Goodbyes and Grasshoppers

The sad news this time is that one of the volunteers in the area, Rachael, has gone back to America, due to the situation back home. We'd become pretty close and she was our place to stay in town, so I'm real sorry to see her go. Fortunately that's the only bad news to report.

Yesterday I was talking to two of my students who seem to be quite fond of me despite the fact that they're failing my class. They do try, it just seems that math is a bit too much for them. Anyway, at the moment there are these huge grasshoppers everywhere. I guess it's their breeding season. They asked me if I'd ever eaten them. This question isn't as strange as it sounds because the Haya tribe on the western shore of Lake Victoria, not too far from where I used to live, eat them all the time, and I actually have had them before. They fry them up and they're actually pretty good with some salt. They make a good greasy, salty snack, which is an American staple sadly rare over here. When I told them I liked them they one said, "well, we will cook some for you." I didn't take her seriously because the students at the school don't have the means to cook anything. Much to my surprise, as I was leaving yesterday, they came up to me with something wrapped in paper. Turns out they had spent the afternoon catching a bunch of them and had somehow managed to talk one of the cooks into frying them. They were pretty good, if a little bit overdone. Consider that the Tanzanian version of the apple for the teacher. It's going to be hard to leave these kids.

Right now we're getting prepared for the end of term exams. After that we have a three week tutoring program for the exam year kids, which include all the ones I'm teaching. And after that, it's the chimps! I suppose that's all I have going on.