Hot breezes

We got cold soda after class today, at the duka (shop) that's about a mile or so down my road. The shopkeeper rummaged through his chest refrigerator to dig up the last coke for me. It tasted amazing.

Today is the second day I've brought up the projects I need to do here with my mama: we must dig two holes to plant an avocado tree and a mango tree, and I am supposed to make a "vertical" bag garden for my host family as well. As my vocabulary expands, I am more able to introduce ideas and things that need to happen in a "Tanzanian" manner, that is to say you learn to beat around the bush, bring up the point, and then go around again.

Mama and I sat in the early evening in front of our house, looking down the road, when a cow ran across the road, jumped the ditch with surprising grace, and continued loping, a rope trailing after it. We both laugh in surprise. "Anaruka!" My mama says. Which I love because it can either be translated as "he jumps", or "he flies!"

The chickens kept pecking in the setting sun, and I opened my textbook to study.