June 14-17

Mammbbo! Aka sup. One thing that get’s really upsetting about living in Africa is that I constantly think I’m getting really tan but then I take a shower and realize it’s all dirt.  I guess that’s what you get when you shower every 4 days though.  I’ve been hanging out with one of the cook’s kids, Hilde lately- he’s literally the cutest little pumpkin.  It’s so weird though everyone here looks about half their age.  One of my classmates Shelby and I saw him playing on the grass with a soccer ball and we tried to ask him if he was 3 or 4 and he said sita (six). There’s also this small man named Safari who fixes our computers, and we all thought he was around 40 or so- then we found out it was his 60^th birthday that week. ).  It’s so crazy – this has happened multiple times.  We finally met some of the guards that stand around our site- and all of us are now obsessed with one of them- Bura- who we call Askari Bura (Guard Bura; Bura the Guard).  He doesn’t speak much English but we’ve been teaching him a little bit.  It’s the funniest thing though, every time he sees us he walks over and points to himself and says- “me, Bura” “you?” and then we say our name.  Then he points to himself and says “Bura, Tanzania” and then points to ex) me and says “KK where”?  So we say where we’re from and he repeats it a few times.  TheN he usually just starts singing this song with a huge smile on his face and starts dancing- singing the jambo song- which he changes the lyrics every time- but almost everyone in Tanzania knows it.  We know have been singing it nonstop- literally though, I was singing it to myself during our whole volleyball game today (we play volleyball or soccer almost every day- usually with the staff members Arthur, Charles, Nina, sometimes Livingstone, Daniel, Jenna, and John; with soccer, we play with the locals and some of the staff). Anyways the basic lyrics are like so- Jambo, jambo bwana, habari gani?, mzuri sana, wageni, wakaribishwa, Tanzania, hakuna matata. It’s a little hard to understand without a tune. Ok im off to play volleyball but I will be back to describe Tarangire, our project on Tarangire, the Maasai Boma, and otha fun stuff.