stressed

Tomorrow is the big day, both for us--we're driving to San Francisco then flying to LA then Chicago then London then Dar-es-Salaam then Pemba--and for Justin's mom Vicki--she gets her pathology report from the specialist. Hopefully, she'll have those results before we actually get on the first airplane, so we can hear about it before our marathon trip.

It's been pretty stressful here, what with trying to pack



and get all our medications and immunizations, move out of our rooms that have been home for the past 10 months, as well spend as much time as possible with Vicki.



Poor Juma has been a little neglected, but he doesn't feel it much because when we are so busy, he gets to watch extra Jimmy Neutron and The Backyardigans. We also give him lots of extra hugs.



We've also invited Justin's brother's family over a lot, to spend time with them too, before we go. Which means extra cooking, but that's cool, because Justin and I have discovered we love cooking together. (The dishes, not so much.)

Today's the day to go shopping for all the last minute things, like cheap jewelry for gifts; packets of oatmeal for Juma's breakfasts; ziplock bags for all sorts of purposes; earplugs to block out the 4:30am calls to prayer from the next-door mosque; and photo printer ink so we can give friends copies of the photos we take (there is no place to develop digital photos in Pemba, and no one owns a camera).

The next blog post will likely be from Pemba!

dramatic

I had this plan, see. When we were planning on going to Tanzania for a year, I wanted to shave my head.

It's cool, it's easy, and since I cover my head with a veil while in Zanzibar, it doesn't much matter what it looks like.

Yes, shave my head.

No, not like Britney Spears. I thought of it first. And once she did that, it turned my mind against it.

But there was still the problem of hair. You see, hair is not a good thing in Tanzania for me. The shower water 1) is freezing cold and 2) comes out in a tiny trickle. So it takes 20 minutes to get all my hair wet, even when it's only above my shoulders, and then another 20 minutes to rinse the shampoo out. (And do you know how hard it is to find shampoo for my hair type in Africa?) Forget about conditioner. By the time I get it washed, I am chilled to the bone. It's so difficult that I only washed it every few days. So when I did wash it, it was nasty, which only made it harder to wash.

And that's in the places where we had running water. I'm not even going to get started on the bucket hair washing.

Anyway, things didn't work out for the year-long trip, but we are making a month-long trip, so I still had to tackle the hair problem. Justin and Juma have it easy; we just shaved their heads to 1/8 to 1/4 inch long, and they are good to go.

So I got up the guts and drove to a hair salon, a printed out picture of a hair cut I had in mind. A very short hair cut.

After much protest and worry and fixing and "Are you sure?"s from the hair stylist, I escaped with a decent hair cut. This is the first time I've cut my hair above my jaw line.

The first person I saw at home was Juma. His response was, "Mom! You look weird!" That didn't do much to inspire confidence, but the rest of the family assures me the cut is great.

It's growing on me.

bad news

Well, it's been pretty hectic and stressful here lately. Justin's mom, Vicki, has been sick for over a month now, and we found out last week that she has cancer. It isn't really clear yet what type she has, but we know she's going to need chemotherapy and radiation to follow up from last week's surgery.

She was in the hospital for a week, and had family and friends there to help her out. Since Monday she's been home, and we've been helping out, along with Justin's sister Andria. When the pain medications are actually working, Vicki feels pretty good and we've been spending as much time with her as possible (before we head to Zanzibar in a week).

Some people have been asking how Juma is doing with all this. Basically, he knows Grandma is sick, and he could tell you how cancer means "cells aren't listening to their DNA and are just making more and more without stopping," but he is fairly clueless about it, really.

Thank you for the well wishes, thoughts, flowers, texts, and support that have come this way. Vicki really appreciates the prayers, and knowing she has people who are thinking of her.

juma's fake birthday

Saturday, we celebrated Juma's "fake birthday," so he could have one during his school year. He had a lot of fun, and declared that today "was a really good day." He chose to have his party at the local nickel arcade (and he spent all his nickels on shooting games...ugh).

He insisted on having a Star Wars theme, so we headed to the party store a couple weeks ago to find the supplies. We saw Dora the Explorer, Shrek, Sponge Bob, Disney Princesses, Cars, and Speed Racer, but no Star Wars. And Juma wouldn't budge. So we tried Target...still no luck. And still Juma wouldn't budge.

It was Star Wars and that's final.

Thank goodness for the internet. When shopping for Star Wars party supplies online, we saw a Darth Vader pinata. Juma insisted we get it.

"You want a pinata? At the nickel arcade?" I asked.

"Mom," he said, like he was explaining things to a two-year old. "Who has a party without a pinata?!?!"

Like, duh.

Never mind that I've had 28 birthdays and never a pinata.

But he is my only child, so of course he won. We got the Darth Vader pinata. The kids promptly destroyed it.



Unfortunately, we couldn't get a Star Wars cake, so he picked Hot Wheels instead.



