Erasmus's fam

Habari,

Phrase of the day- shinboni

First, we feel compelled to reply to some controversial comments. NO, we do not sleep together. We have bunk beds. Secondly, F U Jingbo for insulting my writing(from Ryan). Anyways... Yesterday we embarked on an epic journey to see Erasmus' extended family. They live around 30 km from Moshi and it took several interesting means of transportation to get there. After taking a dala-dala from Moshi, we arrived somewhere close to the base of Mt. Kilimanjaro. Ryan(I) then embraced his mexican roots and boarded a 1954 pick-up truck along with 15 other people. We then proceeded to drive up the roughest dirt road we have ever encountered. After being thrashed about for around 7 km, we arrived at a remote village and had to walk an additional 3-4 km on foot. The people of this village usually speak their matadan(tribal language), so Erasmus taught us how to say hello(shinboni). Many people laughed at us when we tried to greet them in their matadan. It is even rarer to find a muzungoo(white person) in the village so we got even more stares than usual. Also, all of the women in town carry incredible amounts of bananas on their heads. Erasmus's family was very nice, but only his two brothers were able to speak English. Since bananas are THE main food in the village, they make a local brew called bege, which is a mix of fermented bananas and ground millet. It has a INTERESTING taste of decomposing bananas. Later we sat around with Erasmus's brothers and drank some beers and talked about the political and economic situation in Zimbabwe, where Erasmus's younger brother was studying philosophy. The rate of inflation in Zimbabwe is 2300%. One US dollar is worth roughly 230,000 of their currency. Lunch was, you guessed it, bananas! Before we left, we took a picture of the family(above) that includes Erasmus' parents and 2 of his 8 siblings. On the way down the mountain, we volunteered to ride in the back of another pick up. It was like riding a BMX track. The views were spectacular. It was dusk and you could see an unbelievable view of the surrounding country. We went down the mountain very quickly and almost flew out a couple of times. "It was a surreal experience"(Andy's words). "It was super cool!!"(Ryan's words). We have also added a picture of the infamous dala-dala so that you can see what 25 human beings can squeeze into.

Kwaheri

Andy and Ryan