Old McDonald Had a Shamba

This is Elena again. Shawna and Elle left on Saturday, and we miss them already! Hopefully they are recovering ok from the jet lag. Jake, Aleks and I are all still hurting from our trip over. I think Jake is pretty much there – he slept through the night until 6a. Aleks isn’t too far behind, with a 4:15a wake-up time today. And then there is me: 2:20a every night since we’ve been here. And I have found it pretty much impossible to get back to sleep – but that is probably due in large part to all the Tanzanian nocturnal noises! It’s funny how I can sleep straight through the sirens, car alarms and drunken street brawls back home….

Crickets – The ones outside aren’t so much of a problem. They actually make nice woodsy background noise – don’t they even make cds of that for city folk? The crickets inside the bedroom, on the other hand, are really hard to take. I finally cracked on the second night around 4:30a and went on a little hunt. The little sucker was hiding until the flooring. I got him.

Wild dogs – There must be a pack of at least 10 dogs in the ‘hood. And it sounds like they hang out right under our window. They barked for at least 2 hours straight in the middle of the night last night, interrupted only by intermittent fighting that sounded so violent that I half-expected to find a carcass or two in the yard or just outside the gate this morning.

Rooster – One of the neighbor’s has a rooster that must be suffering from jet lag too or something, because he starts cock-a-doodle-dooing around 3a – a good 3 hours before sunrise. And Mappy (the gardener) surprised the girls with two new pets today – another chicken and a rooster (bringing the fowl count in the Wood-Prince household up to 6)!!! I told Sarah not to be too surprised if the rooster mysteriously disappears….

Goat – A couple of neighbors have a goat or two. They produce the occasional “maaa”, and are actually quite cute.

Owls – Luckily these guys make most of their noise during the day (weird - aren't they nocturnal??). And the hooting is actually somewhat soothing….

Lizards – These are blissfully silent creatures! They are all over the place. And as Nell has found out on multiple occasions, they do bite. But then again I would too if I were them! In two separate and unrelated incidents, Nell has rendered a lizard tail-less (sorry, Hope). She says that it’s okay, because their tails are supposed to come off so they can escape predators. Hummmm….

[I actually wrote this Sunday or Monday, but because of power outages and the internet being down, we are just now posting it. I can appreciate why it takes so long to get stuff done here!]