And it turned out all his presents were either Star Wars or Hot Wheels. Five-year olds are so easy to shop for.

crazy

I've had lots of ideas of things to write about, but things have been rather crazy. Justin's mom had surgery on Monday, and we've been back and forth from the hospital two hours away to help take care of her. She's recovering nicely, and has family with her to make sure she's getting everything she needs. She will be back home in a couple days.

Other than that, Justin and I have been both substitute teaching around town, and I've been teaching drum line to middle school kids. Juma's been rocking the house in school, and the weather reached over 100 degrees today. Tomorrow we are having an early birthday party for Juma. (He calls it his "pretend birthday" or "fake birthday.") Because his birthday is in the summer, we've never been able to have a school-friend birthday (and, in fact, he's never had a birthday party at home--we've always been traveling). We thought we'd make up for it this year by throwing a regular old birthday party where he invites his cousins and friends and no one speaks Swahili the whole time.

skirt

Justin went clothes shopping with me and we decided a casual, knee-length skirt might look cute on me. We selected one and I wore it. Justin had taken Juma to school in the morning, so when I picked up Juma after lunch, he saw me for the first time in the skirt.

Now, Juma's seen me in dresses and skirts plenty of times, especially in Tanzania (though when I dress up, I usually wear slacks, not dresses--I've always been something of a tom boy). But it's been almost two years since we were in Tanzania last, and for a five-year-old, memories from two years ago are hazy at best.

So when I picked him up from school, he stared at me and looked uncomfortable and confused.

"Hey, buddy," I said, "how was school?"

"Good," he answered, his usual uninformative reply.

"What's wrong?" I asked, probing for his reaction to my clothes.

"What--why--why are you wearing that?" he said.

"What do you mean? This?" I asked, pointing at my skirt.

"Yeah. What--that--why--what is that called?" he replied, confused.

I laughed, realizing he didn't even have a word in his vocabulary to describe my outfit.

"It's a skirt. It's called a skirt."

"Why are you wearing it?" he asked.

"Well, Baba thought it would be cute, and so did I, so I bought it. Don't you like it?"

"Um...I just want you to wear normal clothes," he answered.

"Ah, don't you think it's cute? Baba said it's really cute on me."

"Just...just wear...normal stuff," he advised.

I smiled and assured him I'd wear pants or shorts the next day. But I also bought a cute summer dress. We'll see how he reacts to that.

mmmhhhhffffmmm

Juma: calling out from bed Mom? Are you still down here?

Sarah: calling back from bed Mmmmm-hmmmm.

Juma: What?

Sarah: Mmmmm-hmmmm.

Juma: You are here?

Sarah: Mmmmm-hmmmm.

Juma: You're not here?

Sarah: Mmmmm-mmmmm-mmmmm.

Juma: What?

Sarah: Mmmmm-fffff-mmmmm-hhmmmm.

Juma: Mom, I can't understand you.

Sarah: Hmmmm-hmmmmm.

Juma: Do you have your teeth whitening thing in?

Sarah: Mmmm-hmmm.

Juma: You do?

Sarah: Mmmm-hmmm.

Juma: What?

Sarah: laughing Mmmmmm.

Juma: Mom, I just can't understand you.

Sarah: Mmmmm-mmmmmm.

Juma: I'm just going to go to sleep now.

Sarah: Mmmmmm-mmmmm. Mmmmmm-mmmmm!

Juma: Good night.

Sarah: M-mmmm-mmm.

deep fried asparagus

Living in the Central Valley--the fruit basket of America--we have access to all sorts of fresh and local fruits, veggies, and nuts. We decided to celebrate with a central California town, Stockton, (which most recently made the news as the foreclosure capital of the US, unfortunately) during their annual Asparagus Festival.

It was just too weird to pass up.

On the way north, we stopped in Modesto to see a minor league baseball team, the Nuts. Why the Nuts? Blue Diamond is based in Modesto, and it seems you can't drive 5 miles through the valley without seeing an almond orchard.

But the weather was so terribly 90-degrees-hot and shade-less there that we hid in the shade near a concession stand behind the stadium and ate a giant snow cone. Then we were off to the Asparagus Festival.



We hoped that at an Asparagus Festival, we'd be able to buy some fresh asparagus to take home to cook. But, alas, no. Our asparagus food options were asparagus-margaritas (um, no), asparagus burritos (um, yuck), and deep fried asparagus. The deep fried stuff looked too heavy and greasy for such a hot day, but we had some tickets left at the end of the day, so we went for it. Let's just say we are thankful that's something we never have to try again in our lives.

Besides eating mediocre food, we also put Juma on a pony ride



cooled off in a sprinkler



and tried to stay hydrated.



Yes, it is that hot in the valley in late April.

justin's birthday

In April, we celebrated Justin's birthday. He decided he wanted to go to a miniature golf place that also had laser tag, go-carts, an arcade, batting cages, and a playground. Juma fell in love with the place, and we had a lot of fun too.



It was great to do something with just the three of us (and we've been doing a lot more of that since then, too), but we also had a extended family birthday party the next day.



We cooked enchiladas and chile verde with a recipe we'd never tried before; it turned out great. I also made a "birthday cake" of apple-raspberry crisp, and the whole Merced clan turned out to sing.