Tanga/Pangani Trip

One weekend in October, we had off the Friday and the Monday. Most of the girls decided to go to Zanzibar but Kelly and I, in order to save money, decided to go with Lisa and some borders to Tanga/Pangani. Tanga is a coastal town and Pangani is the wild area right on the coast. Because we were going as chaperones we didn’t have to pay for basically anything. The adults on the trip were myself, Kelly, Lisa (who organized it), her husband Mbaraka, and Kelli Bee, the primary science teacher. We took 9 kids, most were the orphans that the school supports. They were super excited because some of them had never seen the beach before.

The trip didn’t start off the best…The school bus was broken and so we shoved all our stuff into one bus and then had to drive to a different area of town to switch to a bigger bus. We werealready running late so that set us back even further. Not to mention we had to stop by the bank and a shop so the kids could get some snacks for the ride. These snacks ended up being the bane of our existence because we had to stop for the kids to pee every five minutes.

The kids were surprisingly good on what turned out to be an 11 hour car ride. They slept a lot and amused each other (when they weren’t calling for a bathroom break.) I read on my kindle for a majority of the ride. Once it got dark we sang some songs and played a fun (read annoying) game that involved counting seconds. They did this for 10 minutes; I kid you not.

The highways in Tanzania are definitely not the American idea of highway. A highway here is just a paved road. It goes through a town literally every 10 minutes and the Tanzanian way of making you slow dowm for pedestrians is to have series of speed humps at intervals of about 20 feet. It is nice to have roads though; once we passed Tanga the paved roads disappear and its dirt for about three hours. As I said before it is the short rainy season so there was mud everywhere. Al some spots the mud was pretty rough and I was dreading the possibility of having to push the bus out (been there, done that). We also went through some massive puddles. At one point the peddle we drove through was so deep that the headlights were completelysubmerged.

We made it to the lodge finally and had our dinner at around midnight before falling into bed. Tinga Tinga Lodge (where we stayed) is made up of a bunch of small bungalows with a couple of beds in each one. The kids were split up by age and sex and usually were sleeping 4 to 5 a room. Myself, Kelly Pierce and Kelly Bee shared a room. And Lisa and her family shared a room.

In the morning, a few of the kids got up bright and early and escaped from their rooms and wandered on to the beach, which is right next to the lodge, unsupervised. They got a talking to at breakfast for that one.

That morning, Me, Kelli, Kelly and Mbaraka headed to Pangani ( a town on the coast next to the Pangani River) to take some kids snorkeling. We load up our six kids and bump down the road to climb onto one of the rickety-est wooden boats I have ever seen. Then we motor out of the river and into the Indian Ocean for about an hour before reaching Maziwe Island, a sandbar island.

It was utterly gorgeous. The water was an amazing blue and the sand a sparkling white. The kids were super excited; some of them had never been to a beach before. The boat guys unloaded the snorkel stuff and we went for a swim. There was coral all over and lots of fish and bright blue starfish. I really wished I had an underwater camera….. We swam around for a while. I was trying to stay near groups of people in case of a passing shark. (Although I don’t know what shark are indigenous to the area) No worries. Didn’t see any.

Then we went for a little wander across the sandbar. There were tidepools all over; we saw an eel, hundreds of spiny starfish, and some massive seashells.

During the hour trip back to Pangani every single one of the kids fell asleep in the boat. Even though there were waves crashing over the boat, salt spray everywhere and it was none too smooth.

We spent that afternoon at Tinga Tinga lodge, hanging out.

The next morning everybody headed down to the beach next to the lodge. We wandered about exploring a shallow cave, digging in the sand, splashing in tide pools, and playing with a few boogie boards. Kelly Pierce amused herself by persuading one of the boys to pretend to be a mud invader and then filming him chasing down, frightening to death and then “eating’ his victims. (I’ve seen the final cut; it’s going to be a blockbuster) One of everybody’s (me included) favorite activities was standing, back to the waves, and having them crash over us. It really reminded me of family vacations off the coast of Georgia…oh St. Simons Island…

Lisa and Mbaraka actually have a house near Pangani. Mbaraka comes from a town called Kigombe and he still has family there. For lunch we all went to his sister’s house. She lives in the typical Tanzania house; it has no power and no indoor plumbing and the kitchen consists of a hut with cook fires on the ground. She made us the most delicious lunch of octopus tentacles, fish, coconut rice and fruit. It was all really, really good, especially the octopus. The fish, while it looks a bit gruesome, was also pretty tasty.

