Mombasa!

The title says it all, really. Elizabeth and I were wandering around the bus station on Wednesday, and we saw that there was a bus leaving at 4 pm for Mombasa. An hour later we were sitting on that bus, high-fiving and mentally commending ourselves for being the type of bad a** girls that would just hop on buses to Mombasa with no forethought, not a care in the world.

WELL. Things did go swimmingly, but it turns out that Mombasa is exactly like Dar. As in, essentially the same city, just ten hours away in a different place. A place where we don't have residency, and therefore have to pay $50 for the single-entry visa. I'm still a little grumbly about visas, but it turned out to be a good time, even if most of what we did we could have accomplished in Dar. We went to a Swahili museum in old town, where the tour guide awkwardly outfitted us in burqas and hijabs and then took pictures of us, in which we instinctively smiled even though no one can tell when you're veiled. Thoughts on this forthcoming, since my opinions mean so much.

Then we went to the aptly named Fort Jesus and sat near the waterfront until we met two very nice Muslim men who were, in short, hilarious. They immediately called dibs and told us how attractive we were since we appeared not a day over sixteen. Then mine lied and said he was 24, only to show me his tour guiding license moments later that had his 1969 birth year on it. Mine told me he had a very rich father and that I could never spend all his money even if I stayed for one year. If we married, he would allow me to enter through the front door since his mother, with whom he still lives, is old and senile and probably wouldn't notice. Then he espoused the advantages of creating a "cocktail" baby, since they are proven to be smarter and are among the most beautiful in the world. These men, so charming!

We spent the rest of the evening walking around, found areally amazing used bookstore (any bookstore would have been really amazing, since books are really hard to come by in Dar), and ate ice cream and talked on the patio of this fancy shmancy hotel.

I have a surprising amount of work due on monday, so we came back yesterday evening and were too exhausted to do anything fun. While in Mombasa we did manage to by several bootlegged CDs and DVDs for about a dollar a pop, including all three seasons of Desperate Housewives and some Bongo Flava hits. Place orders now, please.

Other than that, things are good but uneventful. I actually live here now, and even though I stick out like a sore thumb everywhere I go, I feel like I belong more or less. My bastardized Swahili is good enough that I have no problem expressing myself in a basic way, to the point that my English has suffered greatly. I think this is going to make reassimilation a problem, since none of us really remembers how to speak casual American English. Sometimes I forget the English words for basic fruits, and we've all taken to saying, "How did you find it?" instead of, "How was it?" and "It is finished," meaning "It's all gone." It's going to be a trip.

Plans in the works to do India over Christmas break since flights are relatively cheap (about $600) and we have two months to travel in between semesters. I'm super pumped, because everything is going to be nonstop until then. I've got three weeks laden with papers and seminar presentations, then Alex Good comes (OMG!) and we travel for two weeks, then I have two weeks of exams and then Xmas break and I'm off to...wherever I end up going. I had a moment earlier today where I detached from the whirlwind and realized how much I'm missing at home and how difficult reentry is going to be, and I think that's the closest I've gotten to my version of homesickness. I miss knowing exactly what's happening with everybody, but that's the trade-off for getting to do something like this. I wouldn't give this up for the world, because while Tanzania hasn't revolutionized my core person in any essential way, it's been extremely enabling in more subtle ways. I just feel more capable than I ever have in my life, which is really, really important.

I'm supposed to be working on a group presentation now, which means plagiarizing a paper and then reading it aloud to the class (I have more to say on the integrity of Tanzanian academic institutions later), but my group refuses to call me and hasn't shown up for our two scheduled meetings. So...? Oh, and my first midterm, in Linguistic Theory, looked something like this:
The _______________, _________________, and ________________ of the ___________________ are essential elements in _________________________ ______________.

What? You take that test, you'll do about as well as I did.

ANYWAYS. Alex Good, get here soon. I miss you guys something awful. Let me know what's UP!