Homestay: First three days.

We arrived in Bangata  on Sunday and were immediately given to our families. I was one of the last people matched up with my family but when I was matched up with my mamma it was like we were old friends. Greeted with hugs and kisses I walked back to our house with her hand in hand the whole way.

We got home and our home is actually really nice compared to where I thought I would be living! We don’t have any electricity and our toilet is the LITTLEST hole in the ground (Trying to poop and pee in a hole that is 3 inches wide is an acquired skill that I am still acquiring) but other than that I have my own room with a nice big bed and a mosquito net, although the only downside is it is well equipped with some BIG spiders.

In my family I have a momma, baba (dad), a baby brother named Junior who is 2, a 12 year old boy named Amon who I think is my mommas brother and a girl named Nmema who is a 16 year old girl who I think is my moms household helper, still trying to figure out everybody who comes and goes and lives at my house. My family is all super nice and I really like them but there is still a huge language barrier because I know a very limited amount of Kiswahili and the only word my momma knows is “language”. Everyday though I am learning more Kiswahili and my momma and Baba are learning more English and were communicating more and more. The last few days I wake up at around 6:30 help my momma with whatever job she is doing in the morning  (aka laundry, dishes or breakfast) then around 715 I sit down for a quick glass of tea and either a piece of white bread or some notes with a little banana and then at around 7:25 I start the 30 minutes walk to school usually accompanied by a group of school children all trying to hold my hand. At school we have Swahili until 1 with a 30 minute break for tea and then we have lunch at 1-2 then some type of discussion after that. Most days I stay at school to do homework and hang out with people or grab a beer before heading home around 5ish. Once I get home I either help momma with laundry, play with the SWARMS of neighbor kids, or take a bucket shower and then around 730ish every night I start helping momma cook dinner. Cooking dinner as you would expect is WAYYY different than in the U.S: we cook on a wood fire and the pots are supported by rocks, peel all the vegetables with knives, and pick up hot pots with our bare hands. Back home I consider myself pretty sufficient in the kitchen but here I feel like an incompetent child.  For example last night we made a dish called chips Myai which is basically peeled, cut and fried potatoes with a little egg cooked on, essentially an omelet with potatoes. In the U.S. peeling and cutting any vegetable is easy but here I thought my hands were about to fall off. Piles and piles of potatoes kept appearing on the plate and peeling them with this knife was extremely hard. They kept slipping out of my hand and shooting across the room and although my momma had not problem with it peeling it for me was a little chunk by chunk. In the time it took me to peel one my momma had peeled four. When I told her this she just laughed and told me I was doing a good job, although I think she was trying to be nice it did make me feel better about myself. 

All in all I love my family and the little boy is SOOO CUTE and its nice to have somebody on my language level. Its definitely exhausting trying to communicate and the only alone time I have all day is when I’m going to bed but so far it’s a great experience and I think its only going to get better!