chris and becka warner

Christina is my fellow English teacher and has become a great friend. She’s also from Southern California, and flew to Tanzania to staff this school before heading to Fuller Seminary next fall. She’s been keeping a great blog about her experiences in Africa; check it out here.

There are thousands of butchers, pharmacies and other assorted shops around town. Most shops look the same as the next; some are little more than shacks. The way that they make themselves known is by their hand-painted signs and store names. Every now and then, a shop stands out due to its interesting or unusual advertising. Like the butcher’s store with a large Chicago Bulls logo on the door (I imagine they only slaughter large, red, basket-ball-loving bulls). Near the bus station is the small but classy Princess Diana Shop, selling clothes and miscellaneous household items. I’ve even found my namesake: a seedy clothing store called Becca’s Fashions, perfect for buying short, skin-tight skirts. There are hundreds of “saloons” around the city where you can get your hair braided or straightened. My personal favorite sign is a chalk board outside a sport’s bar. It boasts “Chicken Bitings” and “Beef Bitings” as the specials of the day. Not too far from that restaurant is a t-shirt shop called Afreaka T-s.

The same principle applies to the dalla dallas. Each bus is decorated with eye-grabbing signs and pictures, which always makes walking through the bus station an entertaining experience. It’s common to see “dripping” red letters boasting that, “This car is protected by the blood of Jesus.” (They often put a second “insurance” sticker next to the registration, on left side of the windshield, which says something like, “This car is insured by the blood of Jesus.”) There are buses with a variety of one liners like, “Disillusionment”,”Bob Marley”, “Uprising” and “Spiderman”. Chris and I discovered a new one in town today. On the back window was a large painting of Haile Selassie (the former Emperor of Ethiopia) sitting on a throne. To his left was a large marijuana leaf and below his feet was the word, “Responsibility.” Marijuana is a popular design theme.

We both agree that the 50 Cent bus takes the prize for creativity. The rap artist’s name is painted nicely on the rear window and windshield. The rest of the bus is devoted to larger-than-life airbrush artwork of 50 Cent in various gangsta poses. The bus rolls slowly down the road, blasting ear-splitting rap music.

Chris and I have been thinking a lot about this coming December, and looking forward to that time of the year more than usual. That’s because somewhere around December 15^th we are making the huge jump from being just a married couple to becoming parents! We’re expecting! We’ll post another update soon about our plans, but for now we just wanted to share the exciting news with everyone!

Ok, so it’s not that funny, but for the first time one of my students attempted a joke in English. They were given an English-speaking partner to practice with. They also received a small box of tea to give to their partner as a thank you gift. One of the students raised his hand to ask a question. He wanted to know, “What if my partner takes the tea but wants to know where the sugar is?” The entire class laughed (I guess it is kind of funny if you know how much sugar Tanzanians put in their tea-sometimes four or five spoons!).