Africa Baby…

Posted in Training, Overall by Dom on November 18th, 2006

Yeah, so I’m here. I have been here now long enough that most of the things aren’t really new. So bear in mind this keyboard is not well and that I don’t have much time, so here we go.

We got dropped off for our homestay and I imediately picked out my “dad” by his crazy facial hair. He had sideburns that went straight into a mustache. So there was lots of singing and dancing.

The village was really neat. There is a small river that runs between it and another and that’s where we would wash clothes. It was really small and so we could hang out daily. Basically I would wake up at 5am, just because, hang out until 6, take a splash bath, eat breakfast of white/brown bread, or boiled potatoes or african cake, never at the same time. Go pile into the PC land cruiser to be shuttled to class. I taught math at a freshman level for about 5 weeks. It went well. After class we would come home for lunch and then language, I have to learn Chitumbuka. Which sometimes made the homestay extra hard because the village only spoke Chichewa, so I got a little of both.

There were some really sweet sunrises and sunsets and we hiked up a couple of nearby mountains, and went shopping in the market and had to shake a million hands.

That is all in past tense because I just got back from the village fairwell. I’m done. I lived in a mud hut in Africa, and spoke the language and ate the food. Sima, mmmm. The fairwell was really cool, we sang “Lean on me” and they did some singing, dancing, drum playing, acting, etc. etc. The ambassador came out as well as the country director. It was definitely a good time.

Again, not many details but have no fear I’ve kept a very detailed journal that I plan to transcribe digitally when I get back that will have more details than you could want.

Hey, and since Internet and definitely going to be scare, really great packages and letters are always appreciate. Honestly any letters are appreciated.

Ok so I really really appreciate all the comments. They keep me sane. I also know exactly the town I’m going to be in so if you want to know, you need to get in contact with the family. They should know. Tumbuka’s only spoken in the North fyi. Sorry there’s not more.