It’s weird how when you travel away from home, where you’re from becomes so much more of a part of your identity. Before we get to know the people who are staying at Jollyboys with us, we often refer to them as “those English girls”, “that Italian guy with the guitar”, or “that bunch of people from that really random country we’ve never heard of”. We have, naturally, in turn been referred to as the “Irish girls”, or in Amy’s case, “that Irish Chick who I can’t understand, the one with the really strong accent”.
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| Us at the Lunar rainbow at Vic Falls |
With Paddy’s day occurring this week, we proudly represented our nationality on the 17th; though I’m pretty sure when Amy’s at home she calls herself British but ‘tomato, tomato’. It was lovely receiving the free worldwide calls from home that Vodafone had provided for the day. The call from my 3 year old nephew was definitely my favourite!
When I wished the receptionists a lovely Paddy’s day in the morning, they were quick to change the activities board from “have a nice day” to “happy St. Patrick’s Day”. Following this was the question of who exactly Saint Patrick was. When attempting to respond, I realised I wasn’t really too sure…. I waffled something about slaves, shamrocks, Christianity and snakes before wandering away in my green t-shirt to get stuck into some dissertation work.
Anybody who knows me would say that I’m a last minute specialist- if it doesn’t need to be done for tomorrow, then it doesn’t really need to be done at all. So the idea of spreading out the writing of my dissertation over 6 weeks is a pretty foreign concept to me but so far it hasn’t been too bad. It took me nearly all week to decide on my title… but after that it’s actually been quite interesting researching into a topic area of my own choice.
On Wednesday afternoon, Amy and I had just sat down to read through some things we’d downloaded and get a few hundred more words written by the pool (oh yeah, this is the life) when a friend invited us to a Braii. We had heard all about the infamous African braiis, which are like social barbeques. We had also already had to refuse a few invitations previously because of other plans so we left the work for another afternoon and headed off in his four by four.
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| A Praying Mantis at the Braii |
The house that the braii was in was located about 20mins away, near the river, so we had to suffer the treacherous mud roads once again. They’re actually not so bad when you get used to them. We were pretty early, so spent the afternoon swimming (not in the river, don’t worry…. not after seeing those crocs last week). By about 6pm, or as they call it here, ‘18hours’, there were about 80 people from all over Africa populating the grounds, there was a full pig roasting on the spit and random night bugs jumping all over us.
The couple that were hosting the braii had prepared a feast for everyone and I was very tempted by the aromas coming from the hog roast. Amy and I had wanted to make tortillas for ages but the 50 pin (‘pin’ is what us wannabe locals say for thousand) price tag (around £8) had stopped us from buying tortillas in the supermarket. So you can imagine our excitement when we saw a pile of about 100 tortillas for us to dig into at the braii!
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| mmmm... pig on a spit at the braii |
When it was getting late and it seemed like everybody was finished eating, there were still loads of tortillas left. After much deliberating and scheming, Amy and I shoved 8 between two paper plates and hid them in the host’s bedroom.
When we were leaving, with a kind stranger who was heading towards town, we went to retrieve our things from the room which we found locked. We found one of the hosts who let us in. As we were saying goodbye, her final remark was “don’t forget your tortillas”. Oops. Earlier on, she had entered the bedroom to find her husband standing by our tortillas and accused him of hogging the food…. It obviously just clicked with her that they were ours! It was worth it for the lovely dinners we had the next two nights though!
So, yes distractions like this have kept us from fully focusing on our dissertation writing! It has also been quite frustrating sitting in Kilimanjaro café (the internet café we use) for hours on end, where the internet is ridiculously slow and there is no air conditioning. The serious lack of access to books is making our ‘literature review’ without the literature quite difficult too! We’re making do though!
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| 3 year old Mabote from the orphanage using the chalk to make himself into a muzungu |
We have, of course, been enjoying ourselves this week too. Our orphanage visits are still going strong and are always a highlight of our week. One of the days, we brought big chalk that my wonderful mother had sent over amongst other things. The kids went crazy with it and were drawing on everything in sight! They wanted us to do sums with them on the ground and it was really sad to see some of the 8 and nine year olds having to draw out 6 dashes to add 5 and 1. They loved it though!
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| Me standing on a rock, in the middle of the night (in a dress I had made here), at the top of the Falls where the water is madly rapid.. perhaps not the safest! |
Then last night we went 10 minutes down the road to the Falls, to see a lunar rainbow. It was incredible. Talk about once in a lifetime opportunities! When there is a full moon and it reflects off the spray from the falls there is this colourful rainbow that emerges through the dark. It was stunning!
Altogether, not a bad first week away from teaching!
Your Night Rock photo is amazing! :-)
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