This week was an off week.  Nothing particularly bad happened; sometimes a dozen little frustrations just come together to tell you, “Nope, it’s not gonna be your finest.  You might as well go back to bed and start over next week.”

The big thing is just language-learning growing pains.  I took Spanish for five years, so I’m familiar with the ecstasy of feeling one day like everything is clicking and you’re finally making progress (“Haha, now I will understand what the market ladies are saying and can barter on my own!  No more paying a 150% markup on bananas for me!”) and then another day having it all crumble around you as you gape helplessly at the person spouting foreign sounds at you; as though furrowing your brow and staring hard enough will somehow activate the Babel fish in your ear and a pristine translation will pop into your brain.  But this process spread out over five years is quite different from the incredibly condensed process we’re undergoing here, a day-to-day roller-coaster of emotion where one goes from “TRIUMPH!  I am a Swahili prodigy!” to “Why am I such a failure at everything!?!?” in less than 12 hours.  This week has felt like one steady, long fall towards the latter.  But the thing about roller coasters is that the really big drop is usually followed by the best loop-de-loops of the ride, and so I’m hoping things will perk up soon.

I’ve had a few frustrations with my research process as well.  I’ve been a little under the weather, so I feel a bit behind in general.  I had been hoping to take a few days and travel to Ifakara just to touch base with people at my field site in person, but that hasn’t been possible yet.  I also am still struggling with getting through the research permit process, which requires more trips to Dar es Salaam than I had planned on.  I have been doing a lot of reading, catching up on current literature, etc.  But I can’t help feeling that I am not where I wanted to be at this point.

And while I am starting to really love it here, there are many little day-to-day things that, while not huge hardships, kind of wear on you after a bit.  No hot water.  Constant insect bites.   Power outages.  Lack of fitted sheets (sounds ridiculous to mention, I know, but you’d be surprised what you miss).  The bare fact is that daily life is just easier in the United States.  Not better, necessarily, but from an infrastructure and supplies perspective, definitely easier.  This week it actually was a bit more serious.  We had torrential rain for two days and a pipe broke, so mud was washed into the water system.  As a result, for several days now all that has come out of our faucets has been muddy water.  It’s finally starting to run a bit clearer, but as you can see from the picture, we have a little ways to go.

But enough negativity.  I realize how lucky I am to be here.  I’m just in a slump and I know I’ll be out of it again soon.  To that end, a couple of pictures of campus I haven’t posted yet!