Last night I dreamt of Africa.

When I was 14 years old, I spent four months in Tanzania. Mom was doing business over there and wanted Terry and I to come with. We rented a house located smack-dab in the center of Dar es Salaam. It was an all marble, three bedroom home with two bathrooms, a spacious kitchen, a dining and living room, and a small house out back for the houseboy, driver and gardener to sleep in when they were doing work. Honestly, typing the word houseboy makes me feel awful, but when I first met him, this 35 year old man introduced himself, saying "Jambo ma'am. I am John, your houseboy." I refused to let him clean my room and felt awful about the whole thing. He had a son - a little boy with few friends - and when his father wasn't around, Terry and I would have him hang out with us to watch television, eat Snickers candy bars and drink soda pop.

The walls around the house were about fifteen feet tall, with broken Coca-Cola bottles covering their top surface. Boniface, the gardener, would maintain this collection of glass shards. "For safety," he'd say. He cut the lawn with a scythe and checked the grounds for snakes every day. One morning, he came to the house to notify us that a snake had been found... an extremely poisonous one... and it was loose. We were restricted to the confines of the house for a few days until Boniface found it. It had bitten him, he killed it, and he'd sucked the poison from his own arm. We didn't find out about the bite until weeks after he told us the snake had been taken care of. Also, one day, he didn't come to work. I worried, then found out later that his wife had died. He remarried the next day. This is just the kind of man Boniface was.

One day, we were told we'd be going on a safari. My mother had ties with some foreign diplomats through her international finance work, mostly French. So we accompanied a group of them to Mikumi National Park. This was around month three of my stay in Africa, and I'd been getting increasingly homesick for Green Bay. Sounds weird, huh? I was a jaded fourteen year old. Anyway, my nerves were increasingly frazzled, and my heart heavy for friends and family back home. Mom had somehow procured me a box of Cocoa Puffs from a commissary and I placed added importance to this otherwise worthless box of cereal because it was a taste of America. I set it on a table at our campsite and went to climb trees with Terry. Out of the corner of my eye, I see a flash. It was a baboon who had been waiting, waiting, so patiently waiting to get his hands on my Cocoa Puffs. He ran up a tree, and almost teasingly, stared at me as he reached in the box and shoved a handful of the cereal in his mouth. It was the straw that broke the camel's back. In my fragile, emotional state, I started sobbing. An Egyptian diplomat drew a gun and pointed it at the baboon, who was now guarding this box from another baboon. I cried harder at the sight of the gun, my mother grabbed me close, and the man was coaxed to put it away by the others. The rest of the day, everyone was quiet, processing the sheer intensity of the event.

I have other random memories of Tanzania. The children that would come give Terry and me high-fives when we'd walk down the street to buy tangerines and lychees. The man preaching Islam on his soap box in the public market. The Islam calls to prayer multiple times a day when a siren in the middle of the city would go off. John killing chickens in the backyard for dinner - due to this I stopped eating meat. The white beaches and rising and receding tides, accompanied with painful sunburns. The Muslim girls in their burqas giggling at the "naked" sight of me wearing shorts and tank tops - I should have known better and done my research beforehand. Sleeping under a net every night and the little prevention it gave for the mosquitos. The yellow tinge my skin attained as a side-effect from the malaria prevention pills. The sunsets. The sunrises.


I want to go back.

Cabin Fever and the Birth of a Blog

Ooh la la! Look what somebody made for dinner! I actually cooked! The past few weeks I've been unbelievably lazy with my cuisine, ordering in, going out. So, the fact that I actually grilled a pork tenderloin is pretty impressive, even if only to me.

I'm on day four of recovery for my ankle sprain that has been annoyingly debilitating. The lack of physical activity has affected my sleep and eating patterns as well. I can't sleep, and hardly want to eat. I'm just not doing enough to make me tired or hungry. Dad came to visit me on Memorial Day and the plan was to go to Bratfest, but he advised that it wouldn't be the best idea to go walking around huge fairgrounds with an ankle the size of a baseball. He was right. I finally realized what it would be like to have cankles. I also have massive bruises on my knees. I contemplated taking pictures of them, but they're that disgusting that I don't have the heart to show them off. At least, not in the same post as pictures of dinner. It would turn you off to pork tenderloin forever, though, I'll admit that my knees don't look much different than the tenderloin. Damn, I'm sorry, I did it. I haven't worked since Sunday, which kills me, since I like being busy, and I've had nothing to do. So I picked up a shift for Saturday night, which should help me out quite a bit. At this point, I don't care if this ankle hurts anymore. I'm going stir-crazy and I'll put up with a limp if it gets me out of the house and moving again.

It might sound weird that this is affecting me so much, but I never get hurt. *knock on wood* I've never broken a bone. *knock on wood* I've needed stitches only once in my life. *knock on wood* And I'm not much of a cruisin' for a bruisin' type of gal. So please, forgive me for being such a whiner.

Also, if you've never listened to Deleted Scenes, then do. They're a great band from DC and they're coming to Madison on June 30th. They actually came a couple months ago per my e-mail request. We stayed in contact and I recommended venues and other bands to play with. Sadly, I was sick the night they played at The Frequency! I heard it was a fantastic show and they got great local reviews. To my relief, they e-mailed me recently to let me know they were coming back. What nice boys.

Please allow me to introduce to you...

Megan Fox's awful roots.




I don't get it, celebrities. Here, I'll break it down for you, step-by-step:

1. Get your limo driver/masseuse/makeup artist (I know you've gotta consolidate, the economy's rough right now) to drive you to the salon.

2. Give them your money.

3. Have them fix your hair color.

You're a pretty girl, Megan. And talentless, too. So don't go screwing up what you've got going for ya.

Oink

So I'm hung over today after a fun night out with good friends and I'll take this time to do some blogginz. Even if I do feel half brain-dead. And it's a beautiful day out.And it hurt to brush my teeth, even.But I digress. So this swine flu is a big deal right now. I get it, it's the flu, not everyone recovers very quickly from this shit. However, how many people have died from the swine flu in comparison to heart attacks every day? Like we have to figure out how to cure this thing, yet people are still inhaling Hardee's ThickBurgers and giving themselves coronaries like it's their job. I also don't get why people are wearing surgical masks to escape this when half those people probably forget to use condoms. Only about 100 people are infected with swine flu, but over a million people have AIDS. CNN is totally beating this thing over the head. People are keeping track of the number of affected with this virus, but I've got some dick almost killing me on the freeway because he thinks it's an awesome idea to text on his cell phone while driving. I've got better things to worry about, folks.