That afternoon we were going on a historical tour of Pangani which used to be occupied by the Germans and was a center for the African slave trade. One of the things I fand sad here is that the kids have very little knowledge of the slave trade and what it did to their country. A few didn’t even know what a slave is. Kelly P. (as she is a history teacher) gave them a mini lesson on the slave trade directly after everyone ate.

The tour was led by one of the guys from the lodge and ended up being an absolute bust. He really had no clue what he was talking about…Case in point, he took up to the old German Slave Depo and was only able to tell us its name, no dates, no facts, no nothin’. He then took us to the Old Boma ( a building built by a wealthy Omani slave trader that purportedly had slaves buried alive under the foundations in order to make the building strong (I’m still confused about the reasoning behind that) and that was later changed into a German administration building) Once we got there the only thing he could tell us about the building was that it was old and that’s why it was important. I thought Kelly P was going to strange the man right there. Then we went to a graveyard full of German graves. (Why was it important, you ask? According to the guide: (Confused look) because they are old…and German) Ok then. At least I had fun trying to read all of the gravestones.

After this, we headed back to the lodge and relaxed before packing and getting ready to head back to St. Connie’s the next day. It decided to rain overnight, so we had to cross our fingers that we would be able to get the bus out of the lodge and back to Tanga and tarmac. We made it about an hour before hearing from people that all three of the roads to Tanga were closed because of mud. At one point a whole dala dala (cheap public transportation) were yelling at us to turn back. We decided to try our luck and reach this massive hill with a whole line of cars waiting to try to get up it. We waited for an hour and half before it was our turn because there was a massive bus completely stuck in the mud partway up the hill. All the passengers formt he bus got off and had to try and push. Thankfully we made it up successfully the first time.

The rest of the ride was long but fairly uneventful, though we didn’t get back to school until 11pm. Leaving me and the other teacher pretty unprepared for the next day…oh well, it was worth it.

Short Rainy Season

The short rains are upon us. What this means is that it rains mostly at night, but sometimes in the mornings and afternoons too. And everything gets covered with mud. You should see my classroom floors. It’s disgusting. It also means that my shoes get completely covered in muck.

It can create other complications as well; the other night Kelly and I took a cab back from a bar. It dropped us off in front of our house and Kelly went inside and passed out on her bed. I was in the midst of brushing my teeth when I heard a knock on the door. It ws the cab driver; he was stuck in the mud right outside of my house and my neighbors house (who happens to be the principal of primary school) The cab driver and I try for a while; one of us pushing and the other in the car. All that we ended up doing was digging the wheels in……

So I ended up calling Nick and about three askaris (the school guards) came by to help get the cab out. TWO AND A HALF HOURS LATER the stupid car was finally out. . It was 4:30 in the morning and I was completely covered in mud. The wheels spun at one point and splattered mud across my face and entire body. I had also been kneeling in the mud to hold the flashlight under the car for the askaris to dig. It was rough…Thank you rainy season.

Victoria going for a stroll.

New Classroom!

I’ve moved! To a much bigger classroom! I love love love all the new space. It is so much more light filled and colorful and I can actually have the kids work in small groups in different parts of the classroom. There are a few downsides though: I am much farther away from Sofia and Lisa now I don’t see them hardly at all. And the classroom is in the Infants building so we are with all of the teeny tiny kids. It's not perfect yet....still a work in progress!

All those woven baskets I have, (aka the basis of my organizational system) I bought from one of the mamas that sells them on the side of the street. She originally wanted 12,000 shillings for each one but I worked her down to 8,000 (roughly 4 or 5 dollars) This seriously took about 20 minutes and a lot of grumpiness on her part, but now that we have the deal I don't have to bargain any more. She actually greets me with a smile now when I show up at her stand, which is a big improvement...

On Duty Weekend

So I survived the dreaded duty weekend, but just barely. Friday night I went out (I couldn’t give up my whole weekend!) with Kelly and Becca to Colobus Club, a bar that is made up of one room for dancing and one room for karaoke. Becca is obsessed with karaoke so we spent the majority of our time in that room.

