Not the best day in Africa.

Today was not a day that would make me exclaim, "I love Africa!"

Today was thoroughly and utterly gross.

Let's start with my morning visit to the kitchen. There, I found evidence that something else had visited the kitchen since I had washed the dishes the night before, but it had confused my drying rack with the bathroom. Guests can be so awkward sometimes. After swallowing down my stomach's response to the discovery, I washed away the evidence and went about my morning routine of eating fruit while cooking my dinner so I'd have something ready right after work (today: beans).

*knock knock thump scratch thump* Oh, my. My visitor was still in a drawer in the kitchen. A more considerate host would have opened the door – I mean, drawer – but I was, perhaps, less forgiving of my guest's (or guests') behavior than my quick return to routine had indicated. I did not want to have to look them in the eyes or, worse, shake hands to make up. I was quite happy to let them figure their own way out of the house, which they finally did via unseen means. Indeed, my reputation as a hostess can only be further tarnished by the fact that the welcome mat I put out for them afterward was no more than a piece of cardboard torn from a Wheetabix box and covered with a sticky glue that promises not to let any guests go away empty handed (or handed at all). I didn't let one mat suffice. While decking my kitchen with a second mat at another potential entrance, a Jurassic throwback of a roach came hurling out of the covered trashcan just by my face. The roach was so big that I thought it quite possible that it could have left the rat-sized turds and made the rat-sized noises in the kitchen that had been haunting me all morning.

Sigh. I figured that I would at least treat myself to a bowl of the Wheetabix I had opened for the occasion and drown it in some nice, cold milk – something that felt very much like a treat from home. I bet you are expecting to find out that the milk was lumpy yogurt or flavored with a hint of melamine. I would have made such a guess myself with that set-up. But I never got to the milk. Rather, I was greeted with more visitors. Or, considering that at least one whole generation of beetles had been raised in that box of cereal, I guess I was the unwelcome visitor. I apologized for my intrusion, put their whole housing duplex into a large resealable plastic bag, and returned them to their rightful home. The grocery store from which I had purchased their bustling abode apparently had a whole neighborhood of their friends on the shelf whom I am sure they missed since they were probably all related. The neighborhood was promptly bussed to the what I think counts as the inner-city for bugs. Despite the crowded high rises they will encounter there, I am sure they will find consolation in their proximity to innumerable close and distant relatives. As with every other hostessing taboo I had broken within the first hour of waking, I considered causing their eviction – from what was surely, at this point in their history, their ancient homeland – amongst the most venial of the sins I have committed in life.

All of that made the tiny ants that crawl up my legs and arms daily nothing but the most minor of nuisances since I am getting better at sensing them before they bite me. Not that they are any more welcome for it.

That bit of my morning routine not only took longer than usual, but notably fouled my mood. In the flurry of unexpected greetings and farewells, I forgot to fill the water tanks that supply my showers, so I had no water pressure when I tried to wash away the happenings of the morning. Since I needed to take an extra few minutes trying to rinse the shampoo out of my hair and soap off my body (which was not a complete success despite the extra time dedicated to it), I had less time to get ready and ended up running out to the car that would take me to work with unbrushed, undried – i.e., completely untamed – hair. I figured, "Hey, everyone wears scarves here. Why not try that out for size? Then no one will notice that I didn't do my hair." I was in a hurry. The "scarf" I grabbed wasn't a scarf. It was a new kanga. A new kanga is about 10x2 feet of stiff, smooth-as-silk fabric (old kangas are the same size but are not stiff anymore). For anyone who has tried to wrap a wet head in fabric, you know that 10 feet of unyielding satiny cloth is about as useful as that much paper wrapped around your head. I was less than thrilled, and had no time to make up for my mistake.

I tried to get some sympathy from Masoud, my driver, by telling him my bug story on the way to work. He laughed. "This is Africa, Chase. Africa." That is Masoud's answer to everything. And then he said, "You know, you should not try to wear kanga on your head. You should get a scarf. Only 2,000 shiringi." A note to Jess: Thank you for teaching me the value of cultivating an Evil Eye. It overcomes all potential language barriers.

My day at work was less than notable. So that is as much of a note as I will make on it.

What came after did, however, seem like an apt continuation of my morning saga. I am having friends over this week. First, my friend Sarah will come to sleepover so that she can easily take her son, Juma, to his school nearby while his dad uses their Vespa for work. Then, this weekend, a bunch of fellow SBIers (SBI = Social & Behavioral Interventions program at Hopkins) will join us, and finally (though temporarily) my house will be occupied by a more reasonable number of human beings, much improving the human-to-bug-eyed-intruder ratio. That explains why I had to go on a shopping binge today. This means purchasing vast amounts of pumpkins, bananas, tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots, coffee, coconut cream, flour, and toilet paper. Unlike in China, where one could choose to be protected from the thrilling/intimidating sights and sounds of the open-air marketplace by paying quadruple the price at an air-conditioned, Muzak'd supermarket, Zanzibar does not have enough demand to support an all-out supermarket. Not even one. One must either venture into the cacophony of the market, or pay someone else to do it on one's behalf.

So, off to the open-air market I went. I did, indeed, buy quite a few pumpkins (Masoud was impressed with my haggling skillz, considering I did not have the benefit of Swahili or the pretense of not having enough money to pay higher prices). But, in the midst of my fruit and veggie perusing, I was subject to other sights and smells, too. Do remember waaaaay back when, in China, I was blown away by markets full of live chickens, ducks, fish, eels, crabs, ... and the first picture I took was of a cow's heart sitting out in the open on a chopping block? And how I couldn't believe that vendors would take make a makeshift bed out of such chopping blocks by simply laying a big piece or two of cardboard over them and then taking naps there in the middle of the day? Well, people don't take naps at the market in the afternoon, so no repeats of that story. But they do carry nearly whole cow skeletons (with trace amounts of meat hanging off of them) with their bare hands directly on their backs from the butchers' market, through the crowded streets, to dump said carcass into the public dumpster. Old women trudge the same path with large wheelbarrows full of cow horns and skins (with similar bits of raw beef still clinging to them), and the smells that waft from the meat quarter to the produce stands tell me that those cows walked themselves to the market this morning after a very filling and gas-inducing meal the night before. Masoud had parked his van near those dumpsters – though, in my excitement to shop, I had not noticed their contents or our propinquity before. As we left, having seen the deliveries being made to the dumpster from the meat market, I took a closer look at what the crows were getting so excited about. Blegh! Worse, I had skipped lunch and came to the market hoping with childishly exuberant anxiety to find a corn-on-the-cob vendor before heading home. And there he was, parked just under the shade of the dumpster, sharing far too many of the flies and much of the air with the dumpster for me to handle the sight without making another universally comprehensible look. I think it translates into English roughly as, "There is currently a surge of vomit being emitted into my mouth. If it were not for a profound fear of opening my mouth anywhere in this vicinity, you would have more tangible proof of that fact than just this look. And, no, thank you, I do not want any corn."