Friday
Just another normal day...
A while back I wrote about a Thursday and how what seems normal here is unimaginable to most people.
This morning I woke up thinking it’s time to write about a Friday. One never knows how the day will unfold and it’s good to document the moments before they collide into one big chaotic jumble.
First, it’s coffee and cats in bed, our ritual for about 30 years. Once we became self-employed and didn’t have to start our days based on someone else’s agenda, coffee became our thing. It has also been a huge time waster, and I often wonder what else I could have accomplished in those years lost to drinking coffee for two hours every morning and watching motivational videos that obviously didn’t work at all.
After coffee, I will renege on my promise to do yoga with Steve because I really didn’t want to do it in the first place. But I like to give him hope every night, even if only for a short while.
Next, we’ll make a quick breakfast – toast and scrambled eggs. I ask Steve to turn off the hot water heater. Doesn’t seem that one begets the other, but here you have a choice of toast or hot water, but not at the same time.
Round one with the toaster—too light, barely warm enough to melt butter. Round two, just shy of catching fire and now destined to be used as a charcoal briquette for a grilled chicken dinner another night. Our toaster requires vigilant monitoring as the heat cylinders ramp up. It has been startled too many times over the years from wild power swings and no longer knows how to produce a normal piece of toast. Plus, I don’t think it cares, either.
With a dismal breakfast out of the way, we steel ourselves and look at the to-do list. A friend is due to arrive in just a few days—at the top of that list is tackling the art studio/junk room/guest bedroom so Diana doesn’t feel like she’s a complete afterthought. Instead of just putting everything neatly back where it belongs, we suddenly feel compelled to repaint the walls, which might just be an avoidance tactic for other things on the list. Steve runs to the hardware store for a few buckets of paint, and meanwhile I am tasked with moving the litter box to our room, sweeping up dead bugs (there have been a few swarms of flying termites lately due to the rains), removing any lizard eggs which look like small hard peppermint oval candies, and double-checking that the caterpillar hatchlings that are devouring my garden have not found a way into the house. And then of course a beautiful vase of flowers to make it look like it’s always been a guest bedroom! Nothing is too good for our friends.
Steve is back and the painting starts. I am now just in the way (I know this because he told me). I move on to business emails, work on the outline for the next magazine edition, and add clipping of Marley’s toenails to my agenda, although Steve is the one who always does this. Mostly my to-do list exists for me to remind Steve what he needs to do.
The cats have never minded this invasion of their personal space—it’s a little pawdicure spa time for them and they would lie there like blobs, purring away, safe and content in Steve’s arms. I will kiss Marley a lot, though, and inhale the smell of her fur because that’s what we cat people do. For sure that counts for something!
Then on to a quick round of my Duolingo Swahili lesson. I feel I’m making progress although I haven’t found the place where we should be living that matches what I’m learning. Here are the latest phrases I’ve collected from the past few weeks. If you recognize the country where these are from, please let us know.
Chinja mnyama kwa kafara – slaughter an animal for the offering
Jipu lina usaha – the boil has pus
Wamisiri watatu watafika leo – three Egyptians will arrive today
Pweza hula samaki wadogo – the octopus eats small fish
Mbwa hula nyama ya mbuzi – the dog eats goat meat
Watu wengine wamelewa – some people are drunk
Well, one out of six makes sense for this area…
And my favourite one to say, just because it’s fun… bila shaka nina shaka… ‘of course I doubt it’! I think that will come in handy on occasion.
Next, a quick bite of lunch, and then despite knowing I still have a long list of things to accomplish, it’s now 2 pm and time for my favourite activity which is to lie very still on the bed with the fan on full force and do nothing. The afternoon air is heavy and still, and a nap is the only thing that makes sense. Thunder rumbles in the distance and the birds have stopped singing. The quiet before the storm—I love it.
Possibly I’ll read a chapter from my book club book first, which is the one everyone else finished by our last get-together and has already discussed. It’s an outstanding book (There are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak) but I’ve let everything else take precedence and didn’t finish it in time. Like Season 4 of Bridgerton, for example.
Speaking of that, I’ve had a few people suggest I start a Lady Whistledown-style of newsletter which I would love to do! That level of snark deserves to be commended and a worthy goal, I might add. I wrote something very similar at a previous job ages ago and almost got fired. It was worth it and factored into my eventual decision to become self-employed... job security and all that. I’ve been tempted to fire myself many times over the years though, so I kind of sympathize with a few previous employers.
As Friday continues to unfold and my desire to stick with my to-do list has waned, I feel a cooking project brewing, possibly a mango chutney since it’s their season and they’re amazing right now. Plus, I’m not thrilled with the remaining items on my list which is reason enough to not carry on with that nonsense.
So, I think this gives you a pretty good overview of a Friday in Tanzania. The daily to-do list can rear its head and often make life feel mundane, but then I hop in the car to head to the market, or take a stroll around our property, and am overcome with that ‘holy shit I live in Africa!’ feeling that I experience at some point every day.
Sometimes I get a glimpse of the two young giraffe that live next door who occasionally wander onto our land. Or our neighbour’s son runs up to show me the very long snakeskin he found yesterday alongside our driveway—too close for comfort, I might add. The shape of the head was pointed, which is not a good sign, if you know what I mean.
In the late afternoon we might get that majestic view of Mount Kilimanjaro when the sky clears around her peak. From the polo club—usually during Wednesday happy hour—is when we most often see her briefly undressed, as they say, sometimes followed by a full moon rising with zebra and wildebeest grazing below. In those moments I’m always transported to a time when Africa was for the early adventurers who explored these untamed lands and shared their stories for us to experience secondhand centuries later. What a crazy life that must have been.
This is my Friday. What magic it is to live here, far away from the heaviness that seems to be our world these days. I’m so thankful that Steve was willing to dive into this huge life-changing adventure with no idea where we would live or what we would do to survive. We had faith, a small savings account, our cat, and each other and knew that was more than enough to make it work.
Turns out if you believe in yourself and are willing to put in the work, magic will happen.
Laughing out loud again, my friend. Although I don’t recall getting flowers in my room when I was there. Just sayin.
bila shaka another great story!