My New Home in Rubya

And the adventure continues. I arrived in Rubya on Tuesday of this week. It’s a very small town/village. Before I came here I tried to Google Rubya several times with no success, all I found was information on Bukoba which is the closest real town and is about 70km away. Well, just before I left Dar es Salaam to come here I gave it one final Google and guess what? I got a hit! I have a feeling that someone at Google noticed that they were getting a higher than average number of inquiries (all from me) about this place so they decided to have someone look into it. The description that I found was accurate – it is truly beautiful here. It is green and mountainous and at night the stars are just gorgeous (you can see the Milky Way, it’s awesome). Also, I do not think that the aliens know about this place yet cause I have yet to feel any sort of presence from them (for those of you who don’t understand what I mean in saying this, please disregard and continue to be of the impression that I am NOT crazy).

It’s a new local and there is also new animal life that I have to get used to. I was washing my hands in the bathroom the other day and I saw something move out of the corner of my eye. It was a lizard. Now normally I really like lizards, but the thing is, normally, they are not in my bathroom. I was not really sure what to do so I just looked at him and he looked at me. I thought about trying to catch him, but lizards are really quick so I didn’t expect to have a lot of success with that. I then thought, maybe shoo him with a broom? But the problem with that is I would have no idea which direction he would run to. Although a lizard in the bathroom is not the best scenario ever, a lizard in my bed or in my shoe is a far worse scenario. After staring at each other for about 2 minutes I decided to take action (while the lizard did nothing). I called home. My brother answered and to my surprise he was less than helpful. He generally knows stuff about just about everything, but he does not know anything at all about lizards in the bathroom. After hanging up a quick check confirmed that the lizard was still there. Still watching me. I decided to call my neighbour who is also a VSO volunteer and has been here for a few months. She was more familiar with my situation than my brother but she was about equally as helpful as him. She laughed at me. So it seems that this is the sort of thing that I will have to get used to. As an optimist I guess I have to look on the bright side.... lizards do eat other pests. 

I’m sure I will speak more about the actual work I am doing in a future post when I am more settled in my job. One thing that did make an impression on me on my first day of work was something the hospital administrator said to me. He told me that although the government would like employees to work 8 and a half or 9 hour work days, the hospital has opted for a 7 and a half hour work day. He explained that if he had people work anymore than that then they would just be tired and unhappy. It took quite a bit of effort to keep from cracking a smile. REALLY????

Well just a couple of days later and I see that he just might be right. At home when I get home from work I might make a quick dinner, or maybe watch some TV, perhaps have a drink. Not here. After work here I have to start boiling water. Once I boil the water I have to wait for it to cool before running it through my water filter and then boiling some more water. Also, I do not have a washing machine. So if I want to wash my clothes I must do it by hand and if I want to wash them in warm water then I have to boil even more water. Oh yeah, did I mention? I do not have hot water. So in addition to all of that water that I just boiled, if I want to bathe in warm water then I have to boil even more water. It’s a good thing that they do not sell wine in the village because I do not think that I would have any time at all to drink it (this is again the optimist in me..... in reality I REALLY want a nice glass of wine, or maybe even the whole bottle). 

I’ve included a couple of photos for all of you who are curious as to what my house looks like. I’m sure I’ll post a few more at a later date.

Miss you all.

V