Off Again

It’s about that time – the day of my departure from Diani Beach has arrived, and tonight I’ll be hopping on a flight from Mombasa to Nairobi and will stay overnight with a missionary family in the city. Tomorrow I’ll get on a bus at 9 P.M. that will take me from Nairobi to Mwanza, Tanzania (in theory I’ll arrive at 11 A.M. the next morning, although who knows how timely African buses are)… it’ll probably be a hot, cramped, and uncomfortable fourteen hours! I can’t wait for the minute that I actually arrive in Tanzania and finally meet the German family that I’ll be living with until March 5th!

My suitcase is just about the right weight I think, my carry-on is stuffed, and I am going to be carrying my winter jacket on the plane with me (on a ridiculously hot day) and wearing tennis shoes with my skirt since they’re too big and heavy to put them in my suitcase. Boo on luggage regulations!!!!

One quick story before I sign off and finish packing – my research took an interesting twist this morning when I met up with an older English gentleman named Johnno and his wife who live on the coast. I wanted to learn a little bit more about traditional medicine and witch doctors that many people in Africa use (what they do, which types are seen by the local population as good and which are bad, etc.) because many people who visited the eye clinic first tried traditional medicine for healing them and I’m pretty ignorant on the topic.

I figured I might as well learn some more about it while I had the chance, so after a lovely brunch, Johnno took me around his beautiful beachfront estate with one of his house staff and I was given a botany lesson on lots of plants that are used to cure various illnesses. I guess I’m just used to picking up all of my medicines off of a drugstore shelf, so it was mind-boggling to think that so many plants had uses that, according to the people I was with, really work.

This whole time, by the way, I was wearing a hat that Johnno’s wife offered me since it was sunny – it was straw with big white and red feathers and came from a lovely English woman, so how could I refuse? : )

Well, that’s all for now. The taxi will be here any minute to take me to Mombasa and I’d better start lugging my suitcase to the door and making sure I have everything. More to come from Tanzania!