Sunday, October 10, 2010

10-10-10!

My first “day off” I decided to sleep in, which was really nice. Church (Lutheran) supposedly started at 09:00 but my sister and I didn’t get there until at least 09:30. I didn’t understand much of what was said but I was able to find one of the readings in my Bible and the music/singing was beautiful. We left during an auction time. People had brought various non-monetary donations that were sold to the parishioners. These included everything from eggs to bananas, bags of rice/flour/?, milk, chickens/roosters, cooking oil, a pig, a cow, etc. As you can imagine, these live animals were not quiet during the service either so they made things a bit more interesting…and annoying. During the service, I had to stand up and introduce myself along with the other visitors. Another PCT, Doug, was there too so I wasn’t the only mzungu. The Lutheran church is just a pavilion really: cement floor and pillars with corrugated roof. I wonder how common this is…at least there was a breeze because there aren’t any walls. (found out next day from Doug that the auction is to build the church)
My mama let me help cook again and I “made” ugali. I say this very loosely because I really just stirred the stiff porridge after someone else had added the maize flour to the boiling water. Mama says I can try rice next, which will be much more time-consuming than my quick-cook brown rice in the States. I can’t wait till I can cook Tanzanian food by myself.
After eating, my sister and some other female relative (mama’s younger sister I think) helped me wash my clothes. She said I am able to wash my clothes by hand, which is a good compliment because she said it soon after she showed me. I had a lot of clothes and am thankful the women helped me because it saved me probably a couple hours of work.
This weekend was the first time I was thinking, “What the heck am I doing?” I know that I am in the right place but I think everything was just finally getting to me. How did I deal with it? I wrote a letter to the person I would have called.

No comments:

Post a Comment

You'll actually look forward to your morning commute. Life is calling. How far will you go? Learn more about the Peace Corps