Anyway so we get back at a decent time, 1am I think, but then I have to get up at 7:30 in the morning to supervise the boarders eating breakfast. They had to eat a little bit earlier than usual because after breakfast we headed over to ISM (another international school about 5 minutes down the road) In order to get to ISM we had to all pile in the bus.

Funny thing about road safety in Tanzania, there is none. We piled 30 some kids on a little bus blatantly meant for 20 people at most. Seatbelts are nonexistent. There were kids sitting/standing in the front seat next to the driver; no seatbelts. The only thing from then and the road was the windshield. There were children in other children’s laps. Children perched on the back of chairs, standing in the aisles, sitting on top of boxes of juice and sandwiches. So basically if we hit anything more than a mini-pothole, there would be casualties. Luckily there were no mishaps and we made it to ISM.

Sports day consisted of students from 4 or 5 different school competing in track and field activities like the 100m, 200m, 400, 800, relays, discus, javelin, long jump, high jump, etc. For most of the day I hung out under the St. Cons awning and amused the children who were there to watch. The day extremely hot and dusty and every time anybody moved, a little puff od dust would wash over nearby people.

There were little grey and brown lizards everywhere. I found them really cute. They were roughly 3 inches long and caused some amusement when a few ran up one of the male teachers pant leg.

St. Constantine’s kids are super good at sports and so we ended up sweeping almost all of the awards. There were awards for Under 10 girls, Under 10 boys, Under 12 girls, Under 12 boys, Under 16 girls, Under 16 boys, Open girls and Open boys. St. Cons won all of these awards except two of them and we won the whole thing by almost 200 points. It was almost embarrassing how much we won; the kids loved it though.

Finally sports day ended and all the children made it back safely. I was hot and dusty and begged off to take a shower. After that we kinda puttered around until dinner.

After began my camping saga. The boarders had made it known that they wanted to go camping on the school grounds. So I took it upon myself to organize this. I has passed out a sign up sheet beforehand (originally I had planned to only take primary students but then the secondary kids kinda revolted and desperately wanted to come; though I was terrified that there was going to be some inappropriate behavior and someone was going to end up pregnant or something) So I ended up with 39 kids.

After dinner I took them all out to the field to set up the tents (this was the worst part) none of them had any clue what to do. There was only me and like two other teachers there and so there were children wandering around with tent poles and tent covers blowing away not to mention the sun was going down pretty swiftly. Somehow we got the tents up and Jose came by to make a fire for the kids to roast marshmallows on.

One thing that really surprised me was how many kids had no clue what a marshmallow was. Even the secondary boys had never experienced them. And none of the children had ever roasted them on sticks over a fire before. They ended up absolutely loving it; we went through soooo many bags of marshmallows.

After that I made them all sit in a circle around me and a lantern and sing songs. I figured the secondary students would think this part of the night stupid and I even gave them the option of not participating but I honestly think they liked it the most. I led them in the Tarzan song (a BIG favorite; One of the secondary girls told me that students were singing it in groups all over the dorms the next morning) We did Singing in the Rain (how very appropriate: warning: foreshadowing) and then I did the improvised skit Emily’s Candy Store. The students were soo into it and really had a great time.

At this point the other teachers left so it was just me and one dorm master, Jackson, with the 39 kids.

After singing I shoved the primary students into their tents, but let secondary hang out in little groups in the middle of the tent circle. They were really well behaved but I stayed on top of them when they decided to play a truth or dare game that involved spinning a phone in the middle fo a circle and whomever the phone flashlight landed on was the truth or darer. (Liiiitle too much like spin the bottle for the game to be kosher) I then shoved them into their tents at around 10 and settled down into a chair in the middle of the tent circle to read my kindle and watch for escaping children.

At around midnight it started to drizzle. But then it stopped, I set up a tent for myself in the middle just in case it started up again. And oh did it start up again. At 1am it started to downpour and it didn’t stop until 6am.

Now some of the tents are like 10 years old and lack any type of waterproofing. Not to mention that there were three children in all of the tents so people were leaning up against the sides of the tents.

At around 3am I hear a plaintive, “Mees? Mees?” One of the boys tents full of three 9 year olds has entirely flooded, I mean a couple of inches of water in the bottom. I have no clue how they slept as long as they did. So I walked them back to the dorms and their beds. From about 3am until 5am I ended up walking back a total of 8 children for flooded tents, but all of the rest stayed.

