In Mbeya
Spent the morning hours in the vodocom shop, trying to get the phone working. This has now become a mission. I could solve the problem by buying another simcard, a Tanzanian one. But, according to the latest huge advertisement campaign, my Ugandan simcard is supposed to work anywhere in East Africa. This includes Tanzania and Kenya. So, I'm staying in Mbeya until the phone works! I know that's a bit hot-headed, but I can be like that sometimes. So, spent the day in the office of my friend, the vodocom man, again.
In the evening, I went into the pub of the Royal Zambezi and started playing pool with the same people that I'd played with for the last 2 nights in a row. George showed up again. He hadn't been there last night.
I was now having a great time with George, and there was another man there with what appeared to be a very bored woman. The man was playing pool with me and George, and we were having a great time ... but the woman looked extremely bored. George and I occasionally gossiped about the two of them.
I asked George, "Do you think that's his wife?"
George said, "No. That's a girlfriend. The wife is at home." I agreed with George's analysis of the situation.
I said, "Yes, his wife is probably at home taking care of the 13 children."
George chuckled.
At some point in the evening, George and I had agreed to go off later to the oldies music and dance place. At some point, George also felt the need to let me know that he was 36 years old, 3 children, and divorced since "1998 ... no, wait ... 2002." I wasn't real sure how you could forget the year you were divorced, but let it go, because I didn't care that much.
It was at this point, however, that I decided to shock George by just going ahead and saying, "I'm having a nice time, chatting and playing with you and our friend over there with the 13 children, and his girlfriend. Going out to the Mbeya Hotel later sounds fun too. But maybe we can just set some ground rules, so that we don't have to think about them any more. At the end of the night, we are not sleeping together."
This shocked George no end, but he was happy to go ahead and discuss it for the next 45 minutes. I didn't think it needed 45 minutes of discussion, but that's o.k. Finally, around 11:00 p.m., the man with the 13 children at home lost his final game of pool (to me, I must add), bid his farewells, and he and his girlfriend left. About 5 minutes later, George and I left too, to go find a taxi. When we got out to the carpark, however, the man with the 13 children and the girlfriend drove up. He and George talked a bit, and the next thing you knew, all 4 of us had decided to go out together.
The man with the 13 children and wife at home, and George, being the men, were deciding where we should go. I kept piping in from the backseat, "Mbeya Hotel. The whole town will be there tonight. Oldies music." The girlfriend in the front seat was just sitting there quietly, like a proper woman. Finally, we ended up going to a place that was not the Mbeya Hotel. To placate me, however, George said that if this place wasn't good, we'd move on. (I'm making jokes about poor George, but he was actually quite nice and charming, and I later decided that the story about the divorced wife and the 3 kids, all in boarding schools, might even be true.)
So, we went in and it wasn't good. We could see that as soon as we walked in. There was a live band, but they were bad, and very few people were dancing. I wanted to walk right back out and go to Mbeya Hotel, the happening place for the night. By now, I even had the girlfriend on my side, though she wasn't too vocal about it. But when I'd mention "Mbeya Hotel", she'd look at me and nod and grin and say "uh-huh". But the men forced us to all sit down and have one-one. As long as we were sitting there, the girlfriend asked George if it was o.k. if she danced with me, to which George gave permission, so we danced a bit. Then, George and the man with the 13 children danced. So far, there was no male-female dancing, but that would come.
The men finally admitted that their place was a dud, so we went to ... Mbeya Hotel! We walked into Mbeya Hotel and right away I liked the music. The men sat us women down in the lounge outside of the dancing area, while they went in to make an advance mission to see if there were any tables or whether we wanted to stay. So, I tried chatting with the girlfriend, which was a bit tricky because she knows 6 words of English and I know 6 words of Swahili, and at least 2 of our words overlapped, giving us a grand total vocabulary of 8 words. However, we did find something to do. It's that bonding thing that women often like to do together. We went to the loo. Then, we bonded some more as we both walked into the loo and made grimacing faces at each other, as we tried not to touch any disgusting filth. In general, as the evening wore on, I was starting to like this woman, and she was becoming a bit more lively.
When we got back from the loo, the men were also there and they didn't think they liked the dance place very much. So, they said, "Why don't you two go in and see if you like it?" But when we tried to go in, we were stopped by the man selling tickets and he wouldn't let us pass. So we just came back. But it turns out that the man with the 13 children and wife at home was some muckedy-muck (or at least he thought he was, and quite a few people seemed to know him), so he said, "That's ridiculous." He took me by the hand and said, "Let's go dance," and he led me right past the man selling the tickets. The man selling tickets, however, followed us out onto the dance floor and had a lengthy discussion with the man with a wife and 13 children at home, about my lack of ticket. In the end, the man with the 13 children and wife won out, and the ticket seller retreated, and allowed us to dance.
The music was great, and guess what?! He was a great dancer ... and! He could dance the cha-cha! Couldn't believe it! A Tanzanian, dancing the bloody cha-cha! Embarrassed me slightly, since I can't dance the cha-cha. But I gave it a go and it's pretty easy, really, as long as you just do the basic steps and don't try anything fancy. I decided I was kind of liking this man-with-a-wife-and-13-children-at-home-who-was-now-shunning-his-girlfriend-to-dance-with-me.
But what about George and the girlfriend, who were out in the lounge area, because apparently George (who was also charming in his own sweet way) did not have enough clout to say "that's ridiculous" and lead anybody past the ticket seller? So, "the man" (for short) and I didn't dance all that long before coming back out to the lounge. Then, the music only lasted another 10-15 minutes before the evening was over at the Mbeya Hotel.
So, we all went out to the car and drove off to a place called "Mama"-something-or-other, a disco. I have a question. What is it with adolescent men that they think it is normal or cool, to dance around while holding their testicles? Many of the young ones out there on the dance floor were doing that, and this isn't the first time I've seen it. I've noticed it lately on music videos as well. What's with that? It's not cool. It looks idiotic. O.k., though, leave that one alone...
At the disco, we all danced a lot for several hours. Mainly me with George and the girlfriend with The Man, but we sometimes mixed it up a bit. Fortunately, sweet and charming George did no such thing as to dance while holding his testicles, and just danced nicely, like a gentleman. Also, do you want to hear some good news? I think it is *possible*, though I'm not quite sure, that George and I had our analysis
wrong. This woman might actually be the man's wife! At least, she said she was and so did he, and they apparently have 2 children, not 13. Here is a picture of the two of them dancing. If it is true that they really were husband and wife, well, then, I was started to like them more and more. Not that we weren't already having fun, but having fun and actually liking people are two different things.
Finally, at 4:00 a.m., The Man and his (girlfriend? wife?) dropped me and George off at the Royal Zambezi and they went home. They told me, however, that they would like me to come visit them in their home, which makes me think more and more that they might really be married.
I cannot remember the last time I was out till 4:00 a.m. I don't do that! But George and I walked up the steps to the reception and the receptionist (the same one who never gave me a t.v. remote control the other day) woke up and gave George his room key, and I already had my room key, and we went to our respective rooms to sleep. True to the plan (well, my plan, at least), we didn't sleep together.
to do, to get to Entebbe. I will stay here in Matugga this week and visit with my good friend, Nalongo. She is Annet's sister (Annet, who came visiting a couple of months ago, when we were in Arusha). Next Friday or Saturday, I'll ride the remaining distance to Entebbe, which I think is only about 70 or 75 km.
