Last week we started teaching English at Mwenge, the local everything market where there’s no such thing as a set price. It’s my favorite part about being here so far, because everyone is loud and fun, and so heartbreakingly devoted to learning English in order to reach a larger, richer market. There are about forty grown men, mostly wood carvers, who pool what little money they have to pay for the electricity to keep the lights on. They bring pens and whatever scrap paper they can round up and take the most detailed notes on every little thing we say. They’re split into beginner, intermediate, and advanced groups and I’ve been going with the intermediate group. Fridays are fun days, so we had them in teams, competing to see who could say and write English words and phrases fastest (interest, customer, loan, etc.). We had to referee a lot because it got really heated and probably would have come to blows, although it was also tempered by the fact that the men in the beginner group were doing the Hokey Pokey next to us in order to learn body parts. A girl named Julia kind of runs things, and she happens to embody everything I want to be. She came with the Brown program last fall, had to go back to school in the spring, but returned to TZ for the summer because she loved it so much. She speaks fluent Swahili and the men adore her because she’s an amazing teacher, but she can also level with them and joke in Swahili. They’re incredibly appreciative of all of us, actually, and they tell us so every chance they get. When we’re shopping for odds and ends in the market during the day they watch out for us. They yell, “Teacher, mwalimu!” and make sure that the shopkeepers don’t try to swindle us with Wazungu prices, which is unbelievably helpful since I’m only just beginning to feel comfortable bargaining. It’s really awkward, but in any case it helps my Swahili a ton, and I think I’ve about mastered the extended greetings (all greetings here are extended). You can’t walk by and just say hi, you stop and it’s hi, how is your day? And your kids? And your work?, and that’s just for people you know well. With introductions it’s delightfully personal right off the bat - hi, how many kids do you have? are you married? why aren’t you married? what religion are you? What does your father do? (to which I reply he’s a farmer, because it’s easier than explaining hospital finance). I’m pretty solid on responses to all these things, except in describing my family I’ve been saying I live with my mother, my father, my two siblings, and two dogs. Which would be fine, except I recently learned that the word for dog is also slang for prostitute, and people don’t really understand the concept of keeping a dog dog as part of the family. So I’m Jessica, and I live with my mother, my father, my brother and sister, and two prostitutes! So proud!

Today I’m tired (it shows), but still extremely satisfied - I didn‘t ever really catch up on sleep after Zanzibar and this week has worn me out. Lots of class, and market trips for whatever tiny essential thing we forgot, plus we’ve had special dinners almost every night to meet this or that professor. Our on-site coordinator here is Professor Senkoro Senkoro, and he is…the most stereotypically ridiculous African man. I was a little bit uneasy around him even though he was extremely (overly) hospitable, not least because his house was huge and lavishly decorated, which is almost unheard of here unless you’re white and/or corrupt That’s probably an unfair judgment, but he was loud and showy and I was a little put off. However, after dinner he stuck us in front of the tv to watch some subtitled Ugandan music videos, and they were hilariously offensive, with one brazenly titled, “Send that b**** back to the village”.

It was a little rainy yesterday and cooled things off, but we spent all day trouncing through muddy market streets and then went to my friend Kilima’s house and he took us to the beach and then we went to dinner and then out for drinks - everyone else went out dancing after that, but I crashed too hard and pulled my trademark sleep-through-everything-exciting. Apparently it was really fun, though, and by virtue of Nick (the only boy in our program) traveling everywhere with 7 or 8 ladies by his side, everyone assumed that he was a pimp and kept asking him to name some prices. I think the trick to Tanzania is to embrace all the absurdities and just laugh all the time.