At 6am I woke up the rest of the tents and even though all but one tent had water issues there were still children that didn’t want to leave. I had to promise a whole bunch of them that we would camp in the field again soon.

Sunday was rough; though the rest of my team let me sleep from the time when I woke the kids up until lunch time.

And sorry no pictures.......

Sports Day

A couple of weeks ago, one whole Friday was set aside for sports day. The whole school is split up into houses. Delphi, Olympia, Sparta, and Athens (Greek cities because the school was founded by the Greeks in Arusha) Each person gets a shirt with their teams name on the back and in the team color. (Delphi is red, Athens is blue, Olympia is yellow, and Sparta is green)

TO begin all the teams congregate and begin their team cheering (just generic chants. Nothing nearly as creative as the Comfort Zone Camp cheers) Then everyone marches around the field cheering and waving their team flags. Once everyone is settled in their team areas the sports begin. There were races (100m all the way up to the 800m) the long jump, high jump, discus, shot put, tug of war, and relays. The energy was ramped up pretty much all day.

All of the teachers had jobs Kelly was in charge of judging high jump, (And see if you can spot her in a neon green wig, haha) I was one of the teachers in charge of the teams. I’m on Delphi so I had to make sure that all of the Delphi kids got to their events and that they weren’t getting out of control. (The seating area for the teams was right up against the track so every now and then random students would wander out onto the track while people were racing. Part of my job was controlling that)

Almost the whole day I had a little shadow. Esme, one of the students in year 3 (though not in my class) decided to stick to me like glue. She followed me around everywhere and for part of the day I was carrying her around piggy-back. We even ate our lunches on the field together. She is such a sweetheart! And now whenever she sees me around campus (which is a lot) she gets really excited.

My favorite event of the whole day was the tug-of-war. All of the kids got super pumped for it (even the older ones who were wayyy too cool to cheer). Some of the battles were really intense! There was one match between us (Delphi) and Olympia that went on and on and back and forth (to everyone’s delight) until eventually Olympia yanked away the win.

By the end of the day I was sunburnt and tired but I had a good time.

School!

The first weeks of school were super, super busy. Those that I’ve talked to, know that I spend the majority of my time either teaching or lesson planning so that I can teach some more. Both Sofia and Lisa were teaching other grades previously so none of us have a store of lesson plans.

My class is good by American standards, especially when you take into consideration that I have 16 students shoved into a classroom half the size of other classrooms (Jose has decided to move my classroom. I have mixed emotions; delighted that I will get a full size classroom, but sad that I will be moving away from Sofia and Lisa. We are always in and out of each other’s classrooms to distribute things or chat) But by Year 3 (ages 6-8) standards my kids are the hellions. They don’t mean to be but I’ve got a few strong personalities.

One of my boys CANNOT stay in his seat/hold still to save his life. I’ve got two chatty girls that DO NOT stop talking, EVER. One of my kids likes to pick fights, etc. Personalities. Maria, the primary music teacher has had issues with them, a few of the other teachers have told me that they’re a handful.

One of the major irritations for me is a very Tanzanian habit. When the students want my attention, instead of raising their hand, they each call out “Mees! Mees!” Imagine a whole bunch of baby birds chirping Miss (but with a Tanzanian accent it’s Mees) all around you in a room that echoes. NOT OK. That is something we have been hard-core working on; Raising your hand quietly. I don’t answer to “Mees”!

All of my kids are African; I have Tanzanians, Ugandans, Rwandans, and Kenyans. I have more girls in my class but just by a little. I also have a very wide range of ability levels. Some of my students are still reading books with two lines on each page and one is at the point of chapter books.

Despite their faults, they are all pretty affectionate. One of my girls brought me in a rose the other day. I have two that regularly give me back massages at lunch and other students clean up my dishes at meals. Two of my kids are borders and so I see them at all the meals. They are both really sweet and love eating with me and Kelly.

It’s funny being a teacher on campus. It’s almost like being a minor celebrity. In the first few weeks I would be walking around and hear children whisper to each other, “That’s Miss Fano”. Other times, children I had never met would call out “Hello, Miss Fano!” It’s really funny to walk by a table of children, because then they all call out in a little chorus “Hi Miss!” and “Hi, Miss Fano!”

