still here!

So Deus has gone over his date of return again! He says he'll be here Tuesday as right now he is still too sick to travel but we'll have to wait and see. I've definitely been enjoying Kigoma so this isn't a complaint in any way. Although I am a bit sad to learn I missed MamaDia giving birth. She had a boy!
News:
I got sick. For the first time here, I got really sick. Maybe really sick is an overstatement. It's something like a cold that mainly effects me when I wake in the morning (my nose stuffed with snot and my throat all clogged with goober). I did go to the Duka la Dawa though and get a few things, a cough syrup and this pill thats supposed to help flus, runny noses and give you energy. I took so much time comparing the ingredients of different medicines in the pharmacy (even coming back to return a medicine I decided wasn't quite right) that the doctor there asked me if I was a doctor myself. What worried me though was that half the cough syrups seemed to have ingredients that sounded like they belonged on my spice rack and not in my medicine. If its going to cure me I want it to be strong, undiluted CHEMICALS I'm paying for. sarcasm intended- sorta.
Yesterday there was a ceremony because the National Torch (symbolizing Tanzanian independence) came to town. They fenced off a big area where the Government officials and police officers stood around the torch while in front of them different groups put on performances, mainly dance, although there was one band, mainly comprised of drummers but also with one dude wielding an accordion he clearly didn't know how to play and as we we're leaving a theater group was starting (to some 'boo's'). The best was definitely this really well coordinated story-dance where two men, one dressed as a woman and the other as an older Arab man acted out a love story. The rest of the dances mainly consisted of people shaking their bums at you. I got tired of standing though so me and Ngoro headed back to her house down the road. Looking up on the way back I noticed the start of a lunar eclipse! I tried in limited Swahili to explain to Ngoro what was happening. Unfortunately she has little understanding of the sky above her. As yesterday was a full moon I looked up the word for full moon and then pointed out to her that it wasn't full anymore but actually shrinking but she asked me "full is big or little?". Clearly a lack of school (she finished only elementary) contributed to this confusion.
As for news of my ideas and thoughts:
I'm seriously considering scrapping the whole drug and alcohol program, actually survey, I was planning and doing a completely different program. The problems with the drug and alcohol program are too many but for now I will say time, and really a lack of ideas or maybe confidence in ideas on my part. Plus its just complicated for resource and culture issues. Also we haven't even started!
My new idea came from a conversation I was having with one of my friends here. This kids name is Stan and he's my age. He is really bright and really eager to learn. He's always asking me to tell him stories (about the moon landing, colonialism, English grammar, geology, or the American Revolution, basically anything I can talk about -- which is forcing me to examine how little I learned in high school). I told him if he wanted stories like that he should come to the library with me. He responded that he didn't have money to get books at the library, I responded something like "don't you know what a library is?? it means the books are free!". "No," he said "you have to pay 3ooo Tsh per year to be a member and I don't have the money. I try to save up but it hasn't happened. Maybe if God wishes though I will get the money" (People here say "if God wishes" with amazing frequency). For those who don't know, I'll assume everyone reading this, 3000 Tsh is three dollars! So of course I told him I'll get him a library account for this year. And now the idea is that I want to set up a program to get library accounts for other students who want them. With 1,000 dollars you could get 300 kids accounts, plus put a lot of money into the library, which I think would give you some influence to say what kind of books you'd like to see (meaning we'd ask the kids what kind of books they want to see). I'm going to propose it to Deus when he returns but it all seems pretty simple and straight forward. The questions remaining are: how much money, how many students and which, where will the money come from, how do we guarantee it gets used at the library, how do we make sure it gets spent on students who want it and some practical application questions. But over all I think it is do-able. I woke up a few days with the idea and totally pumped to get working on it. I think the only thing that could get in my way at this point is my confidence in my ability to be a leader of a program, but I'm doing everything I can to fight my doubts and just prove to myself I can do something. Another idea I've been thinking about is sustainable lightening for houses like the one I'm staying in that don't have electricity and rely on kerosene. I am almost certain the kersene lamp is hurting my throat a good deal and the fact that a few of the kids in the house have hoarse voices reiterates that belief not to mention the loss of productivity onces darkness sets at about 7 p.m. and all you have is a lantern per 3 people or so.
For that problem I don't have an answer but it is something to keep in mind. Any one interested it should know there was a project called Lighting Africa that tried to set entrepreneurs upon the problem to come up with light inventions. I'm sure you could google it and figure out more about how it went.
Other than that I've been giving a lot of thought to government theory thanks to my current book of choice. Having some major "A-ha!" light bulb moments and some things that are really making me think. I've just finished the part of the book about socialism, communism and very briefly anarchy (which it noted as "the noblest" and yet "Utopian").
As for some news out of my head, which I just remembered, in the morning I've taken up running. We'll some mornings at least. I told Ngoro I didn't want to return back to America waddling so I better get some exercise and started using that early morning time normally spent not-sleeping in bed, listening to the mosque to go for a run. Although I can't say I did this morning... I'll have to see if I keep it up.
Another quick thing I noticed was how human everyone has become to me. If you were to walk into the situation right now from America I think pity would be a pretty common emotion, here I am surrounded by dirty kids in ratty falling off clothing, not in school, living in a dirt house (I've decided it is most certainly hard to stay clean when living in a dirt house), eating the same meal day after day (ugali and dagaa, or this flour paste stuff and small fish), etc etc. its like those commercials where that guy has some barefoot girl on his lap asking you to give them money except now it's just totally normal to me. Not saying I condone it or anything, just that I've adapted and feel at home.
And for a last anecdote... I believe I mentioned one of the women of the home took up selling fruit out front of the house, meaning inside the house we have a large storage of bananas and cucumbers and such in tarps on the ground. The other night me and Ngoro were laying in bed attempting communication about bugs that were in the house when someone started yelling from the kitchen, Ngoro said there was a "big big bug" so I went out expecting a cockroach and found myself faced with a foot long rat. While I do consider rats friends, foot long ones not so much and I went runnning, screaming back into the bedroom.
mhmm...