Hamjambo!
I just thought I’d throw up a quick post to give you a glimpse of my homestay village, Taita. We had a pretty chill Saturday today - we woke up and headed down to St. Johns, the school at which we’ll be helping to build a library over the next week or so. All that exists of the library now is two levels, one that has had concrete laid over it, and another that just holds loose rock. Our job will be to lay concrete over that second level. We didn’t do much today, just pulled a few weeds and smashed up some bigger rocks - the real work will start Monday, when we get the concrete mix. I’m actually pretty excited about this project. I sort of grew an affinity for concrete work during my trips to Mexico in high school with FPC, and it sounds like this work will be similar. However, because of my shoulder (which I fractured while skiing in January), I’ll be on the sidelines for much of the hard labor (blessing or curse?). Of course, this frees me up to coach a bit - I taught a few of my classmates how to use a sledgehammer today, which made me feel like a total manly-man.
Anyway, the rest of the day was pretty chill - we had Swahili lessons, then hung out on a rock in the sun, shouting to village kids in the distance. Mad fun!
So, on to the pictures. The first shows the view of the Taita hills from my house, sitting under the shadow of Yila, a very Half Dome-esque mountain. We’re about 2000 meters above sea level here, and the weather here is fantastic - 80 in the sun, 65-70 in the shade. Take THAT, Northern Hemisphere.
The second photo shows my host mother and brother. They’ve been incredibly gracious in welcoming me into their home, sharing their food, their hot water (my bath this morning was HEAVENLY) - they even washed a couple of shirts for me this morning. Right before this photo was taken, we were joking about my inability to pronounce the Swahili word for beans (maharagwe - you try). This family is a great one to be around while learning this language, because they speak both languages very well. I’ve been able to emulate naturalized Kenyans, who tend to switch back and forth seamlessly between English and Swahili. Of course, I tend to lean on English a bit more.
The final photo is of my room. You can see some of my essential supplies here - diabetes stuff, Swahili books, a MacBook, toilet paper, bananas, a camera, and water. Clearly I’m roughing it out here.
So anyway, hopefully that gives you a peak into my homestay. Tomorrow is church, then we’re going to go explore some of the mountains around the village. Yoohoo!
Lala salama!
P.S. Sorry about the crummy photo quality - in order to get them uploaded on my connection, I had to compress them to very small sizes. So… use your imagination!
