Screening to protect against mosquitoes has recently been installed on all the windows of the classroom building and two out of three new doors have been constructed of board, netting, and screen, their wood sanded and varnished, and their cross bars angled into place, and they currently rest, propped and drying, against the frame of the craft shed out behind the clotheslines.

Abu and his compatriot—Olania’s two “fundis” or handymen—give me a daily update when I make my late afternoon rounds. I come to visit them when the light grows low and lovely and the temperature becomes remotely humane, sometime around 5 pm, with my body sticky but mellowed from having sung and danced with the girls at their afternoon prayer service. The new screens filter the light that pours into the classroom at this time of day, further softening it, and it is a pleasure to look on Abu’s work—a pleasure to think that these screens he is helping me build are something that I have contributed to the girls here at Olania.

That all being said, it has seemed an age to get these screens constructed and in place. Moreover, they seem to have presented no end of expense and hassle—from bobbing along in the daladala with Christina to buy the first round of materials, to the crooked businessman in Mpigi Magohe who sold us rolls of screen with much less than the meterage advertised, to Abu’s penchant for buying half the wood or nails he might need at any one time—primarily, I imagine, so as to eke out additional trips, financed by Mary, to Mbezi throughout the week. Thus I am impressed that we have made it even this far. I have even promised Abu some English lessons before I go in a shameless attempt to ensure that he finishes with everything squared away even if he has to continue with his work after I have gone. [Considering, however, my stellar teaching record (see previous) I am not sure who is getting the better end of this alleged bargain.]

In the meantime, we are still waiting for Mr. Gao and his truck of long-lasting nets to arrive. This is Tanzania after all, and everything goes polepole (slowly slowly), a reality further complicated by the fact that Gao—the only major LLITN distributor in Dar—somehow has run out of nets. I live in fear that the few things I have been able to physically contribute will crumble away, go unfulfilled, or be only partially finished.

Similarly with the files, brochures, newsletters, and other paperwork I’ve been helping the German volunteers design. They, too, seem to have caught the polepole disease, and as I see the need at Olania as looming, omnipresent, pressing, it is for them somehow much less urgent. Perhaps this is their method of adapting to living here for almost six months now. I wonder, though, if the files I have spent days writing and designing and editing will ever, ever, be put to any sort of use. If only I had four more weeks, I keep thinking—four more weeks to go crazy in, perhaps, but four more weeks to shepherd things along a bit more. There are so many little boats I keep launching, ideas of folded paper that I keep floating, pushing towards the people to whom I keep talking about this place. I know some of them will capsize, but I hope something—anything—will reach its destination. That something will bear fruit.

Keep Olania and her girls in your prayers.