Hello all! So far, I haven't been stupendous at updating this thing, but I'm trying. My days are incredibly packed. I have a feeling it will be a lot easier to find the time to update after training is over. Just to quickly catch you up. I have officially moved to Morogoro. When we got here, we stayed at another compound-like place. We were sometimes allowed out of the walls of this prison at times though. While we were here, we were split into CBT's (Community Based Training groups), and our language training began. My group consists of Doug, Uma, William, and Carolyn and our legit language-culture facilitator is Rehema. So we really dove right into language. Since then, our days have pretty much consisted of nothing but language training from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. I can honestly say that this method seems to be working. I think I can officially speak Swahili better than Spanish, a language I studied for years, but with no real dedication. I am loving having Rehema as a teacher. She speaks mostly in Swahili and really has a calming presence. This really became apparent when we had a sub one day when she was sick. Our sub was great, but something about her teaching style turned me into a spaz. I literally had a panic attack in class...awesome. Needless to say, I was grateful when we got Rehema back. During these days, we also had sessions about moving in with our host families. They gave us the do's and dont's of living with a host family. Some of them were pretty obvious, others were good tips, such as don't smell your food. The entire time, they would get us worked up and stressed about moving in with our families only for the homestay coordinator, Jumapili, to tell us to "don't shit the bricks."
So the Sunday before last, we moved in with our host families. That may have been one of the most awkward experiences of my life. Basically, they load you onto a bus with all of your bags, knock on your family's gate, and leave you there with a Swahili-speaking family and a pile of bags. So here is a run-down of the family. My mama's name is Happyness and she is a taylor, or fundi, for a living. She is married to my baba, Emmanuel. He works for World Vision and is gone to Dodoma during the week. My oldest kaka or brother's name is Felix, who is 16. He speaks excellent English, which has been wonderful! My next oldest kaka's name is Alex. Alex is 14 and also speaks very good English. I also have a dada, or sister, named Glory who is 8 and absolutely adorable. When I first got here, she just wanted to follow me around and hold my hand. We have a house girl who we call Dada named Sarah and a bibi, or grandma, who speaks not a drop of English and frankly frightens me a bit, for no good reason. The family has 3 dogs: Jet, Kok Kok, and Jim. And a week after moving in I found out we also have a cat, which really doesn't have a name, but people kind of call him Neow. The food is amazing which I was really not expecting. They have ways of using bananas that I could not even imagine. There is also a lot of rice and beans, which honestly I am all about. When I get home from school everyday, I help cook dinner and do homework. By 9 o'clock, I am all pooped out and only want to go to bed. I am actually breaking my strict 9:30 bedtime to write this and save to my hard drive so I can possibly post tomorrow at the Internet cafe (yea for sticky key boards and uber slow internet). This last weekend marked my one-week anniversary of moving in with my host family. I celebrated by learning to perform household chores. I learned to sweep and mop (because I would have never figured that one out), light a kerosene lamp, and do my laundry in a bucket. It took me about 2 hours to wash 3 skirts, 5 shirts, and 2 bras. The result of all the hard work was clean clothes to wear, but also no skin on the knuckles of my left hand. If I return home with only a nub for a left hand, you know why. Also this Sunday, I rode the dala dala by myself for the first time ever! For those of you that don't know, dala dalas are the buses around these parts. Basically, they are the equivalent of a church van and seem to have all been imported from Asian counties (judging from the Chinese symbols on the sides). The manufacturers seemed to design these vans having in mind that they would hold about 18 passengers max. Once I was riding on one, and decided to count how many people were on the bus; I lost count at 30. Every time you stop, you are thinking "there is no freaking way that we are going to get more people on this bus!" then 7 more people cram on. People are crammed in, sat on, hanging from the ceiling and leaning out windows. It is honestly hilarious mayhem. So needless to say, my first successful solo dala dala ride made me feel incredibly accomplished.
Well I'm exhausted...way past my bedtime. I'll try not to wait so long to write next time.
Tutaonana baadaye!!
(See ya later!)
No comments:
Post a Comment