How odd things have become normal

 

We have almost spent 4 weeks in Kolandoto and time has really passed by quickly. You realize now how fast you got used to things and got an everyday life with routines here that are actually very different from home. Suddenly a lot of odd things feels totally natural. Therefore we are going to give you a glimpse about these things – before we forgot them J

Kolandoto village

 

The heat:

The main difference that is very evident all days is of course the heat and it’s very hard to cool down due to the lack of water. The heat makes you very slow between 11-17, so the best ideas and efficient work must be made during mornings or evenings. This, together with loads of work in front of the computer or sketching indoors, have contributed to the fact that we are still very pale. We totally understand that people screaming Mzungo (white man) after us as soon as they see us – we really light up with our white arms and legs. Sometimes, however, we try to get some tan - by sunbathing one part of the body at a time, usually the legs or a feet we manage to stick out of the shade from our veranda.

 

If it’s not sunny it is the opposite - extreme rainstorms or big thunderstorms, since the rain season is here. Then you have to make sure not to have your computer plugged into the socket - already one computer has broken because of this, even though we use surge protectors.

 

Water and hygiene:

If you want to cool down or take a shower, you can do so by going to the toilet and pour water over yourself with a bucket. We usually have water about an hour in the morning, and then you have to hurry up to fill up our buckets with water - one for the shower/ hand washing, one for flushing the toilet and one in the kitchen. It's funny because now we have become used to not having water, so even when we have, you still pick up the scoop instead. But then you realize how wonderful it is to turn on the tap water and wash both hands with soap at the same time - and not one hand at a time with the bucket.

Our bathroom

 

The electricity:

As we mentioned before – we never take electricity for granted here. It comes and goes little as it wants to or sometimes you hear about planned power outages in the village. Therefore, we charge phones and computers as soon as we are able to sit nearby a socket.

The food:

In the village here in Kolandoto you have two dishes to choose between - eggs with potatoes or beans with rice. After eating this a number of times we cook most meals at home now - to get more variety. In the beginning though, it was still most rice with eggs or rice with beans we cooked.

The hardest part though is always to sort out all the stones from the rice and the beans, and still after 4 weeks, we haven’t found an easy way to do it.

The creativity has however been improved and we have become really good at varying us using the same groceries. This has also been easier after we discovered this Arabic shop in Shinyanga market - selling ketchup, Japanese soy, coconut milk powder, vegetable conserves, spices, peanut butter, oatmeal and pasta.

 

The best parts of the food here is all fruit - we live on mangoes, pineapple, watermelons and huge avocados.

 

Sometimes we eat dinner with our neighbors and they serve all kinds of traditional food – like ugali and some meet dishes which is fun to try - the dried fish we happily refrain though. Tomorrow we will invite them to taste our "Swedish" carrot soup and they will teach us to do "the best” chapati bread.

Dinner at our neighbors

Daily exercise:

To not completely get stucked in front of the computer we all try to do some exercise in some form. The best time to do this is in the morning before 8.30. For example, we have found a good running track around the village at around 7 km. The run is never the same and quite exotic actually - sometimes you have company of about 1 to 20 kids (or adults) running after you or waving and shouting at you - best encouragement! You also get to see the amazing landscape with cows and cattle, workers on the fields, houses made of adobe bricks and even round mud huts.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Except the running we have to admit we are also quite inventive in training equipment – like watermelons or water bottles.

 

 

 

Wildlife or insect Life:

Last but not least, we meet a lot of animals and insects everyday - some more welcome than others. It is now standard that cows walk by two meters from our house or that a hen or rooster is trying to come into the house - like when we had a meeting on skype with our tutor and we were constantly interrupted by the cackling rooster right by our door – quite surrealistic for her we think.

Other common animals is bats or lizards along with several thousand mosquitoes. Around ten each night, all the giant mosquitoes wakes up (which we found out to be the malaria mosquito). They are really aggressive and if you sit up at night much of your legs are bitten. Or if you sadly fall asleep with your head or hand too close to the mosquito net in the bed, you have at least 20 mosquito bites when you wake up. Luckily we eat malaria prophylaxis and using mosquito repellent.

 

Insects have simply become a part of everyday life here and we have probably all became a little more "brave" – at least we don’t panic if a cockroach crawling up from the toilet anymore. However there have been two times when we got totally panic - first when we were invited to dinner to the two boys living next to us and a rat came running on the floor and they hardly reacted, and secondly one cozy movie night in the sofas and suddenly a 10 cm scorpion came crawling out under the sofa – I think we all died a bit then.