Yesterday was nothing too crazy. Work was fun because we had a meeting and it got a little chaotic. Every month there are supposed to be program status meetings for each of the 7 programs. There haven’t been any for the past few months because the team who oversees them is very busy. But now that they have me (a wide-eyed eager intern who is willing to do the boring work of setting up slides and collecting status updates), they’ve decided to resume to meetings. Anyways, all the other meetings have been online of course because the other programs are in other countries, but yesterday’s was in person because everyone involved (for the most part) is in Shinyanga. However, everyone still felt the need to bring their computers with and join the meeting online while also being present in the room. It led to some good confusions when there was a ricocheting echo and the likes.
After work I went for my regular run. I forgot to bring my headphones with me and I can’t imagine how I did that—normally I walk out of the hotel listening to music with my phone in my hands. I was a bit confused, but I had already committed to the running and I new if I had to go back to grab my headphones my will to run might be eliminated, so I decided it best to brave the route with no music. It made me realize I have been missing a lot. There is so much noise in these shinyanga streets, especially when a muzungu (white person) is running about. I was surprised at how many people were calling out to me and the number of honks from passing cars. Normally when I’m running I drown all that out with headphones at full volume.
It was also nice to experience the stillness of the environment when I got out of the city and things got quiet.
On my route home I stopped for some dinner at a new mishkaki place. There are so many vendors of these sweet meat sticks that I bet I could go around every day for a year and never have to repeat a restaurant. But, I’ve been gaining the ability to identify good spots even before I bite into the fries or shish-kabob. I don’t want to reveal my secrets, but I’ll give a little hint: If there is smoke or a boiling pot of oil, you know you’ll get fresh and warm mishkaki and/or chips!
After dinner I got back to the hotel and did some duolingo for a while. These days I think I’m clocking about an hour a day on the language learning. Unfortunately I’m finding that it doesn’t help too much with my spoken Swahili, but these days my reading isn’t too shabby. I’m sure if I could get my hands on a kids book with limited words I could understand it for the most part. I’m hoping I’ll reach a point on the learning curve where it flattens out and the spoken Swahili comes a bit faster and easier, but I’m not too certain that’ll happen anytime soon.
I didn’t sleep too well last night and even found myself cursing a few of my neighbors. Trying to get to sleep before 10pm is hard enough with all the traffic and whatnot, but it’s even worse with a bachelorette group staying in the hotel. I felt like an old curmudgeon for a bit, but don’t worry, I realized that I was being unreasonable. Today will be good—Fridays always seem to work out that way. I’m hoping I can talk a few coworkers into going out this weekend to the local zoo, but other than that just a regular work day ahead of me.