OK…so the first half of this post was supposed to go on the last one but it was too long. So we’re going back almost a week first.
Sunday…was an ADVENTURE. Church starts at 8 (read: 8:30) so we did English service until 10(read: 10:30) (which involved me getting up in front of the 50 people to introduce myself) then Bible study by age group until 11 (read: 11:45), (which involved me getting up in front of another 50 people to introduce myself…see more people had come by then) and then Swahili service (which involved me getting up in front of 300 people to introduce myself…as well as lots of semi-choreographed dancing…at one point everyone was supposed to be twirling their handkerchiefs in the air and I didn’t have one so I was just standing there but the lady on my left was twirling the half of her shawl that was over her shoulder and I narrowly missed getting poked in the eye 39 times by the tassels on the end of it ) until about 1:30. Then we came home and had lunch and headed out to Evening service at 3 (read: we left the house at 3:30) So when we got there it was starting to drizzle. It was at someone’s house, because the woman’s father had died recently, and the tradition is to have a church gathering at their house to comfort the family (If someone I loved had just died, I would not want 100 people in my house that week, but I guess it would be nice to have lots of people there to take your mind off things…I’d just rather it not be in my house where I had to clean or cook for all these people. But I don’t think anyone cooked or cleaned for us because it was outside and I didn’t see any food.) Anyway, it was outside and there was a series of tarps over half the chairs they’d set up. They had finished worship and started preaching when we got there, and he was just finishing as the rain got bad. Everyone with umbrellas ran home and everyone else crowded under the awning of the house or the tarps. That wasn’t much good because there were lots of holes in and between the tarps, which resulted in not only getting rained on, but getting poured a stream of all the water that was collecting on the tarps. Oops. So eventually someone from the church who lived 20 ft. away invited Nancy and I into his house so we went there to wait out the storm. Once it stopped we walked home.
Monday, we went to someone eeeelse’s house for a Bible study. When we got there a half hour after it started they were just finishing up worship, which was in Kikuyu, and involved beating animal hide drums with short wooden sticks. It felt like Africa! :-P
So there were about 20 people crammed into a room not much bigger than a large American bathroom, so it was noticeably 10 degrees warmer inside than outside. I was asked, once again, to get up and introduce myself even though I was sure all those people had heard my by then. I’d decided that if I had to do it again I would try out my Swahili so I told them my name and I’m from NY and I’m in Kenya for 6 months and I want to be a doctor and work in Kenya, etc. and apparently they were highly impressed by me knowing Swahili…. Now I’m 100% positive they weren’t impressed WITH my Swahili…because it even sounded bad to ME, but they could have been impressed by my at knowing enough Swahili to get my point across, which I think is what they were. :-P
People are STILL having issues with my name…I’ve given up saying “Danielle” because they always think it’s “Daniel” and I can see the confused look on their faces until I say “it’s LIKE ‘Daniel’, but with ‘l-e’ on the end” and then they say “ooh…” but still don’t really know how they should pronounce it. So now I say “Daniela” which is how they usually end up pronouncing it anyways, but they still don’t really like that. They often ask for my other name, like “maybe this one will be better” and everyone likes “Elizabeth” better, it doesn’t seem that much easier to say than “Danielle” or “Daniela” but some people have decided they will call me that.
Also, I discovered that many people think my hair is a weave. I had a hard time convincing someone the other day that it was my real hair, it grows out of my head, and wazungu don’t wear weaves…they wouldn’t stay, our hair doesn’t stay in braids, and we shampoo it every day or every couple days depending on the person. Shock ensued. :-P Alice keeps telling me she wants my hair instead of hers…she refers to her hair as a bush, and mine as velvet. Haha!
So..you know how I am almost never sitting the right way in a chair? More often than not I have at least one of my legs or feet under me and I’m curled up in some strange way. You’d think a skirt would limit that but I have found many ways to tuck this here and that there so that I can still sit however I want and maintain decency. So I have never thought anything of it, but apparently NOBODY in Kenya sits or has ever sat like that. I learned this today when I was informed that someone asked Nancy if I had legs. She had never seen anyone sit like that, and she saw me on a chair with my legs up under me. I laughed out loud when she told me that one.
Today I attempted to wash my clothes. I KNEW the girls were going to laugh at me when I did it, because I don’t really know what I’m doing so I just make something up. So they were all going to wash a car somewhere so I took the opportunity to go wash my clothes. There’s this trough outside with a few faucets on it. So I’m halfway done with the first batch and one of the girls comes out and I told her not to watch me because I didn’t want them to make fun of me. She laughed but went away. Then 2 more come out and I told them not to watch me either, but they decided they were going to help. 3 minutes later, the 5 of them had completely taken over washing my clothes and I was standing there with NOTHING to do. They literally shoved me out of the way and started washing and ringing out my clothes. I would have thought I would have liked that because in general I don’t like doing it but I’d watched them washing enough in the past 2 weeks (they wash their uniforms every night) that I had a much better idea of what I was doing and I thought it was going well. Plus their idea of “getting all the soap out” is dipping a shirt in the water you just used to de-soap 5 other shirts like 2 or 3 times and then wringing it out. And I’m like noooo there’s still soap in there!
Also, before the complete takeover had happened I was still trying, when one of the girls tried to correct my technique. She kept saying “like this” and I kept getting it wrong. Then I realized there was nothing special about the way she was scrubbing the clothes..the point is to rub two parts of the cloth together…why does it matter how you’re holding it? The oldest girl, and Nancy when I told her later, agreed, but the rest of them couldn’t fathom how I could do it any other way. Oh well. I guess I’ll be resigned to being laughed at, because I still don’t really get how she was trying to show me to hold the clothes…:-P
Last night I got my first official ugali-making lesson though I’ve seen it a billion times before. It took me a few tries to get the lump of goo to stay together as I was trying to flip it over to cook the other side, but eventually I got it…of course with lots of laughs from Rachel.
Tomorrow I am going to Nairobi for my first Kenyan wedding (though they said it’s going to be relatively western in style ) so I’m sure I’ll have lots of commentary about that when it’s over. I am traveling with the pastor of the church here, who is also going to the wedding…but I don’t know what time he’s planning on leaving. I asked him this morning and he didn’t know, and I’ve not seen him since. So it’s supposed to start at 10:30 in a city 1.5 hours away so..maybe I’ll wake up at 10? :-P
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