And yet somehow, despite it all...

There are many things I am not good at. I cannot cook - I would like to submit exhibit A for your approval, the result of an attempt to heat up a chapati this morning. A chapati from four days ago, that someone else made, because since then I've either eaten in the cafeteria or eaten peanut butter. No, not straight from the jar, don't be RIDICULOUS. I put it on a plate and mixed it with brown sugar first!

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury... I plead guilty.

I also have negative sense of direction, as evidenced by my complete inability, after four months, to turn the right way upon exiting my house, or to navigate anywhere in the greater Arusha area that requires walking more than ten feet from the dalla dalla stop. I gauge everything in relation to its proximity to the Computerized Zebra Eye Clinic sign, without which I'm not sure I'd recognize I was even in the city. I am similarly impaired with objects - I once lost my keys in the refrigerator for two weeks. Talent.

As far as I am concerned, this is all there is to Arusha. The rest is a vague, very dirty haze.

I also excel at injuring myself in frankly unlikely ways. I am constantly covered with inexplicable bruises and regularly cause strangers free amusement by my tripping over my own feet. In my first week, I took off the majority of my pinky toe on a pumice rock while running to unlock the gate. In the first month, I bruised my big toe so badly on the dalla that it required extensive (and kind of fun) mini-surgery with a candle and safety pin, which I of course undertook myself, sticking myself in the finger in the process. I can barely feel my hands after many years of burning, filing, sanding, sawing, and otherwise subjecting them to the hazards of a jeweler's life. I get diseases nobody can diagnose and catch malaria even while taking anti-malarial tablets daily. I'm kind of a mess.

I am good at playing peekaboo, carrying multiple babies at one time, having political arguments, dealing with customer service, chicken husbandry (who knew?), using power tools, making jewelry, and writing somewhat arbtruse and specialized feminist socio-political commentary.

Me and my chicken. Er, rooster.

And APPARENTLY,  those wonderful but inexplicable admissions people over at the London School of Economics' Masters of Public Affairs program in International Development (phew, a mouthful!) are looking for EXACTLY that combination of skills for their class of September 2011-July 2013!!!

(I wonder if they'll let me keep chickens in the dorm room)