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The downside with Seth & Olive’s situation is that when they arrive in the classroom, they’re too goal-oriented to appreciate the wonderful opportunity they have. They tear through the Swahili lessons, barely acknowledging the happy children cheering them on. This wasn’t a good leg for The Amazing Race to do U-Turns. It should have been an uplifting experience rather than a pressure-packed leg for two of the teams.

Other teams like Liz & Michael and Tara & Joey relish the moment a bit more. Their Swahili lessons are livelier. Even Brooke & Scott, who have been at each other’s throats since day one, unite to relish their classroom studies. Both of them are, dare we say it, smiling as they exit the building.

Tara & Joey are first to arrive at the Road Block, called What’s For Dinner? It requires players to head to a Zanzibar marketplace and purchase all the items on a grocery list. Then, they must take the ingredients to “the family chef,” which seems to be three women sitting beside empty baskets. This challenge sounds easy, so there must be a trick to it.

A-ha! The ingredients are foods like Nyanya Chungu, Pomelo, and Mchiciha (we swear we’re spelling it correctly), and Mkonowatembo. Readers of this site know that we also recap Top Chef, and we’ve still never heard of any of these ingredients. We presume the contestants will have to ask the locals for help.

We can’t quite tell how much separation exists between the teams. What we know for sure is that Vanck & Ashton are in fourth place, Team Fun is in fifth, and London & Logan are in sixth. The Boys have also finished the harder side of the Detour and have arrived at Build It. Our perception is that Olive & Seth are ahead, but that’s just a guess right now.

The one team whose struggles are noteworthy is Sara & Shamir. They don’t fight or anything. It’s just not a challenge they can do well. Interestingly, it causes them to work better together than they ever have before. Whoops, spoke too soon. The easy part of Build It, something we didn’t even feel was worth mentioning, is that the players have to carry the new desk to the school. Sara follows every instruction that Shamir has, and he STILL gets angry with her.

In his defense, he can’t see that she’s trying. All he knows is that he’s carrying a heavy wood desk, and she’s nowhere in sight. Also, he has a broken testicle. It makes him feel a bit…testy. (Sorry.)

To speed up the grocery spree, the players start to work together. Tara pays for everyone’s Mchicha. Several of the players point one another to the proper ingredients. Meanwhile, the merchants of Zanzibar grow industrious. They start price-gouging as they see all the American television show cash getting flashed around. Vanck gets charged $45 for something and for some reason draws a line in the sand. He won’t make the deal unless the person gives back a dollar. Hey, it’s a 2% discount!

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