My popularity is really helped by my neon blue slap watch. The kids here are super fascinated with it. They all know what they are because a few of the students have them. I’ve seen a neon pink/purple on one of the secondary girls and one of the Year 6’s had a brown one until he broke the watch face. The little kids love to take it off my arm and put it on their wrists, ankles and heads and the older kids like to slap themselves with it so it curls up.

September 4th, 2011

On Sunday we were finally able to move into our new house! I was originally told that Kelly and I would be living in a two bedroom apartment, but as it turns out the apartment was actually a house. It’s actually really nice. The front window has a view of Mt. Meru!

the view off our front porch

Our neighbors are the primary and secondary principals on one side.

And the other girls on the other side.

The kitchen and the living room are open to each other and it came with all of the furniture (couch, chairs, coffee table, bookshelves, dining table, mini fridge (ours is as big as it gets here. The power can’t handle American sized fridges) and gas stove/electric oven)

Our rooms are enormous in my opinion, much bigger than both my JMU apartment room and my room in Richmond. The room comes supplied with an armoire, a desk, and a bed. The bed for some reason is like a single and seems miniscule in the room. The bed is smaller than both my double at JMU and my day bed at home (which you wouldn’t think would be possible but this bed is considerably shorter) I put up my photo collage!

I love the view out my bedroom window!

The bathroom is very basic toilet, sink, shower head. (I like this shower much better than that strange bath tub with a showerhead and no curtain thing they had going in Berlin.) No storage though.

The house is fabulous! …but there are a few downsides….the floor is straight up concrete, complete with scuffs and paint marks. Also, the dust here comes in and coats it so when you walk across it you get the weird walking on a chalkboard feeling. Our poor maid Gudilla (not how you spell her name) has to mop it everyday.

It was looking pretty bland and the lack of decoration was kinda freaking me out when we first moved in. It took them about a week to give us couch cushions. (Made of some industrial foam stuff that is a very solid rectangle. It does not cushion at all when you sit. It’s the same stuff they choose to make mattresses out of here, haha. But pure exhaustion will make any mattress feel good…)

The other weekend Kelly and I set off to the used market to buy some furnishings. I think this market is called Matumba or Matoomba or at least that is how it’s said. It’s this big row of people selling anything from clothes (some cute ones and good deals) to curtains, bedsheets and shoes.

Our trusty cab driver, Jimmy took us and helped us bargain. Not that Kelly needs help bargaining, she’s much more assertive than I am when it comes to that. We ended up getting:

a gorgeous curtain panel in chocolate brown for the living room. I ended up paying 20,000 shillings for it or 12$. It needed a few alterations and I hung it up that same day.

Bathmats and a shower curtain for the bathroom. A set of three bath mats came to 15,000 shillings or 9$. The curtain Kelly got for 10,000 shillings or 6$ because she bargained the poor man to death. It is a super good curtain from Target that is worth 30$ new. (I know this because I had the same curtain only a different color scheme in my college bathroom) Gudilla washed the mats for us before we set them out.

For my room I picked up a beautiful woven rug that cost me about 20$. Which actually was a rip-off, I should have gotten it for half that price. But they saw the color of my skin and read sucker…and Jimmy wasn’t there at that point. But now we know.

I also got a purple bedsheet for about $3.50 that I cut in half and strung it on my curtain rod in my room. Sometimes the askari’s (the school’s guards) like to creep around back there and I needed a curtain for when I got dressed or changed. It’s looking a lot better now and I feel like I’m finally settling in.

I will definitely feel settled in once I plant some stuff out front. Right now it's all depressing dirt...

September 3rd 2011

To welcome all of the new teachers to the school Jose set up a safari in Tarangire Park for all the newcomers. It’s a 2 hour drive there and we wanted to be at the park pretty early so we got up and met at the front of the school at 4:30 in the morning. (This was difficult for some people because the faculty bbq was the night before and there was, of course, alcohol involved) I think I managed to get to bed around 11pm so I wasn’t too bad.

