Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Some people and places



A couple pictures from Christmas with my friend and his family.  



And here is my lovely living situation. Two bathrooms, I am a lucky man…and even though it may appear that I in fact have a massive king size bed, really it is just a single, and you are drastically overestimating the overall size of the rooms. 

 


  





 

The start of teaching


A view of the crater that is Chome



 And school begins. January 10th. This past weekend probably should have consisted of me preparing lesson plans since as the only Physics teacher at Chalao, I am expected to teach all forms and all students at the school. I think all and all I will have about 400 students across all 4 forms. I did a few lesson plans but was kept rather in the dark as to what was going to happen on Monday, other than that I was expected to meet with the rest of the teachers in the staff room 7:30 to prepare for school to begin at 8. The schedule for last year was still posted, but since there was new teaching staff it was no longer correct, so I had no idea when and where I would be teaching…and whenever I asked, no one could really tell me anything either. Monday morning arrived, I woke up at like 6 because I needed time to boil some water for chai, and since its super cold in the morning here I would have frozen my face off with out at least luke warm water to bucket bathe in. I had a tasty left over rice and beans breakfast from my equally tasty rice and bean dinner the night before, and wandered out of my house onto school grounds. Since I have been in Chome for a little over a month now, I had stopped getting as many confused stares as I walked from place to place. I forgot, however, that very few of the students knew I was going to be teaching at the school, so it was rather amusing to see all the perplexed faces.

After getting into the teachers lounge I was hoping, just maybe, someone would be able to tell me what was going on. All I knew is that I was teaching Physics…oh I also found out the day before that I was the “teacher in charge” of Form 2B, but no one could tell me what that was either. But after getting in and greeting all the teachers, all I had found out is that everyone agreed that the school was extremely dirty, and the kids were to clean it until it was sufficiently sparkling. One of the students, I think he was called one of the “head prefects” but maybe I am just imagining that and pretending I was a part of something Harry Potter-esk, hit a stick on the flag pole and all the students arranged themselves in some mysterious order around him.

I assume the mkuu was meant to talk to them or make announcements, but since he was absent everyone just stood there looking at one another in silence for about 20 minutes. Then, all the students dispersed to their respective classrooms. I am not sure what happened in those 20 minutes, or how they knew when to disperse, I am partially convinced that there is some sort of conspiracy going on to confuse me as much as possible, but I’m gonna let it go for now. So all the students went to their classrooms (organized by Forms and Steams…like 2B for example being the one that I was assigned to be in charge of or something). I started walking back to the staff room when one of my friends, and another teacher at the school said that I was supposed to be talking to “my” classroom now. This I assumed meant talk to Form 2B, but I had no idea what I should be talking about…again another part of the confuse Colin conspiracy perhaps? Haha. After going into the classroom and trying to ask them what was going on…only to receive 100% blank stares, I went in search of another teacher. I was meant to take attendance and instruct them on which parts of the school they should be cleaning. So I botched maybe 40 of 45 names, and attempted to explain what part of the school to clean in Kiswahili…which most likely went terribly, but they did clean that particular classroom at least. After about 2 hours into cleaning time I asked another teacher if there would be any teaching today…again he kind of laughed and just said the school was sooo dirty. 6 hours later, the students took off. Day 1 down, no teaching yet, lots of confusing times for me haha.




A couple pictures of the school- the first one is where the mama’s cook lunch

Day 2 of teaching…game on. I thought maybe since there was more cleaning done yesterday than I had ever seen done anywhere, today I would get to spit out some equations and meet the kids I would be teaching the next two years. Up early again, made some noodles for breakfast…breakfast of champions…and meandered to the staff room. After all the greetings, I asked where and if I would teach today. My closest friend, Baraka, informed me that all the students who had not yet brought their school fees had been sent home to retrieve them before school was to begin. This seemed like it would not be too much of a problem, however after walking around the school it appeared of the 400 students at Chalao, only 3 remembered to bring their school fees. And although some of the students live very close to Chalao, many live an hour or two walk from school…so by lunchtime, only about half the school had returned. Lunch came and went, and I thought another day would go by without setting foot in a classroom yet again, but then at around 2 (school goes from 8 until 3 with a 15 minutes break at 10:30, and a 45 minutes break at 1 for lunch), completely unspoken, all the teachers cleared out of the staff room. Again, more proof of the confuse Colin conspiracy theory. I sort of wandered around a bit and noticed that they had all gone to teach, but in what seemed to be random classrooms. Since there was no formal schedule yet made up, my best guess was that they all just walked into open classrooms. I thought ok…I’ll just teach in some classroom…but all of them had a teacher in them. Conspiracy I tell you. Eventually 3 rolled around, and I asked Baraka how he knew where to teach. He told me it didn’t matter. Since there is no schedule yet, I should just wander around and if I find a classroom without a teacher, I should go and teach there. Hahaha glorious, just a free for all. I still am not ruling out the confuse Colin conspiracy, however. Day 2 of school done, 0-2 on teaching. Bring on day 3.

