Hamjambo!

Hello everyone!

Takaungu is amazing! Each day I am taking 5 hours of Swahali in Bwana Asis's living room with three other girls from the New School. In the afternoons, we have a lesson about culture or visit a neighboring village or practice the language lessons. In the evenings, I am at home with my mom, Aisha, and her 12 year old daughter Maryam. They are fantastic! The food is wonderful - rice, beans, fish, eggs, flatbread and fresh mangoes from neighboring trees. Each night, a couple adults and numerous children come by to sit and talk at different times. Aisha is pretty popular. I have conversations with them, especially the kids and love getting to know them. Most everyone speaks some English as many people have been taught it in school since colonialism.

My house is 'downtown' and is very homey. Right when you walk through the door, you are in an outdoor hallway that leads to the kitchen at the end and the living room and bedrooms to the left. If you take an immediate left you stand in front of two doors. One is the shower (a room with a faucet and a bucket) and the bathroom (a ditch with a hole at the deepest point). I take cold 'showers' out of the bucket in the afternoons and am enjoying it now. That is how Bryan used to shower when he worked up on Beech Mountain in Boone!

The village and entire surrounding area is beautiful! There are palm, mango and coconut trees everywhere. And goats and roosters. The river and the ocean are gorgeous and great places to chill and read or study language. Seriously, this place is paradise! As I walk through the streets, everyone says hello and how are you. I feel very welcome here as people are as interested in learning about me (and if I voted for Obama) as I am about them.

After the end of next week, I will begin working on the development project, health surveys, administrative stuff and even teaching in their grade school! I visited the school the other day and fell in love with the kids there. Crazy huh? To get online, I come up to Kilfi by riding on the back of a motorcycle (more like a scooter) and then a bus (more like a van) for a half an hour each. Don't worry -it's totally safe, they are licensed and have to go super slow on the bumpy, dirt roads.

That's all for now! I have been taking as many pictures as I can and will post them asap. It is tough to get pictures of people here because they typically get 3 pictures of themselves during their lifetime - 1 at birth, 1 at graduation and 1 at marriage. Thus, they feel it unfair for someone else to have pictures of them. Thus, I am not running around, camera out offending everyone around.

Love and miss you all!
Jen

P.S. This blog has places where you can comment ya know? It's a two way street people.