Crazy prep for Septemberfest:

Today was full of crazy-ness. I’m up super late typing emails and trying to pack for September Fest. Spent the day hanging out with Jess and Steve. Got Steve’s bike fixed, barely. Tanzanian bike fundis don’t always (ever) admit to not being able to do something, and often substitute force for the right tool and patience. The hammer is quite literally used in almost every job. So we’re trying to get Steve’s cranks off, since the pedals stripped out. The fundi has a tool (amazingly enough, the correct one) and starts to thread it on. It starts to stick so, of course, out comes the hammer.
He reefs on this poor crank and pops out of the threads twice before I take a closer look at his tool and the crank threads: his tool is completely stripped, threads rounded over completely; the crank threads are now shot as well. I ask him if he knows his tool is completely and utterly broken, and he seems to think he just wasn’t using enough force. So with Don’s help, we convince him to use a new tool, which we naturally have to buy. 8,000 isn’t too bad, so we get the tool, and he gets going again but quickly drops it in the sand. He picks it up with sand coating the threads and starts to put it back on the bike. I’m stop him and ask him if he knows that the sand will strip out the threads and ruin the tool - he is oblivious. I as if he has a toothbrush to clean the tool off, nope, so 300 shillings later, we have bought a toothbrush to clean his new tool. It goes back on, and as soon as it’s tight, he wants to get out the hammer again and wail on it. I stop him and tell him it’s tight enough. Sure enough, the crank popped right off. It even worked on the stripped side, but we were basically re-cutting the threads.
All in all, about an hour later Steve had new cranks and pedals on his bike, and in the mean time, I bought a new panga and jembe for my garden and had them sharpened.

Later in the early afternoon, Jess came into town, and we had lunch with her, then when shopping, Her phone was broken again, so we swapped it out at Aziz’s, no problem, and he ordered a new one for her right then and there. Those guys rock. On the way back at my house Jess attempted to get a handlebar lifti on my bike. Shocks and loose sand made it pretty difficult, and it didn’t help that we were laughing so hard that we could barely stand. I launched her off 3 or 4 times. It was a spectacle for the Tanzanians for sure. We hung out for a while at my house, then I decided I wanted to have my hair cut before September Fest. Seeing as I have a tradition of stupid hair and beard to hold up, I decided to go with a Mohawk and chinstrap-fu man chu beard combo. Jess got to work and started to shave my head, but she got a bit carried away and Ms Van Goh took off a piece of my ear. Not just a cut. A visible chunk is missing. She attempted to balance out the other ear, but I stopped her and assured her it was ok. We went back over to Jens for dinner, and Steve and I cooked peanut sauce again. It was good. Jess is not to be allowed to touch sharp objects around me for the immediate future.