After school each day there is an hour of some activity…it can be sports, school maintenance, English lessons, and I forget the other two. I think two of the days are sports maybe…anyways, after day 2 of school was sports day. And today it was a staff vs. student soccer game. They asked me to play again, even though they must be getting the message by now that I am literally the worst soccer player in the country of Tanzania. So school ended and all the teachers and I headed down to the pitch…well actually after school ended the students all stood together and were talked at by the mkuu for literally an hour without moving. I have no idea what was happening. Probably intricate details were being given out on how to continue to confuse me as much as possible. Yup, I am on to them now. Right…soccer game…first before I continue, a few weeks ago I was talking about sports with some of the guys I have become friends with in the village, we got to talking about soccer, which I really no nothing at all about. But as long as I smile/nod and just say Manchester United if anyone asks, its all good. So, talking about soccer with some guys and they ask what number I was…thinking they meant like what number do I wear on my jersey, I told them number 5. I dunno if these numbers are universal soccer lingo of what, but when I said this they were like number 5! Cool! I was like yea, 5, cool is right, that’s why I wear it, but naturally didn’t say any of that. The next day I am invited to play in a soccer game with some of the teachers. I reluctantly agree telling them my feet don’t do much more than prevent me from falling over, kicking and running around on them is dangerous territory for me, but they insisted I come play. When I get there my buddy says all right you are a number 5, right?...uh oh. Number 5 meant something in soccer, or at least in Tanzanian soccer. I soon found out that number 5 was like the sweeper or something. I was meant to be the “conductor” on the field. This was a problem for many reasons. For one, I am terrible at soccer. Also, and maybe more importantly, being a conductor of a soccer team, when nobody can understand the language you speak, is bad news bears. We ended up only losing 2-1 that game, but it was not pretty, that’s for sure. The teachers game went similarly…we did tie however, so whoop whoop for my feet.


Today I woke up same time as normal for day number 3 of school, hoping that today maybe I will get to kick off this teaching thing and actually get the ball rolling on some Physics …as usual up bright and early, dressed not in pajama pants because for some reason even though Tanzania is the dustiest place in all the land, Tanzanians manage to be the cleanest people of all times. It’s amazing because I cannot walk to the closest duka or friends house 100 yards away and not come back with red dirt stains on every part of my pants and shoes/uncovered part of my feet while wearing Chacos (I love Chacos, especially because they make me think of tacos, which makes me think of burritos…and burritos are the best)…anyway, compared to my pj pant wearing days in the states I am required at a bare minimum to wear non-wrinkled, non-track/sweat/comfortable pants, and a shirt that looks good, too. And when I teach it should have buttons and I am expected to wear a tie on most days. Crazy times I tell you, crazy times. So, off to school, day 3, potentially going to teach today…I get outside and as I am walking past the entrance to some of the others teachers’ houses, one comes out brushing his teeth wearing athletic shorts and a normal t shirt. Not a good sign. Like with the rest of the things I like to wear, adults do not wear shorts, unless they are playing in a soccer game. Seeing as there was no chance for a soccer game I gave him a weird look to which he responded by asking if I knew it was national holiday today. Haha, made sense now that there were no students around watching me. We laughed for a bit, and I headed back home…0-3 on teaching thus far but its gonna happen, I’m hoping for this week, but it seems that I potentially might not do much until Monday week 2. Only time will tell.

