lettuce salad is always wilted, so Mary won't buy lettuce anymore, all he gets is cabbage. Sometimes, we get cooked cabbage along with our cabbage salad. He likes to make cakes, either white or chocolate, but they don't rise very well. There is a Tanzanian dish named ugali, like grits, made from ground corn. Maybe I could make tortillas out of that? If you could find a recipe for tortillas from corn meal, that would be great. Dr.G. fed us sour beef lung, a German delicacy.
Lately, I've been walking on the beach looking at decomposing sea life. There are several fish that blow up like balloons before they fall apart. Yesterday, I saw something that looked like a big snake, but it didn't have fangs. The land snakes are black and green mambas, so it must have been a sea serpent. We are planning to go to one of the game parks by train on Sunday.
These are the only monkeys I found down at the Arts & Crafts Center. For some reason, monkeys aren't real popular around here. Saturday was notable for no electricity all day, which didn't make a lot of difference, but we needed to boil some water for drinking on our train trip to the park on Sunday. The electricity come on for long enought to half-cook supper, then went off again until midnight, so I got up then and boiled water, and finished some cookies Mary had started earlier.
We set off at 6AM with bananas, cashews, cookies, soda, and water. We rode third class (=hard seats) for 5½ hours to the game park. There were wildebeestes and giraffes and baboons and water buffalo and zebras and some kind of antelope-type thing and a veritable population explosion of warthogs! Then we sat around for a couple of hours before starting back home, at which time there was a rain storm. A lady said someone saw an elephant down one trail, but she also called a warthog a rhinocerous, so it may have been an anteater.
There weren't quite as many animals on the way back. I don't know whether they went to sleep or were out of the rain, somewhere, and it got dark before too long, and I went to sleep, although there was no way to get comfortable, and I am leaving out all the sounds and smells. The train has only been accumulating smells since 1975, but it has quite a collection already. Our car was next to the "disco" car. Some of the people around us spent their time there, so we stretched out. We got home 4½ hours late for unclear reasons. I slept through them, for which I am grateful.
It's been pretty overcast for two days. Seems like the rainy season is trying to start. It will be nice for it to cool off, but I'm afraid the whole place will turn into a swamp, after a couple days of rain. I walk from one end of the hospital grounds to the other, going between labs. This should be real interesting.
The event of the day is the pneumonia project computer crashing. It is suspected that some of the people that were here earlier brought a virus with them from San Francisco, that already caused two other computers to crash. It will probably need to be reprogrammed entirely, which I will stumble around at doing. That will guarantee I don't have too much free time. Hope you are doing fine. Tell everyone Hello.
February 13I'm aggravated right now, so it's probably not the best time to write, but I may not get unpissed anytime soon. The phone rang late last night and I stepped on my glasses when I got out of bed, and broke the ear piece. (If the person who the call was for had not let it ring forever, I wouldn't even have needed to get up.) Right now, the earpiece is taped together. If you have any extra time, could you go to Perle Vision and see if they could order me a new ear piece? If you could manage sending me a new one in the next few months, I would be happier, I think. At least it's holding together with masking tape right now, and not totally nerdy-looking.
Anyway, for a new earpiece, I will be grateful forever. You only need to ask for an elephant, and I will begin making arrangements to adopt same.
