I'm finally caught up...lots to read!

Day 45 (10/19)
This was the big day! The home stay! We stayed from 8 to 5 and did everything the Mamas did.

We had our day-long home stay with a local family. We were grouped in pairs and then assigned to a family. We brought with us water, cabbage, cornmeal, cookies, sugar, tea, butter, cameras, and a radio for each pair. There was a group of 4 assigned to our boma, and then we were paired for each Mama. Our boma was close enough to the camp to walk to, the four of us walked with an askari (our camp guard) over to the boma. On our way there was an elephant and he had tucked himself in large bush, he was big too…we could only see the top of his head and back. The askari thought he was sick because usually they are not near people when morning comes, he ended up just hanging out there all day. He wasn’t near our boma but he was near the path to get back and forth between camp and the boma.

I was with Lauren, and we were assigned to a Mama named Agnes, she is an askari’s wife. The other two girls were assigned to the askari’s mother. Neither spoke English, and not a lot of Swahili. And lucky for us, we didn’t speak Maa, which was their main language. So there was definitely a language barrier but the it turned out to be part of the fun. I learned that I knew a lot more Swahili than I thought and it was helpful because Agnes was much better at Swahili than English. She mostly just said “yes” and “sit down” in English, and she said that every time we asked her something she would say “yes.” So after we realized that asking her things in English didn’t really work, we either would act it out or say it in Swahili. We got better at it throughout the day and our Mama was really patient with us, if there were misunderstandings it usually just ended up being funny.

We spent the first 45 minutes sitting and smiling at each other, meeting the children and watching some livestock. We discovered 2 female dogs there (one with week old puppies and one who was very pregnant) they also had a really cute little boy gray cat, who was actually really sweet (nothing like our kitchen cats at the camp).

After that we made a fire pit, in Agnes house (they put 3 large rocks in a circle and light a fire underneath and put the pots on top of the rocks to balance it) and filled a pot with water. Next she made us chai, and showed us how to do it. We added loose tea, milk, sugar and water, I spilled sugar all over the place, and when I was mixing the chai, I spilled that too (lucky me, it was a dirt floor). They drink chai all day, some people literally have 8 cups a day. After mixing, we sat and drank it, then we put it in thermoses (and surprise surprise we spilled the chai then too.) Agnes was a good sport about our cooking abilities though.

Their actual house consisted of a tin roof, mud/cement walls (it looked like it was mixed together) with logs on the outside supporting it all. You walked in the front door (and they all had actual wooden doors that locked) and there was a bench to sit on (it fit 3) and then chairs set up, sort of like a living room. And then within the room, a little further down there was a fire pit and benches around the sides of the house to sit on. She also had good sized windows that had a wooden door that you could open or close. The other room was the bed room, we actually didn’t really go in there but it had a cloth door and a bed that was on the floor. Agnes’ house was actually quite nice compared to come of the other bomas, most have a grass roof, walls mixed with mud and poop, and small holes in the walls for windows.

After we finished our first cup of chai, Agnes’ friend Susan came over, and she is crazy! She tried to teach us words in Maa, but didn’t know what they meant in English, and she was very high energy, a lot of fun. She insisted on a lot of photos, doing things like stirring food and pretending to eat. We let her take pictures and they ended up being completely off center or cutting off our heads or just showing an arm. They are so funny. We then drank our second cup of chai because we had to offer a cup to our guest and drink a cup with her.

We started to make lunch around 10:45 and Agnes had me cut cabbage, and Lauren cut tomatoes. I used the sharpest knife I’ve ever touched and was a little scared of chopping my finger off. We then cooked the ugali (which is corn meal and water..it basically it a really really thick oatmeal-cake mixture, and it has no real taste) and cooked the cabbage and tomatoes. At times the smoke was intense and made our eyes burn so we had to go outside, but other than that it was really cool to see how they cook every day.

One time, when we were hanging out outside the boma, Ohlibor, another one of our askaris came walking into the boma. Apparently he lives there too. He is older than the other askaris and doesn’t speak any English. I yelled to him and just said hi and he was SO happy to see us in his boma. He came over to me and gave me a huge hug, said something in Maa that sounded really happy…we laughed and then he walked away. Haha he is too funny, I wish we could actually understand what he says.

Then we ate what we cooked and ugali is extremely filling, they gave us huge portions and we couldn’t even eat it all…the little kids ate more than us. After lunch we sat around for about 30 minutes and then went to go get water. As in taking jugs that held 20 liters of water and walking about a mile to the closest stream (which happened to be right behind our camp). On the way we saw a heard of gazelle! We filled them up, and then tied leather straps to them so that we could carry them with the strap across our forehead, so that the barrel is supported by your lower back.

Neither of us could carry it like that, so we put the strap across our shoulders and supported it in our arms. Everyone we saw on the way back laughed at us….everyone. But we made it back and sat around for a little while again. Then we made some bracelets. Agnes told us the colors she wanted us to make and we put them on wire (but she did set them up for us) I made an all yellow bracelet (with about 4 beads that were different colored) and Lauren made an all red bracelet. Haha, I think she was trying to make it simple for us because she knew we wouldn’t be very good at making complex designs (which is very true.)

Throughout the day people were talking on the radios and fooling around with them. And then they made up stories about what they did, like someone said over the radio they saw a leopard…which was a lie. It was fun to play with the radio and communicate with our whole group…even though the idea was to be able to use it if you had questions or needed help. Our mama had NO idea how to use it, but a couple times her husband said something to her (and trying to show her how to use it was…interesting.)

The next task was to get firewood, we walked a little ways away from the boma and then happened upon a fallen tree. She proceeded to chop parts of the tree up with a machete. I was shocked at how good she was and how sharp the machete was. Lauren and I mainly just watched her cut and gathered the wood into one pile. Then we put it into 2 piles, that had to weigh 40-50 pounds each. Again we wrapped rope around them and Lauren and I had to carry them in front of us because it was easier for us then putting the strap on our heads. Again, everyone laughed at us. Agnes carried part of a decent-sized tree trunk back to the boma, holding it on her back.

When we got back, the all little kids had came home from school and they all wanted to greet us after that they started playing and there was lots of screaming and wrestling, boys will be boys…even in Kenya. We rested and watched them play, drank MORE chai and hung out. Finally we cleaned dishes (that seemed to magically appear), I think she was trying to find things for us to do. And then it was time to go. The whole day was a great learning experience.

After getting back, we had learned what others did…and we had it pretty easy. The guys went with the men to herd livestock and farm the fields. Some of the other girls helped to build the mud huts, others built fences, and milked livestock.

Something that was solidified for me today was the presence of SFS within the Kimana community. So many people thought so highly of our staff and how they have helped individuals throughout the many years that SFS has been around. It is truly an honor to be a part of something that not only has a strong foothold in the community but also a program that makes a real difference in community members’ lives.

Day 46 (10/20) and Day 47 (10/21)
These last two days everyone has been finishing up papers that are due, and today (21st) was our last real day of class. We have 2 study days and then finals are the next two days after that. So its been a little hectic getting ready for finals.
Then, after exams we are going right to SFS’s National Park Site for one week, and then camping at Lake Nakuru for another week. We start our Directed Research project for the remainder of the trip and have a few assignments in the middle of it. (And of course our big research papers to present to the community at the end of the program.)