The safari company, East African Voyage, came to pick us up in the safari cars and we settled in for a long ride. We went through all these little towns on the way and actually got stopped by some kind of police in one of them. (They were guys in normal clothes carrying guns. The driver didn’t seen too distressed so I wasn’t worried) As we got further away the towns turned into Maasai villages surrounded by bush. Every now and then you could see a Maasai warrior walking with his staff. We turned down the road that leads to the park just as the sun was rising and it was absolutely beautiful. My cameras really only got a shallow imitation of how big and colorful it actually was. We turned into the park area and were greeted with a massive baobab tree. ( I love love love these trees. They are so massive and so utterly picturesque that I took tons and tons of baobab pictures.) We got out of the safari cars to stretch our legs and so thesafari dudes could raise up the roof of the car so we would be able to stand up and watch the animals once we got going. Jose warned us to not even stray away from the parking lot here because a few years ago a child from Braeburn (another school in the area) was killed by a leopard just a few feet into the brush.

After a quick potty break we all piled back into our cars and set off. I was sharing a car with Kelly, Maureen and Victoria. The first animals we saw inside the park were gnus, zebras, warthogs, and ostriches. There were animals all around but they were kind far away from the road so it was hard for me to get real good pictures (as I accidentally left my good zoom lens back in Virginia) We drive and drove and drove. We got into the park at 7 or 8 and didn’t end p stopping for lunch until around 1pm. In between we saw impalas, our first elephants, giraffes and lions (including a mama lion with at least two cubs. They were so freakin adorable frolicking around this rock pile. It was very lion king) I also loved seeing the elephants. They were hard to find at first but then it was like they were everywhere.

The terrain is very dynamic. There were flat bits where it was very bush-like and then there were hills and then even places that had small cliffs. At times it was trees, like gigantic baobab trees or marsh or scrub. It’s dry season here so there were many dried river and creek beds.

We finally stopped for lunch at a little outdoor area literally right in the middle of the park. There were no fences or anything so we were wondering what would happen if a lion or leopard decided to join the party. At this point none of us had eaten breakfast and we were practically starving. I think we were all staring a little too hard at the spread of food the safari guys were putting out because they handed us a bunch of bananas and sent us away. (The bananas here are differentfrom the ones in the US. For one thing they are tiny. Usually they are no longer than your middle finger, but they make up for it in taste. They have so much more of a flavor here and much sweeter. The school serves bananas all the time and I love it!)

The company fed us well. They laid out loaves of fresh bread, cheese, some kind of quiche, fresh cut pineapple and watermelon (the school often feeds us this too. The pineapple is super good here, but the watermelon is definitely not as good as what we grow next to our driveway back home) as well as all kinds of cut veggies and cold chicken, potato salad and eggs. It was all really delicious and exactly what we needed.

After lunch we took off again. Tarangire is huge; just to get out of the park from where we had lunch would be two hours. We drove by the marshy area which I think was the most beautiful part. Elephants, zebras, and birds and all kinds of other animals congregated here because of the water. Also, I loved how the ground went from brown dirt, to red clay, to green grass. The color contrast was fabulous. After luch we saw elephants up really close. SO close that we had to be quiet so as not to scare them. At one point I actually ducked back down into the car because the elephant got so so close. (They are massive and slightly frightening when you’re that close) We also saw a wild Kudu, which are very rarely seen, dik diks (cute tiny deer looking things) some hippos, more water boks and a bunch of different kinds of birds.

All along the safari we were fighting off these biting flies (tsetse flies, I believe. Although the guide said they don’t carry sleeping sickness in this area) Those things were obnoxious! They would land on you and nip your skin pretty badly. They could even bite through jeans. I don’t know how this is possible but it really hurts so I know it’s true. Just as we were all grtting really tired and frustrated about the biting flies we spotted more lions. There were two female ones lying underneath a low tree. We stopped to look at them for a moment before moving on a few feet and realizing why they were there. They had recently killed a zebra right up against the gravel road our car was on. One lion was next to the zebra which had been completely gutted and chewed on. We could see light through its body where the lions had eaten completely through. The zebra’s eyeballs were also missing but I’m not sure if that was the lions doing or the work of some other scavenger. That was basically the last exciting event before we left the park.

On the way home we stopped by a little town where women were selling baskets and rugs made of some kind of woven together grass or leaf. We bought the place out. A whole bunch of people got rugs for their classrooms or houses. (I got one for my classroom so the kids would have somewhere to sit) I also got a really nice laundry basket. Then we drove the two hours to get back home. By the time we got home it was around 7pm and we were hungry and exhausted. So we ate and then crashed into our beds.