Weekend: Lights out, Party on!

Our view of Kilimanjaro every morning.
This shot is from our porch.

Friday at the hospital was nothing special. Thelma didn't pass out on the toilet, so it was a fairly normal. We went to some lectures on research projects and watched a Choledocoduodenostomy - the removal of the gall bladder, ducts, and portion of the duodenum. After they open the lady for surgery, there were too many varices from the portal hypertension to continue with the procedure. They did not have enough extra blood to risk the procedure. So they just took a liver biopsy and closed her up. That brings me to another point. KCMC has a CT machine, but it is broken and the company says that it is too old to repair, so now they have to do exploratory surgery for everything. Cases like the one we saw Friday would have never happened if they had a functional CT machine. TIA!

(Thelma talking now...)

Friday afternoon is where it all began.  We got done with Surgery after lunch (which will always be the case), and sam decided to come over to drink beers on the porch.  The girls in the house had the day off, so just as he arrived Martine and Marte were going to the shop to pick up a few things.  They asked if I wanted anything, and I said maybe some alcohol.  This is when Martine told me about "konyagi".  Apparently it is a staple around here.  So I said - sure, why not?!?  They got back, gave me the bottle.  It looks like something taken off of a bomb shelter shelf from the 50's.  The ingredients are "fine-spirit, konyagi flavour, and de-ionized water".  Great.  So what they heck right?  I mixed it with some crystal light fruit punch and it was fantastic.  A few hours and half the bottle later I was told that you never know what the strength of the konyagi is.  That it could be anywhere from 20 - 60 percent alcohol.  Pretty sure mine was the 60%. 

So dinner time finally hits, sam leaves, and all of us decide to make some dinner at home.  This consisted of anything we could find in the cupboards.  So tuna salad, tomatoes, avocados, some nasty Norwegian fish stuff, hot dogs, and beans and toast.  It actually was quite lovely.  That was up until my second bite when we were all of a sudden cast into a world of darkness.  Power's out.  Wonderful!  We found some candles, Martine stole my headlamp, and we ate a romantic dinner for 7.  We made it out to the porch, put on some music, and just enjoyed each other's company.  Then at midnight...Glaciers.

Our driveway

Our house

Our porch

Dining room

Our smaller batherrom

The hall

Our bedroom

The other have of the kitchen

One half of the kitchen

All 11 of us squeezed into a cab fit for 7 and off we went.  Apparently "everyone" goes to Glaciers on Friday nights.  By "everyone" I mean half the town of Moshi and all of the students.  It is an outdoor club with tree houses, dance floor, and the worst bar service imaginable.  We danced, sat, talked, siri layed in the grass at one point, and had a great time.  So 3 am - where to next you ask?  A club with a cover charge of course!  Yeah - you heard that right.  A cover charge?  In africa?  What the heck?  Anyways, it was acutally quite nice with several levels, a pool table section with bus seats, dance floor, bar, etc.  We stayed there until about 4:30 am and then took a taxi back home.  Again.  Squeezing to fit, but just making it work.  Sleep came quite quickly.

Saturday morning I woke up at 10 only to see Louise passed out in his bed with his feet hanging out of his mosquito net.  I went to the kitchen to get some water and found all of the girls awake - looking like they didn't have an extremely late night out.  So annoying.  This was until I really got a good look at Siri.  It took a double take to really realize that here eyes were nearly swollen shut!  Remember how she layed in the grass? - that one mistake led to an allergic reaction of her eyes.  Anyways, they were all getting ready to head off to the Impala Hotel to go to the pool, which is only a short walk away.  I told them that I would go try to wake Louise and we would be on our way shortly.  Well.  Getting him to wake up was one thing, but the 'short' walk was another.  It was hot as hell, no wind, with the sun blaring down.  We started off walking, I was sure I knew the way.  Not. The. Case.  We ended up walking over 2 miles.  Only knew we had gone too far when we had made our way back to Glaciers.  So I called Siri - she told us how to get there, and we soon made it over another mile back to finally get to the hotel.  We had some lunch, got in the pool, lounged around, and walked back to the house.  This time, we were also shown a short cut, so yeah - it really is only a short walk. 

Saturday evening was pretty low key.  We ordered in some Chinese and watched Inception.

Louise again...

Sunday was very relaxing. It thundered and thundered, but never a drop of rain. We spent most of the day reading and went to El Rancho for dinner and had some pretty decent Indian food.