Mbeya

It has been one of those weeks, where all I wanted was my own car and a microwave. To start things off last weekend like I said I went to Mbeya with the two other volunteers who living in the dirty dirty South about an hour and a half away from me. It was great I was able to by some of the things I really needed and could only find in a “big” city. We went to the gas station/truck stop that randomly sells American products and I was able to buy peanut butter and chocolate, the two things I had been dearly missing. While we were in Mbeya I was even able to break with my daily feeding of rice and beans and got some pizza and iced sweet tea!! It was amazing to say the least, the pizza tasted like one of those ones you buy at the grocery store and then warm up but at this point I wasn’t complaining. While we were in Mbeya we also meet with some of the Peace Corps volunteers who are living around Mbeya. They were pretty cool, although the Peace Corps volunteers tend to have this superiority complex about them which can get annoying, but these guys were pretty chill.

Everything that weekend was going well until it was time to head home. On the way to Mbeya I had arranged a private car to sketchily drive me at 5 in the morning to Mbeya, and I was just going to take a bus back. Little did I know how hard it would be to get back. The bus station in Mbeya is kind of like the streets of Las Vegas in that all those annoying people in Las Vegas are out on the streets with their cards for strip clubs and prostitutes and want you to take them. The people around the bus station in Mbeya are just like that the minute you get out of your taxi the swarm you wanting to help you, wanting to know where you are going, they try and get you to go with them. Luckily we had an awesome cab driver who took us right to where we wanted to be. The first bus was okay it was just a normal bus with a typical amount of people on it. We then got to the town where we needed to change busses. This ois the part I was worried about because my two other friends were going to a bigger town and I was going to a smaller more remote town and wanted to be sure I had a ride there. All the sudden a land cruiser pulls up and this man tells us to get in, naturally we do and are super pumped not to be on a bus driving down the dirt roads. Our excitement quickly faded as we realized we were about to roll 19 deep in the land cruiser. Let me say I would like to think that I have piled the maximum capacity of people into a car, (one night in particular stands out sophomore year piling who knows how many into Stock’s hoe) but this was on a completely different level. At one point there was a guy holding on outside the car as we are pushing 65 miles an hour down t he unpaved rocky dirt roads. This went on for about an hour and a half, it was the most uncomfortable I had been in a long time I will sya that but in the end it was all about the experience. When we got to the town to drop the other volunteers off another problem arose. The car and driver that had reassured me would get to my small town was in fact not going there. The driver did make a deal with me he would drive me half way there and then we would arrange for a piki piki to take me the rest of the way. At this point I hated the driver but as the ride continued just me and him and a 91 year old lady he actually became really cool and wants me to hire him to drive us to Malawi when we go in a few weeks. The drive to Mbeya took me only 2 and a half hours the way back took me close to 10, by the time I got home I was exhausted and cursing Africa.

Other than that adventure the week was pretty chill. I subsequently got sick this week probably due to all the weather changes that have been happening here. I continue to eat rice and beans daily with a little flavor thrown in there to spice things up sometimes. I have gotten pretty good at cooking the green bananas and making them taste like potatoes and this week I even learned how to make the good kind of chipati (picture a cross between a tortilla and a crepe). This week our school is supposed to be getting 10 new teachers from the university to do their teaching practicum for the next month, I ma really hoping there are some girl teachers that come. For now that is all hopefully next week I can put some pictures up.