Fences, Rain, and Hunting

This week has been a whirlwind week, we had some new volunteers join the team and the two volunteers who I spent last week with left (Gerit who I'm going on Safari with this weekend and Oliver who is the coolest 19 year old I know - both from Austria).  It's fun to have a larger group, but I definitely miss the Austrians!  Above is a picture of our new team w/ Simon the Massai.  I started teaching Simon english during my spare time in the evengings - taking over for Oli & Dave before him.  He sells crafts from Arusha that his family makes as souvenirs and needs to know english to be able to communicate w/ the tourists.  He needs to sell enough souvenirs to buy 20 cows, which will allow him to get a wife.  Apparently 20 cows is the going price for a wife in Arusha these days.

This week we've spent time building fences and learning how to make anything from a coconut tree (coconut juice, rope, soap, cups, measuring utensils, roofing & fencing materials, etc.).  I am quite pleased to say that the fence we built at the nursery school is still standing after 1 day and one of the hardest rainstorms that I've seen.  Once it stops raining I'll take my camera out to take a picture.  The rainstorm knocked out power for most of the day and cancelled our game day for the nursery school kids, which was going to be really fun.  I leave for safari tomorrow, so pray that mainland Tanzania is dry, with great animal viewing weather.

My Swahili is finally picking up and I've been have longer conversations with the locals.  It's great to get out and meet people.  One of the guys from our Tourism Training Institute class took me home to meet his family and show me his hunting dogs.  He invited me to go hunting for monkeys and pigs using just nets, sticks and the dogs.  I've never really been into hunting, but it sounds like an interesting experience.  If I make it through safari in one piece, I may take him up on his offer.