Welcome to Africa!

There’s never a dull moment in Africa. I thought you’d be interested to hear the latest excitement around here.

My wonderful friend informed me that she sent me a package back in November. So each trip to our office was filled with anxiety… Do we have any packages? We left each time saddened by our lack of packages. But we still had hope that someday that package would arrive.

Well… when January finally rolled around, I was beginning to worry about the package. Thinking it might never make it to Africa. Or if it had made it to Africa, it might never make it to my post office box. So returning home without packages each time diminished our hope little by little.

Until one day… two months after the package left the States, it arrived in our office. Marissa and I were ecstatic. We raced home to open the big box. We found lots of goodies in the box… books, Velveeta, dry erase boards!! But one thing we found was quite perplexing. There was an empty bag of Reese’s peanut butter cups. We thought… Well that’s just mean. Why would someone send us an EMPTY bag of Reese’s?! Is this some kind of joke?! So we read the letter concerning the contents of the box. She didn’t mention anything about the empty bag of Reese’s. So we started to examine the box a little more. It didn’t take us long to find the source of our problem. It seems that a sweet little rat chewed his way through the first box, then the second box, proceeded to consume every bit of the Reese’s including the wrappers, and then made his way back out of the box! Thankfully, he made his way back out of the box. Or that would have definitely been an interesting package!

Marissa and I laughed for a while, cursed the rats for a while, and took some pictures for your enjoyment. It turns out that the box arrived in Tanzania only a month after being shipped. But then it sat in the customs office for another month waiting to be processed. We imagine the rat found his Christmas present during that month long customs process. As my Tanzanian friend would say, “Welcome to Africa!”

Will you marry me?

So marriage proposals seem fairly common to me now. I think I’ve lost count at the number of guys who are interested. While some days it may be a nuisance, most days I just like to consider it a great flattery. I forget the fact that I have white skin and they are probably only interested in a ticket to America or some money. Rather I like to think that it must be my undeniable beauty or amazing charm.

So I thought I would share a funny story for the day concerning marriage proposals. One day, Marissa and I were leaving the local shopping mall. (I use that term lightly, but it is considered the first mall in Tanzania). As we walked out to our car, one of the guards followed us. They like to try to use their English with the pretty girls, but today he was struggling just a bit. He stuttered out, “How is your wife?! I mean…. Hmmm…. Your boy? How is your boy?” Realizing his mistake I said, “My husband?” And he said, “Yeah!” I responded with, “Oh he’s great! How’s your wife?” He said, “Oh, no wife. But maybe her?” while pointing to Marissa. I said, “Oh yeah! She’d make a great wife!” Marissa quickly jumped in the car and scolded me for offering her up as a potential wife. We laughed as we drove off.

Needless to say, we enjoy lots of laughs in Tanzania. Whether it’s marriage proposals or chaotic traffic or crazy Swahili, it’s either laughing or crying. So we like to choose laughing!