Oh…I did something awesome today though, as it is a national holiday and since I woke up at 6 assuming it was a normal school day…hmmm before I tell you what awesome thing I did, first you should know what I have to work with to make this awesome thing a reality. It involves cooking. My kitchen consists of 4 pots of different sizes, 3 spoons, 1 big spoon, 3 plates, a small bowl, a coffee mug, and a kerosene jiko. I know, I know, kerosene, fancy is right, I knew you were probably thinking that…no charcoal jiko for me, I’m a high roller. Anyway, the kerosene jiko is pretty simple, a little container at the bottom that you fill with kerosene (mafuta ya taa for those with any interest in learning some random words in Kiswahili). Strings travel from below to above absorbing the kerosene and you light them…shabaam, and we have a stove, well some metal cylinders with holes go on the top part to contain and direct the heat. Anyway…that’s my kitchen, and since I went to the market yesterday, I had all sorts of tasty things, well really just eggs, I had eggs so I decided to attempt to bread. Went with a banana bread recipe I was given, and constructed an oven from all my bowls. One big one directly on the heat…a few rocks in between the bottom of the big bowl and the small one containing the banana bread batter…then upside-down on top was the second biggest bowl since I only have one lid and its too small to cover big bottom bowl. It took about an hour and a half, but it worked. It was awesome. Probably not as awesome for you to read about, so I apologize for potentially getting your hopes out about the awesome thing that I did, but let me tell you, bread is not easy to come by, and banana bread, I don’t think I have seen any at all. So I feel like a hero, simple as that.




Day 4…school was actually happening that day so my chances of teaching were largely increased from the day before. After failing to find a classroom to teach in for the 4 two hour periods of the day (normally this would not have been all that difficult, but Form 1 has yet to learn English, and so if I were to walk in and start blabbering about physics they would probably poop themselves…this is why From 1 students took a 6 week English crash course called baseline so that they have some basis of English to work in as all classes except for Kiswahili are taught in English in secondary school) I left chai break early and found a class of From 3 students. This was it, class number one. Finally success. After introducing myself and talking about why I was here yada yada, I started asking the kids a little bit about what they knew from Physics last year. This was pretty reasonable as different teachers go at different speeds and I needed to know what to go over from Form 2 that the kids had not yet covered. I had forgot one crucial detail in my investigation of classrooms though. All Form 1 and Form 2 students take Physics, but Form 3 and Form 4 have the option to choose a more science based schedule if they wish to continue with Physics and Chemistry. Also Tanzania students are extremely soft spoken, and so none of them thought it would be a good idea to tell me that I was not in fact teaching this class, they were the non-science Form 3 students. But for 80 minutes, we went over what they had learned in Physics last year. Dang. So 1 class taught, too bad I am not actually going to be their teacher ever hahah. The conspiracy continues.

Day 5…Boom…I taught. And not only did I teach, but I taught kids I would actually be teaching for the rest of the year, as opposed to the only class in the whole school I would not in fact be teaching…stupid Form 3B, just kidding I am sure they are all wonderful humans. Anyway, to start the day I hopped into a Form 2 class and taught a little bit about static electricity. Although I did get a very large number of blank stares for most of the 80 minutes, my strange noises to go along with rubbing plastic bags on my head to electrify them helped to keep the kids awake. I also taught the Form 4 science students which went much more smoothly. They were far more capable of understanding my strange American English accent, and since we were starting the year studying waves, it was much easy jumping into something more tangible in comparison to static electricity.

Curriculum wise, Tanzanian schools are not too different from high school courses in the states, with the exception of option for electives. The only real choice students have is to continue taking Physics and Chem or taking more courses focused on History and Language. Apart from the curriculum similarities, there are quite a few differences, however. One of the biggest differences is the large lack of resources. The school I am working it has by far the nicest labs I have yet to see in Tanz, but in comparison to those I used in high school they are far from the same.

Textbooks its one of the most noticeable missing resources over here. For the most part teachers are provided with the material they are to teach. And each subject has just four books, one for each form, based on what the students need to know to take the national exam. Almost all the books I have seen are about 100 pages, that are each about 8 by 5 inches. Not too much to work with. And the students have nothing more often than not, unless the school is very well off and has been giving funding from some outside source. This means that if students want to have notes to look at they have to copy my notes. Two students take my notebook first to copy the notes, and then from those two students four more can copy theirs, then 12 more can copy and so on. Basically this means that I have to write my own textbook in a notebook, as legibly as possible so the students can listen during class (and have notes if they do not understand me and want to learn in their own time). A little different than making 40 photo copies and passing out handouts during class haha.

