My December Break: The Heat, No Internet, and A LOT of Alone Time

Here in Tanzania, the school year ends at the beginning of December and starts back up in January.  My roommates jetted off to three different continents for the break, while I stayed here at Sega and held down the fort.  Between living in the volunteer house with Dana, Ellie, and Kini, and sharing Sega's campus with almost 200 girls, in the three months I had been here I could probably still count the number of times I had more than a few minutes of alone time on only one hand.  Despite being the introvert that I am, I actually didn't (and don't) mind it at all.  My roommates are really awesome people and I seriously enjoy the time I spend with them.  We have so many stupid, funny jokes and we have grown to be pretty completely comfortable around one another.  It can be stressful to be here, at times, and we all provide a really good support system for one another that I am really thankful for.  It's also just a really entertaining, good group.  In addition to enjoying teaching and the general everyday interactions I have with the girls, they just make up so much of what goes on every day on the Sega campus.  There would be nobody coming up to our porch saying "Madam...." and standing there awkwardly quiet while I tried to wrap the nearest kanga quickly around my shorts-clad legs before opening the screen door to step out and give them a soccer ball or paper or colored pencils. I knew I wouldn't be waking up to the sound of girls screaming one another's names as they ate their morning porridge.

So, as excited as I was to have a little time to relax and recover from the long battle going on in my stomach, I knew it would be strange.  And it was.  Especially because, for a good portion of that time, our internet was out and I had no way to stay connected with people at home.  And, with a dead computer, I couldn't exactly watch the movies or TV shows I brought from home.  There was a lot of alone time, and very few distractions.  

You may be wondering (and even if you're not, I am going to tell you anyways) what I DID do for a month basically by myself. The answer is, honestly, not too much.  If I had to pick the one thing I did the most over break it would probably be sweat.  I'm not really sure that even counts as a thing I did since it's an unconscious bodily function.  However, I am fairly certain the only time in the entire month long break that I stopped sweating was the day I went to stand in line at the air conditioned bank for 2 hours to deposit school fees for some of the graduates.

Other than sweat, here's what I did over my December break:

Painting a Mural

One of the projects I did undertake, was painting a mural on the wall of the volunteer house.  Before my roommates left I sketched up an idea and got it approved by our director.  Then I took a picture of the sketch, used the school’s projector to put it up on the wall, and (with Ellie’s help) traced what I had drawn. 

I then spent the next 2 weeks painting in the mural with acrylics. 

We’re talking about extending the mural to take up more of the wall, and two of the other Sega volunteers that live in other houses want me to paint murals in their houses as well.  I anticipate a lot of painting in my future, and I am totally excited for it.

Filling More of My Sketchbook

Being alone without a working computer or internet for a long period of time meant that the options of what to do were rather limited.  One of the things that I did do was sketch.  A lot.  Luckily, one of the gifts that Dana brought me from home was 4 new sketchbooks. If I keep going at the rate I have been, I will have no trouble filling them in my remaining time here.

Spending Christmas with My Tanzanian Family

One of my few travels over this break was to Kibaha to have Christmas with Pauline’s family.  I arrived there the afternoon of Christmas Eve and spent two nights at her house.  It was really nice to be with a family on Christmas, and I really enjoyed playing with Rey (almost 2) and Milka (5 ½).  As soon as I got to Paulines house, Rey ran up to me and wanted me to pick him up, giving me a big hug.  I had not met Milka before, so she took a little while to warm up to me, but by Christmas we were sitting on the floor drawing in my sketchbook together.  I also introduced “3…2…1… blastoff” to her.  Not sure why I keep introducing this game to children, because it always ends up in endless rounds of “AGAIN! AGAIN!” and me having really sore arms the next day.  But we had fun. For Christmas dinner we ate pilau, green beans, and cabbage.  They also had fish (which I didn’t eat) and fried grasshoppers (which I tried after a little hesitation... not my new favorite food).  My favorite part of Christmas was the dancing, which is saying a lot because I am definitely not a big dancer.  But, we put on some Bongo Flava and the whole family danced in the living room.  It was really fun and goofy and I definitely enjoyed it.

Getting into Yoga

Those of you that read the last post know my reasons why I don’t run as much as I should, but that doesn’t mean I have forfeited exercise altogether.  I've actually started doing yoga a few times a week and I already really enjoy it.  I don’t really do New Years’ resolutions, but one of my goals for 2015 is to be able to do a handstand by next December.  Even from just doing it a few times over the past month I can already see improvement and can feel myself getting stronger which is pretty awesome.