House Staff

We have 2 guards and one replacement guard, a gardener/handyman, 2 cleaning/nanny people, and a cook that comes two to three times a week. This post is all about them.

The guards we have now are all really good, nice guys. The day guard is Osmond and we got him about a week after I got here. Before him we had a guy named Frankie but he seemed to have a problem showing up to work so he was taken off our house and was replaced. So far, I think Osmond is going to be great!

John is the night guard and he is also very nice and actually does his job. At night he walks around the house to make sure everything is ok and if Twiga is barking he will walk closer to where she is to make sure everything is ok. Even Aki likes him. The replacement guard changes between people so it really depends sometimes they seem really nice and other times they can be irritating.

The gardener/handyman is David and I really like him. He takes care of our different fruit trees and brings in the fruit when it is ripe, he feeds Tembo the goat and our chickens, and if we need help with something in the house he can almost always do it. On the occasion that he can’t fix it, he knows the people that can. My aunt said that at first he was very difficult but that as he has gotten used to the way she wants things done he has gotten a lot better. I think he is pretty cool and is really talented.

Then we have people that work in the house to help us out...Hope and Jenny. I'm not sure what to say about them, they are best friends and seem to have a hard time doing there respective work apart. For example if Hope is supposed to be watching Aki and Jenny is supposed to be doing the laundry, Hope will go outside with Aki so she and Jenny can talk. Of course that means they aren’t playing with Aki the way they should which is a problem. My Aunt gets upset about this sometimes. A few times they left Akira out on the patio by himself for an hour or so why they were cleaning and talking in the house. When my Aunt found out about this, she got very upset. Another example is that right now, as I'm writing this, they should be cleaning but they are in the living room talking. They are both nice and friendly but don’t do there job well. Sometimes, my Aunt gets really frustrated and says that she's going to fire one of them so that the other one will work...but she never actually does it. Sucker!!!

Finally we have the cook Gasper. Gasper has been my aunt’s cook every time she comes to live in Arusha so she has known him for years and has always spoken very highly of him. After eating his food I completely agree. Gasper is very friendly and really likes Aki and Aki really likes him. He comes for sure twice a week and on Saturday when my aunt asks him too. He technically works Saturdays but she tends to give him two Saturdays a month off. Over all I really like the staff here. Since I'm home all day with them, its nice that we all get along, and I never feel very lonely during the day....it's like a little village inside our compound. It's pretty nice!

My B-day Weekend

For my birthday my aunt took me up to the crater(it is a national reserve so it would be going on safari). So the weekend before my birthday we went up to this lodge called Gibbs Farm which is a farm/lodge that is just a little outside of the park. it is a two and a half hour drive to get there and we brought Aki. He didn't like the ride very much but we worked it all out. When we got to the lodge we decided to just relax a little because the drive had been a long one. The room we had was a nice sized room with a deck overlooking banana trees and other plants. The bathroom/shower area was very nice and there was a door that took you outside to a shower that was an out door one. Over all I really liked it. Once we had settled down in there and fed Aki we decided we would wait and go into the game park the next day on the way out so we spent about an hour or so just relaxing and reading until we decided to go and sit outside near the main building. From where we sat we could see over a large portion of the farm and noticed a path that led through the farm a little. After being there for a little and eating popcorn (that was nice because i had been wanting popcorn for a while) we decided to go for a walk on that trail. We only went for like 30 minutes but it was a very fun 30 minutes. (I like hiking) Once we got back to the room we fed Aki again then put him to bed and then headed out to dinner, leaving Twiga to babysit. I found that I liked the leek soup (who would guess that) and the fish was ok. When we where done we went back to the room and went to sleep after feeding Twiga. The next day we were getting ready to go to the park when we remembered why the plan had been to go to the park the day we got there...they don't let dogs into the parks and we had Twiga. So we decided that we would forgo the park so we went down for breakfast. I really liked breakfast, it had pineapple and cereal and other fruit that where really good. after breakfast we hopped in the car and where headed home. the drive back was better because Aki slept for parts so he cried less. Over all the weekend was a lot of fun and a great way to spend a birthday weekend.

Life as an expat - bbqs, brunches and booze

After being in Arusha for a while, you find that there are a lot of people going out a lot. I have been out with my aunt and her friends a few times, however I think one of my favorite things we have done with big groups is the BBQ we had at our house. Shamus, Richard, and I did the BBQ'ing while my Aunt and Gasper did the rest. That was the first group thing I did here. There was a lot of food and drinking, I liked the food a lot. My Aunt had the BBQ to celebrate a lot of occasions: me coming to live with her in Arusha, adopting Akira and my 18th Birthday.

I have also been to a brunch place here. It’s the same place we went to for my B-Day except that that time we had dinner. It's named Coffee Lodge and it has a really nice restaurant and lodge set on a coffee plantation. My aunt told me that there were monkeys that were there because of the free food they get so I had been really looking forward to going there. The food there was really good but getting to see the monkeys and the baby monkeys, I thought they were better. I really think that if this is how life is here I could really enjoy it, sadly that isn’t all there is to living here, that’s just the fun part.