Mud, Bugs, and Plugs

The rainy season has arrived! This means that:

1. your pants are always muddy.
2. cars can't get down dirt roads because they are now mud.
3. the power never works - hence the lack of internet activity on my part for the last 2 weeks.
4. flip flops are often lost during walks into town.
5. laundry refuses to dry. The main problem with this is that if laundry is left out for more than an afternoon you risk the danger of bugs called 'jiggers' laying eggs in the seams of your clothing, which apparently will hatch into insects that enjoy burrowing into your skin. (Anyone remember The Mummy?) So everything, including underwear, must thoroughly be ironed.
5. bugs have taken the opportunity to start breeding like crazy! We get swarmed by flying ants here... which are actually massive, yet harmless. I mean literally swarmed... like thousands of them flying around your head. Some of the girls are quite terrified, which provides humour for those of us who were raised by mothers like Julie Hoit, who let everyone know that nature is a peaceful, harmless thing of which all forms should be embraced and celebrated.

Although it is certainly better for the farmers of Tanzania, general consensus is that the low season sucks. hard. It is not constantly raining, but when it does rain... it feels more like you are getting a bucket of water thrown at you rather than a nice downward sprinkle.

The CCS homebase is surrounded by the most dense hedge I have ever seen. It's around 7 feet tall and has many thorns. We all feel quite safe because of it. Yet, the other day, it rained. Part of the road outside CCS was completely washed out, and by this I mean there is a four foot deep, 10 foot wide trench that runs perpendicular to what was formerly our means of transportation. The problem, other than the fact that you can no longer turn left out of CCS, is that a significant portion of the monsterous hedge that used to protect us, no longer stands erect. It has fallen into what is now the San Andreas Fault of Moshi. The CCS staff then took this opportunity to let us in on the fact that three years ago the former homebase was attacked at 3am by thirty men yeilding machetes and two others with machine guns. um????? Thanks for the timing? I should add to the end of what I have just mentioned that no volunteers were injured.

Chicken wire now lies in place of the hedge that once was.