They pretty much think Mara and I are hilarious. The first night we sat outside with Dodo (who, by the way, is part of some Muslim royal line, the brother of the head of it or something). He took us outside and Mama Halima said, "Story!" So we thought we were going to hear a story. It's silent for a while. Mara and I are sitting in chairs facing Dodo, who is sitting on this tiny stool. We started thinking we were supposed to be the ones telling the story. Finally one of our cats (we have two in our homestay. One is named Big Head, because his head is super large compared to his body. The other is called Beggy McBeggerson, because now that he's not terrified of us, he really enjoys being pet/fed. These are of course names that we made up. They are not family names for the cats) came outside. The word for cat is paka and Mara pointed and said "paka!" Dodo laughed. We then spent the night bonding everytime a cat came by or there were cat fights. It was really fun. We watched Mama Ali make the chapati dough. We learned the word for hippo: kiboko.
Then we went to bed, where we proceeded to discuss how dirty our feet were and the best way to use the choo (toilet) and brush our teeth. We both go to the choo together and wait for each other. We decided this was the best way since the first morning we were there, I went by myself and someone walked in on me, even though I was informed people would always knock, and we should always knock. Not true. So now we go in pairs. Haha.
I think Mara and I will learn a lot of Kiswahili in our house. It's really fun to try to speak, but also kind of awkward. We also feel weird in the house sometimes. We started out eating just by ourselves and someone, usually Mama Ali (Dodo's wife), would serve us. We felt really awkward and asked Frank to tell them we wanted to eat with the family and they shouldn't feel like they should serve us. We just made it worse. Now someone in the family has to wait around to eat with us. Everything is exactly the same, except someone sits with us. It's been Dodo or Mama Ali. We just feel really awkward now. Plus, when they are there, they just put second helpings on our plates. Sooo full. We usually eat a meal and go take a nap, it's so much food. Now they kind of expect that. It's pretty funny actually.
This morning we took our first bucket shower. We were pretty sure our family thought we were getting smelly because they kept asking us if we wanted to wash and we kept saying no. But Mama Ali was boiling hot water for us and no one else knew about it. So we were trying to ask our bibi (grandmother) about it and she didn't know. Then Tony came out (he speaks some English, remember) and we tried asking him. He looked kind of awkward and was like, "Do you want to shower this morning?" It was really awkward because Frank had told Mama Ali that we would need water this morning, but it seemed like no one had prepared it. But then Mama Ali came to the rescue and got our buckets and everything. I still can't wait for an American shower, but it was nice to be clean.
I just have to say a bit about our bibi. She likes to tell us different greetings to confuse us. Then, when we don't know what to respond, she says (in English), "When I say this... You say this..." filling in whatever she's talking about. It's really funny.
Rachel and Beatrice live together. Their mama, Mama Zainabu, works with a women's group and orphans and her family and friends have already set up tons of teachings for us. We're kind of overwhelmed. We were supposed to use the first five days to map out our territory and meet with village leaders and survey people. But we've already had 3 teachings! It's crazy. It's really cool that everyone is so excited. We are trying to set up special hours in town meeting places so people can just come. It will be things like we will be here at this time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and we will have lesson plans and everything, so it will be organized. We'll see how things work out though.
The last thing I'll leave you with today is the quote that made my blog heading. We were getting settled two nights ago and Mara opened her deoderant and said, "You know it's bad when your deoderant smells." Then today, when we took our bucket showers, she took her towel out of its bag and it smelled like mildew, because it had been wet when she put it in. After her shower, she hung it up on our room and it smelled so bad. It was funny because I said, "Just stick your head in your armpit, because your deoderant will smell good." Then Mara was like, "It's bad when your armpit smells better than your room."
That's all for now. Except we did visit Sara, Sana, and Peery today. They have a HUGE rural area to cover. They are about 20 minutes from each other's homestays, which sucks. But they have a great area. I don't like being in the town, where we are. There are too many people and everyone is always watching what you're doing. I really liked where they were and wished we were out there.
Okay, more later!
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