will make you do the boogie dance. I have a thing for cemeteries. I know what you’re thinking, how did we go from boogying in ant-filled pants to graveyards, but trust me, it’ll all make sense after this story. it’s wednesday here, WEDNESDAY!! are we all registering the substantiality (is that really a word?) of this statement?! wednesday in arusha means in exactly one week we’ll be headed back to the states. wait, it’s too much to process, I don’t want to talk about it… back to the story:
post-hospital we headed to check something off of my to do list for the trip: visit a local cemetery. I think this is becoming a trend, that when I travel I need to find a local cemetery. yes, this is odd, I realize, but allow me to explain. rather than thinking of a graveyard in the literal sense of a place where many dead people are buried, I prefer to wrap my mind around all of the history that’s embodied in the grave stones and lives of the people buried there. it is interesting to contemplate. all of things accomplished and seen and experienced by these people, many who lived in a world so different than my own, so different than the world that exists today. yes, it may seem morbid to a lot of people out there, but I suggest looking at it from a different perspective and experiencing cemeteries as a place that holds so much history, endless secrets, things you can never know. awesome, right?
I was really excited to get to walk around the overgrown graveyard we had seen in passing several times when we ventured to the other side of town. amy, thu and kurt were all good sports and came along to make sure I didn’t get too lost, or kidnapped by ghosts or whatever. I was photographing one particularly ambiguous gravestone when I heard amy’s voice ‘uh, linds, there’s an ant crawling on your shoe.’ she said it so calmly that I stood up from my crouch and made to look at my shoe. when I glanced down, before my gaze made it to my shoe it fell upon a creeping, crawling, thick line of HUGE ANTS!! so many ants that I went into panic mode on the spot. not sure if ill be able to paint the appropriate picture here but imagine my scream, true terror scream, coupled with a really awesome ants-in-my-pants dance, stomping around and desperately asking the others if any ants were on me. nope, that description doesn’t do it justice, im going to have to reenact it when I get back. my stomping tribal, get-out-of-my-pants dance worked, and when amy and thu finally convinced me to stop moving so they could look for ants we only found one on the tip of my shoe. I had escaped the fiery death bite and successful shook all ants from my pants. took me a good 15 minutes to come down from the sympathetic response though… we had a pretty good laugh about my ridiculous reaction to amy’s calmly stated comment ‘lind, you have an ant on your shoe’. amy would also like to point out that I came over to dance next to her, snuggle with her as she says, as if it would help the situation. in hindsight I totally did do that, like being near her would make the ants run away or something, not exactly sure what logic was running through my head. fight or flight will make you do crazy things!
our afternoon consisted of finalizing safari plans (we’re so spoiled :) and shopping for mzungu safari companions at the maasai market. the more of us there are, the cheaper the safari is, so we thought the best place to look for willing mzungus was at our favorite souvenir shopping spot. unfortunately, pretty much everyone we creepily approached had already been on safari. regardless, we made some new friends and have some leads for potential safari companions. the worst is when you approach a mzungu to ask about safari and they say ‘im a lifer’ meaning that they live here always and find no thrill in safari because they’ve been on far too many and could probably safari for free if they wanted to. how embarrassing. gotta watch out for those lifers.
to fill our evening we did henna. kurt had found some henna at a local supermarket and we had been sketching potential designs all week. I set to work on his back last night with thu’s help. hours later he had a spinal column drawn down his back with massive wings fanning off out to his shoulders so that the feathers lifted when he lifted his arms. pretty sweet. I’ve decided if I ever change my mind about medschool I’ll pursue a career as a tattoo artist. there’s something very satisfying about decorating someone’s body. we drew all over our arms and stayed up way too late working on these henna masterpieces. however, we wouldn’t have been sleeping otherwise as a group of korean students is here and are way to noisy and obnoxious extremely late as well as early in the morning. no respect!! apparently kurt got up to ask them several times this morning between 5 and 6 a.m. if they could lower their voices and stop slamming doors, no concept of being courteous, they still kept us up from about 5:30 a.m. on…glad to see them go today.
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