Mzungu!

It has been quite a week! It's funny how many things become pretty normal in a week, living without electricity or running water and taking a motorbike taxi everywhere. I have to remember to stop and think about how lucky I am to get the chance to do this! (although, after seeing the pics, I'm not sure that everyone would agree with me on that 'lucky' part)

One thing that I'm still not quite used to is the constant calls of 'Mzungu! Mzungu! Mzungu!' from every kid I see. Mzungu is the word for white person. Kids basically chant it when I walk past. The other thing they do pretty persistently is wanting to great me. In Kiswahili, the common greeting of 'Habari' translates to 'how are you?'. So the kids learn to say 'how are you' in English. It means, however, that kids everywhere yell 'how are you! how are you! how are you!' at the top of their lungs when I pass by. It's actually pretty funny to see.

Although I am still not always 100% sure what to do with myself right now, I am starting to set up a little bit more of a schedule. The project works in two separate villages, Khalaba and Shibanze. When they say village, it's really more of an area though, the houses aren't that close to each other. Harambe is the closest town to these areas, but it is pretty small and Bungoma is the nearest bigger place. The project has two elementary schools, Tumaini Academy and Vision Academy. I will be volunteering at Tumaini Academy on Mondays and Thursdays and at Vision Academy on Tuesdays. On Wednesdays and Fridays I will be working on other things with the projects. I am hoping to help this project network with other ngos in the area, as well as help them get a little more organized for hosting volunteers.

My first visit to Tumaini was quite the experience. Honestly, it was a little overwhelming. I am helping with the baby class, which is what they call the youngest class - similar to junior kindergarten. There are over 40 kids in the class with only one teacher! Right now, all the kids sit on a mat in a single room. I think they are working on getting tables and chairs for this class, but they don't have them yet. In the next couple of weeks, I plan to take some pictures of the school so that you can see what it is like. The kids are really really cute though. The first day that I was there, they were all scared of me, but they are starting to get used to me. I have realized that it has been quite a while since I have been around little kids, I think I'm going to have to do a little research into kindergarten activities!

I have also hired one of the teachers at the school to teach me Kiswahili. I had my first lesson today. I have a lot to learn, but hopefully I will soon be able to communicate a little bit better with the kids.

Other than school, I went to the local market in Harambe on Saturday with Rose. It was pretty cool. Of course everyone wanted to charge me way too much, but I expected that. Since it is the local market, it was really only food and household items, so I didn't really buy too much.
I think that in the future I will try to use Saturdays to travel to different towns & villages in the area to see more of the western province. On Sunday I went to an Anglican church with the director and his family. I didn't really understand too much about what was going on, but whenever they sing it's pretty cool. They can really fill a room with their voices! There are tons and tons of churches in the area, so I think I will check out a few different ones while I am here. Church is a very central part of life here, one of the first questions people tend to ask you is 'what church do you go to?'.

Right now I am the only volunteer at the project, but there is another girl coming on January 27th. I'm not too sure what parts of the project she will be interested in working with, but I'm looking forward to having someone else stay with me & Rose.

that's it for now....keep the comments coming, I like hearing from everyone.