John's Birthday

Today, February 12, is John's birthday, the 8th or 9th he has celebrated in Africa.  Or, as he calculated, he has been in Africa for approximately 12% of his birthdays--and a much higher percent if one counts only his birthdays after 21. However, there isn't going to be much official celebration today, but tomorrow Fahdila plans to have a big Ramadan-like eating event in his honor.  All the students are invited, and they seem very excited about coming.  It will be fun to see how they interact with the little children.  I imagine that Amin and Marthad, the teenagers, will be too shy to mingle much.

During the night, it poured rain and the electricity went off.  Fortunately, with the rain, we have cooler temperatures, or we would have really been miserable without a fan for sleeping.  The students were scheduled to go on a field trip to a spice farm and some slave caves, but I decided to stay home just in case my stomach kept acting up.  Later, John called and said that because of the rain, the morning plans had been changed, and the students had actually visited two historical sites linked to former sultans.  The one place had big baths and other facilities for the sultan's 99 concubines, something which seemed to interest the students a great deal.

In one of the concubines' pools at the Maruhubi Palace

The rain let up a bit, so I took a daladala downtown to meet John, and then we connected with Megan and her husband, Joshua, and her sister, Melissa, for lunch at the hotel where they are now staying.  Josh and Melissa got here Sunday evening and will be around until next week, when they'll go on a short safari on the mainland.  Then, Melissa will fly back to the States, but Joshua will return to Zanzibar and travel to Arusha with us for a brief visit there as well.  They surprised John by ordering him a brownie with a dip of ice cream, and the waitress led us in "Happy Birthday."

John's birthday lunch.

The electricity was still off when we got back to the house.  Fahdila was here--on her way out again though--and said there had been power from 12:00 until 2:00, so we were hopeful that the lights, and most of all the fans would come on again soon.  At 5:00, they did!  I am never as excited about electricity as I am in Zanzibar.  Without it here, we melt; the house is very dark; and the water is quickly depleted.  In a house built to stay as cool as possible, there are no big, sunny windows, so if the power is off, I have to use a flashlight to find things in our room or the bathroom.  Also, our water supply is pumped up to large tank, and without power, the pump can't work, and we soon have no water.   In 2012, we lived for three days in semi-darkness, taking bucket baths and having our meals cooked over charcoal.  I didn't mind any of that, but I did mind the fanless night.

I don't know when Fahdila finally came home for the night.  We played with the children both before and after our pitiful supper of bread and fish soup.  Then, the dadas put the little ones to bed.  Since tomorrow night is the big special dinner, I imagine Fahdila will be here most of the day for the first time since Sunday.

John with children and dadas.