Wow...
I just spent a dollar bill. In Iringa! Which is good because I'm almost out of shillings :)

This is, oddly enough, my last week in Tanzania. Actually, my last few days. Fittingly, I am sick. I just started taking antimalarial medication today. I almost got away...

I had a very touching reunion last night: I snuck up on the night guards at Masumbo, Hassan and Madenge; they were my Swahili teachers and friends during my studies. We would sit around the cooling heat of the stove and stumble through conversations and word definitions and talk about life and religion and girls. Wonderful guys; I'm so glad to finally be able to converse well in their language. Okay...maybe not well. But now there are no awkward pauses, searches for simple conversational topics...and they're not always struggling to figure out how to explain complex Swahili words to someone with the vocabulary of a two-year old.

Then we drove to town with Edjidi, the world's greatest driver and car mechanic, and another one of my swahili teachers. Edjidi...anaweza. We had a great time laughing and talking and remembering the times he was teaching me swahili AND how to change tires on a ten-ton vehicle at the same time. I surprised him by waiting for him up front in the truck and mimicking his gravelly voice: "Habari za leo, wanafunzi?" His face was priceless.

I like being in a world where facial emotional expression is encouraged. The looks on all three of my friends faces were priceless: grinning from ear to ear, stepping back in surprise...seeing me again made their day, and they stopped everything to whoop and holler and laugh and hold my hand and just let me know that they were happy to see me. That's really cool...I will miss those guys.

I also like being in Masumbo again when students are here. It's odd though. I lived at Masumbo with twenty-five other young white people...so I don't really look for particulars to identify them. So I look over to Dave's old tent and see a tallish guy with dark hair and think, oh, Dave! But it's not...so far I've "seen" Jess, Erica, Tegan, Michelle, Pascoe...the list keeps growing. It's kind of sad. I miss my old Masumbo family...

That said, what could be more fun that seeing old friends from school coming to Masumbo, for the first time! Their enthusaism is so awesome, and their naivete is fun too! I remember the first time I stepped out of the Green Bomber into Iringa town to be besieged by all sorts of vendors. Most of them know me by face now, and I can slide right through them with a few reflexive lines of kiswahili...but not the first time. What fun! And to swap news of Tanzania with news of the states: so much fun. I'm glad I stayed to greet the newbies!

So joy mixes with sadness and satisfaction with regret. Today or tomorrow I will say goodbye to Iringa town, and the Tanzania adventure (for that is truly what the last five weeks have been) will be over. As the cast comes out for the final curtain call, I think of every one of them with the fondest of smiles and gales of sidecracking laughter: Mike the incredible tentmate, Dave and Dave and Christian and Tim, the coolest travelling roadshow ever, the supportive friends and family back home, Andy and Suzie, Teddy and Kim and family, Abel, Doc and Mom Arensen, Eli and Linda, the Amazing Adkins(es), the Danes, Moyers and Phillipses, the crazy Moyer children, all the womenses in all their amazingness, the thoughtful and kind senders-of-valentines and birthdaycards, Edjidi, Abbas, Joseph, Tumaini, Hassan, Mzee Madenge, the How People Growers with all their opennes and caring and wisdom...

the applause swells and swells and swells. cheers to you!