An Unexpected Peer

When I went to Lushoto two weeks ago with the Kindergarten teacher we took along her 2.5 year old son, Tino. Mr. Tiny Tino wasn’t quite sure what to make of me at first, but we quickly became friends when his mom decided it would be better if he sat in my lap for the entire ride. After bonding over a few games and some food, Tino finally fell asleep in my lap…..much to the disappointment of my bladder. The trip was expected to be about 6 hours, and it was only hour 2 by the time I had to go.

We finally arrived in a town called Soni at the fork between touristy Lushoto and the rural mountain area of Bumbuli, where we had a 30 minute break before pressing further into the hills. I threw Tino over my shoulders and piggy-backed him off the bus with my hair all disheveled and my shirt completely messed up from being tugged on all morning.

When we stopped to buy some pears and potatoes at the local market, I put Tino down to take a second a readjust my clothes and fix my hair. I’m used to all eyes being on me, especially when I fiddle with my hair, so I thought the men chattering next to me were talking about just making comments about me. But when I looked down I saw that my little friend had decided that the ground right next to all the food was a great place to put some extra water. I didn’t know whether or not this was normal, or what exactly I was supposed to do, so I quickly got distracted looking off at something else and let his mom decide how to deal with it. She just laughed and we moved to another area where we could sit and rest for awhile.

At the new area Tino and I played a game about eating pieces of candy. He took an old plastic bag and started putting in all sorts of unwanted goodies lying in the street to use for his pretend game….which looked a lot more like Mr. Garbage Man to me than anything else. Anyway, it wasn’t even 5 more minutes before he was again peeing in the streets, this time in front of both his mother and me with absolutely no way to ignore him. Based on her reaction I guess it’s totally acceptable, but I haven’t seen too many boys peeing in the streets around Tanga.

The story gets more exciting, but part number two will have to remain unpublished.