The other huge difference I have seen is the very, very passive nature of the students. This is probably due to the rather intense hierarchy system here in Tanzania school systems. There is also a lot of corporal punishment that goes on throughout each day, which has and will continue to take a lot of getting used to. We were warned many times particularly about the beating of students, but witnessing it is rather intense nonetheless. And there is punishment for anything and everything, from being late, to not knocking on the non-existent staff room door before entering, to not coming promptly enough after being called by a staff member. I am not in any way saying that the teachers here are bad people, it is just the way things work and how they feel they need to act to keep order is different than I am accustomed to. Usually teachers are carrying around a stick they use to hit the wrists of students but I have seen some strange alternatives as well. Yesterday I saw a bunch of boys doing push-ups, and today I saw two lines of girls holding their arms in the air. At first I thought that it was not too bad in comparison to being hit, but when I returned almost 30 minutes later and they were still there with their arms in the air. I think I would have preferred the stick to the wrist. Some strong arms those girls musta had. So, the students are extremely passive, very courteous, and keep quite quiet, which is a little problematic in the classroom when I really would like to get some participation. Hopefully my unwillingness to hit students will not cause me to loose control of them, but I am pretty sure it will not be a problem.
       
Another interesting little tidbit is that every time a teacher enters a classroom, the class immediately stands…when I enter they say, “good morning teacher…how are you” to which I am to respond “I am fine, how are you”… and they say “we are fine” and then they will stand looking at me until I allow them to sit down. Since it makes me a little uncomfortable I have had different greetings for different classes. I think my favorite one thus far was with one of my 2 classes they said good morning teacher to which I responded “good morning…what up class” and told them to say back “just chillin”. Probably sounds really stupid reading this, but it was quite entertaining to hear the whole class say just chillin all together. 

Monday, January 24, 2011

The Holidays

The holidays have come and gone in Tanzania, and they were for sure a little different than all previous Christmas and New Years festivities. One of my friends and neighbors asked if I would stay for Christmas because all of his family was coming from different parts around Tanz to spend the Holidays in Chome. So even though I had been planning on finding some other Peace Corps folks to join forces with I decided I would go with a village Christmas. On the 23rd, I rode back up on the deteriorating lorry with a mama that cooks a delicious rice and bean dish near by my house so I have gotten to know her pretty well over the last few weeks…she told me that tomorrow there was going to be a ubarikio or what I am pretty sure means a Confirmation. This was exciting since I had no real plans for the holidays, so having something to do for sure the day of Christmas eve was positive. I arrived a little late to the confirmation and the small church was already too packed to be able to sit inside. There were a group of super old men sitting outside with their chairs just out of the sun sitting face to face with the concrete walls of the church. Not gonna lie, it looked really strange. It looked as though they were currently watching the whole ceremony with xray vision, because none of them were really talking to one another, just staring at the wall ahead of them haha. But one of them was a man I had eaten peanuts with the other day so I greeted him, pulled up a chair and joined the wazee congregation staring blankly into the wall.  We sat there for almost an hour not saying really anything to one another…I could barely hear the music so I am sure they would not hear all that much either. So my first ubarikio was a little odd, but I enjoyed my sitting time with the village elders haha. After those confirmed left, every family with a confimed child (which was a lot, especially because everyone in the entire village seems to be somehow related, so there were many many ubarikio parties I was asked to go to). I decided to go to one with a friend of mine so I could ask him questions in English to make sure I didn’t do anything really incorrectly. The ceremonies I had seen in passing and then the one I attended were pretty big actually. There was music playing, some people had PA systems, many gifts were given, lots of food and drink were served, all around quite a gathering to celebrate the kids being confirmed.

Christmas day was a little strange, because it turns out that my friend’s family was not having the holiday gathering on Christmas, but in fact it would be the day after. So my Christmas ended up consisting of doing a little hand washing of my clothes, making some delicious rice and beans, and watching Elf on my computer. Quaint and extremely peaceful haha. The next day I went to my buddy’s house and did celebrate Christmas with his father and many borthers and sisters.

I took off to travel a little and visit some friends in the surrounding Kilimanjaro area leading up to new years. Spent a few days with a volunteer in her village called Slahamo, near the city of Karatu. A fantastically beautiful site on the plateau that rises off the greta rift valley, closing in on the boarder of one of Tanzania’s most well know national parks, Ngorogoro crater. I spent a few days there, and met up with more volunteers in I think the second biggest city in Tanz called Arusha, before heading back to Moshi for New Years Even and some birthday festivities. About 20 of us volunteers were all together at this point, and we elected to go to a little bit of a nicer bar for the evening. All in all it was quite an experience again…there were many fire works set off, but as opposed to the usual firework precautions (like setting them off at a reasonable distance from a crowd), the fire works were set off in the middle of the roofless bar area. Most went up but from time to time flaming balls of color would go shooting through the crowd. Wildly dangerous. Along with that, they had set up what appeared to me to be a teepee. This teepee turned out to be the makings for the most massive bonfire I’ve ever seen in my life. And I have seen some big fires working at a summer camp for so many years. But this fire stood about 20 feet high. So after igniting the kerosene soaked trees leaned against each other in the center of the bar area, the flames leapt up a good 30 feet. Again awesome, yet, wildly dangerous. To top off the pyrotechnics, when the clock struck midnight, at least a dozen random people pulled handguns out of there pants and shot loaded guns into the air. Karibu Tanzania haha quite a way to bring in the New Years. 

