My life in Arusha as a comedy

We ate lunch yesterday at “immigration.” We might eat at the bank next week. Apparently these are the cafeterias made for employees of the office that become popular with employees of other offices. Immigration lunch was only 2 bucks.

Our lunch date at immigration was Ishmael from Mauritania. We decided together that if he will take us to mosque, we will take him to church. Somehow we got on the discusion of having children. Selina made things interesting by telling Ishmael, a man whose father is a polygamist from a country with Sharia law and has “many” brothers and sisters, that we didn’t want to have children.

We decided to take advantage of the ICTR gym while we are here. Strangely enough the locker room actually is MADE of what seems to be a UN shipping container. Never thought I would change clothes in one of those. Picture 3 girls doing step aerobics in a covered area with shipping containers on one side and mirrors on the other.

Power in my neighborhood is SCHEDULED to go out from 6:30-10pm every Monday and Thursday night. This ruins a lot of people’s meals. We lost a whole pot of spaghetti. Then we heard about an expensive Kenyan steak gone to waste for being to rare to eat and a 4 course half prepared banquet being left on the power company’s doorstep in frustration.

We have watched 7 episodes of Grey’s Anatomy in the last two nights. So much for pacing ourselves with the only season we have in our possession. You should have heard us when we found out our friend, whose name I have sworn not to give away with reference to this story, informed us he has seasons 2 and 3 just waiting to be loaned out.

We are still really terrible at shopping and cooking here. Thus, my stomach was growling loudly during a visit last night from our new British neighbor and friend, Ben. As we told him the stories of our ridiculous meals and my stomach continued to growl, he kept asking, are you hungry- can I go get you something?? The concern on his face somehow made it more comical that we haven’t been eating “proper” meals.

Around that same time I got a text message from our other British friend who has been amused with our eating predicament, “Do you still want us to come over tomorrow and make you dinner? We will bring everything.” :0) definitely looking forward to that.