More Firsts

After over three years in Tanzania, we continue to have firsts here.  A few weeks ago, after Harper had her vaccinations, we took her to the village for the first time.  We thought that since she has such a laid back personality it would be an easy trip.  It's funny how you think things.  Harper did not seem to enjoy the village all that much.  She's more of a homebody than Baylor, who would rather be just about anywhere other than at our house.  Fortunately, she slept a lot, because she was crying pretty much the whole time she was awake.  Baylor, on the other hand, chased goats and chickens, helped carry the dried corn into the corn shed, and ate massive amounts of rice happily.  Hopefully Harper will learn to love our excursions.

A couple of weeks ago I was so fortunate as to have gotten worms for the first time.  Isn't it wonderful that after all this time I've finally gotten to experience them?  Coincidence that I got them after my first trip back to the village since before Harper was born?  Perhaps.  In any case, I'm glad for pharmacies.

And for the first time while driving at night we nearly ran over a man lying motionless in the middle of the road.  We were driving home from the Groens' house and Brett spotted him ahead of us, just down at the end of our street.  Brett took me and the girls home, picked up Oscar, our night guard, and went back to investigate.  We figured one of four things could be happening here. 1) He was very sick or injured. 2) He was dead. 3) He was drunk. 4) He was pretending to be sick so that when a passerby stopped to help he could rob him.  They approached cautiously and when he didn't jump up and hit them, they crossed number four off the list.  They could see that he was breathing so number two was gone.  They tried to wake him up but he was totally out.  They sniffed him but couldn't smell alcohol so they decided he must be sick.  They picked him up and put him in the truck and started to make their way to the hospital.  A few minutes later they hear "Wali!" (Rice!)  The man did not seem overly concerned that he was in a car going down the road with strangers.  He told them he didn't want to go to the hospital; that he was just hungry and that he had passed out because of that.  What can you do? So they took him to town and dropped him off to get something to eat.  He did not care for their company, so they came back up to the house.  It was altogether unusual.  What I find humorous was that our friend T was visiting from the States and this was his first night in Geita.  Brett said he was tempted to pretend that this was a normal, everyday  occurrence, but was really too surprised to do so.

Life is always full of interesting firsts.