Tanz Trans

Well I have been living in the green land of Chome for a few weeks now, and spent most everyday of the past three weeks exploring and attempting to talk to people. A few days ago I went walking to explore the far side of Chome, with respect to my house to keep entertained. About 15 minutes into the walk I was joined by an extremely drunk middle aged Tanzanian man named either Chini or China…funny because in English his name either meant under, or Chinese. Regardless, it was both a blessing and a curse to have China (I’m pretty sure I heard someone say China so I’m gonna stick with it) by my side for the next few hours walking around. On the up side, I was able to practice my Kiswahili without feeling too stupid about my inability to really communicate because he would often forget what he asked after asking it so my responses were only half heard. Also, he was so excited to be walking with a white dude, that he stopped and introduced me and made sure I greeted everyone even remotely close to the path we were walking on. And the downside was that since I live in a fairly religious, mostly Seventh Day Adventists community, very few people drink in the village, and those that do are known as drunks. And since I was walking pretty far from my house, and the people I was meeting, only were meeting me through China, some most likely assumed that I was drunk, too. So it goes though, not really anything I could do about that. Anyway, we walked and talked for a while, eventually stopping at his home because as soon as we started walking together, he asked endlessly if I would come and greet his mama. Naturally I was not going to bail on him at this point, so we weaved down off the path to his modest little home down near the valley. (As mentioned some other time, Chome is like a bowl in the top of part of the Pare mountains, and the valley at the center is lovely and lush and green and full of corn and secret pathways). We got to his house, which was very much what you might expect a stereotypical African house to be. Wooden framed rooms, with clay packed tightly in between to build the walls, a thatched roof and the floors were just the ground. There were four rooms in the house, each one about 6 feet by 6 feet, and 5 people were living there.  Made me feel like a god living in the concrete box with an indoor choo (bathroom…well hole in the ground, but still, cockroach free hole), and a room for cooking. But they were doing just fine was the best part about it. I hung out and talked to his mom and sister as best I could about farming and such in the area, and it took me almost a half an hour to convince the women of the house that I was actually capable of cooking on my own without the help of a Tanzania woman. And even after that I’m pretty sure his mama didn’t believe I was telling the truth but let it go because we could not really understand each other. After eating something that tasted a bit like banana soup I told the family I had to get home, but being the small world that Chome is, I was lucky enough to see China the following morning at about 4 30am…

So I was up in the blackness yet again to head down to Same for the day to eat some meat, have a beer, hang out with some other friends and just take a 24 hour vacation, but I made the mistake of attempting to go on a Sunday. Even though I took the bus down on a Sunday before, turns out that the bus no longer runs on Sundays. Lucky, well sort of lucky for me, I happened to get there early enough to catch the lorry that happened to be traveling down to the Sunday Same market. For those of you not up on your British lingo, a lorry, according to my computers dictionary is: a large, heavy motor vehicle for transporting goods or troops; a truck. This particular truck was something like 20ft by 8ft probably and the back was entirely open except for four poorly welded cross bars and one traveling down the spine of the truck. Theoretically it was put there in order to cover the contents in the back to the truck, but since most often the contents were people, the bars were good for holding on to as we had to stand the entirety of the treacherous ride down the mountain. Along with the 30 or so passengers crammed in the back end of the lorry, there were also a couple thousand heads of cabbage filling the majority of the truck bed. Made for an exciting pitch-black ride down the rock road for sure. Oh and yes, back to my friend China: He happened to be the conductor of this lovely ride, which meant he was the guy hanging on the side of the truck whistling at the driver if someone needed to get off and banging on the side when it was go time again. And lucky for me he was also the man in charge of collecting fees for traveling down the mountain. Where as normally being white I would be charged double, China was so excited that I knew his family that I was in fact given a small discount. Not too bad at all. It was also pretty cool too see just how much it had meant to him that I came and ate with his mama and some of his family. He told about everyone that got in the lorry, in fact, that I was “mzungu yangu” or literally “his white person” haha…

