I'm alive!

(I write this all the time in the subject lines of emails home. Sometimes mommy worries...oddly enough, my host-"mom" here, Suzie, tends to worry quite a bit when it's been dark for hours and I'm not back yet because I made some fascinating new friends in the marketplace...)

(This is the same Suzie who is singing something lovely and classical and soprano-y in Italian or Latin in the living room right now. It really is the random things in life that are the most enjoyable. Like the game of Risk with the Danes last night.)

(I swear they were working together! Stinking Vikings and their incomprehensible language! Sure, right, just "discussing the weather," uh huh! Hah! I won anyway!)

(Okay, so enough with the parenthetical comments...)

I really am alive, and I feel it, too. Today I walked into town with three deaf-mute Tanzanians, ordered lumber cut to size, and got a discount after complaining that the finished products looked more like spaghetti than building materials--in Swahili. Picked up a hand-powered drill and some screws, and spent the afternoon working with my hands. Suzie needs some large, durable wooden boxes for the craft shop; I have loved building things since my first Lego castle. I scrounged up a screwdriver, handsaw, an old file, a ruler, and a pencil, pulled out my handy-dandy Leatherman multitool, and set to trying to make squares and rectangles that don't look like kindergarten drawings.

Lets say that I feel rather proud of my accomplishments, yet simulateously very awed at the work of real carpenters. My hands are pleasantly weathered, my arms are happy and tired, and I have been creative today!

By far the most enjoyable: eight months of language and culture study have finally paid off. The locals now laugh at my jokes instead of my linguistic blunders. Instead of being a helpless child in this culture, I am now a potty-mouthed twelve-year old. :) I'm actually semi-functional! It's really a thrill beyond all thrills to realize that, as long as nothing really disastrous happens, you are capable of living in a completely different country (not Canada) and even relating to the people there.

By far the least enjoyable: having to explain really embarassing aspects of American culture and politics and foreign policy to bemused Brits and Tanzanian taxi drivers (Oh! You come from America? I saw a picture on the internet of an American woman soldier torturing a naked Iraqi man! Why do the Americans hate the Arabs?)

And then MTV was on during lunch at the Hasty Tasty Too...sigh. It's easy to understand all those vehemently self-righteous "No, I'm Canadian!" people.

Cheers!
Dan