Going back up to mountain after a day or two in Same was hand downs the most ridiculous experience I have had thus far. And considering my rides prior to this one included black eyes, vomit on my foot, and broken glass, this one was impressively wild. So…since I was traveling back to Chome on December 23rd, there were tons and tons of people trying to get to the village. Due to the fact that there is only a single bus, and some days a truck, this meant there was not enough space for everyone to go, even with the remarkable human packing abilities of Tanzanians on busses and cars. So when I arrived at the bus pick up spot for Chome the Lorry was sitting and waiting, and after talking to some of the villagers I found out that although the bus was coming it was already full and that meant that even though more people would squish on, the 100 or so people all trying to get to Chome would have to figure something else out. So, everyone started putting their belongings into the back of the truck bed that was already stacked up with a few thousand pounds of rice, corn, and different flours. I climbed out the side of the truck with a  friend of mine because the back of the truck was a mob of people pushing each other to get a foot up on the truck. As I said before the truck is something like 20 feet by 8 feet, if not a little smaller, has metal sides that rise about 2 feet from the base of the bed, and then there are crisscrossing bars that rise up another 5 feet from the base. Stretching across the top of the sides are four cross bars, and there is one bar that cuts down the middle of the cross bars acting as a sort of spine. At first glance all seems well and good. And as about 70-80 people got on the lorry it seemed like they were going to all hold. There were sort of two layers of people after the dust had settled. There was a layer of people sitting like sardines on the floor with the bags of starches, and then there were the people hanging out to the bars on the top level. I was up against on of the walls so I shifted up and sat on the side of one of the walls dangling my feet on the people on the bottom level. It was pretty impressive the number of people on this thing. I would say that with the amount of food and other goods, maximum 20 or 25 people should have fit on that truck. They managed a solid three times that. We took off up the mountain. All seemed fine for the first hour and a half as we were not going on terrible roads and had not started the ascend, but once we started to climb, things started to fall apart… quite literally. Starting in the back the first cross bar completely snapped due to the immense amount of weight put on it from hanging and sitting people. The loss of that one bar was devastating for the outer metal shell as a whole, and piece by piece it fell apart until there were no longer any cross bars at all. With the lack of cross bars, the already packed sardine bottom layer got that much more crowded pushing on the sides of the bus more than before. And without the support from the cross bars, the sides of the truck too could not hole. So first just a section on the back right side, then the entire right wall fell off. Mind you were are on cliff side with no more than a foot between wheel and 1000-foot roll down the mountain to the base. Not safe haha. Anyways, with the wall gone everyone has to sort of hold on to each other so we don’t lose any good villagers. But all the holding has anchored on the last remaining wall, which shortly after the cliffside broke off, wall number two went also. Just about at the same time the engine decided it was carrying far to much weight and the truck stopped altogether. So I decided to grab my bag and take off walking, as it seemed pretty likely I would be tossed off the cliff if I elected to stay anyways. I got home in a few hours, and the truck arrived a few hours after me looking rather defeated.

One last truck story I guess since I’m already talking about them. Down the mountain after the holidays, same problem, too many people now trying to get out of Chome…so this time I decide to go with the up front position. My feet were on the hood of the truck and my butt was on the first crossbar. This was the only crossbar that did not break so I decided even though I was putting myself a position similar to riding a roller coaster without any sort of harness, it was better than sitting in the sardine pit, especially because it was still pitch black. I made it down, no broken bars, no broken bones, just two extremely sore butt cheeks along with about 1000 bugs in and around my face.


All and all here are the recaps of my rides up and down the mountain:

                Eyeball smashed on my headmasters head, and broken glass in my lap
                Harmonized singing, and a seat- best ride yet by far
                Standing for 3 hours on thousands of heads of cabbage
                Standing amongst far too many people returning to Chome, and getting thrown up on shortly after starting the hour and a half accent. Made for sticky, smelly feet and Chacos
                Ride down in a nice mans car…made the mistake of holding a baby when an mother joined us, and two times in a row ended up with vomit on me. This time on my neck though, not in my Chaco…I’ll consider that a win for some reason.
                70 people, and far too much other junk in a lorry fit for maybe the junk it had in it plus a maximum of 20 people…all the poorly welded bars snapping one by one due to the force of to many hands pulling down on them, both walls of the lorry also snapping providing no barrier between people and massive cliffs, and then an engine breakdown leading to a few more hours stuck on the cliff side.
                On the hood. Rough times for my behind. My face was a human windshield, collecting far too many spattered bugs.