Settling in...only slightly wet

So my luggage saga continues. I got one bag on Saturday and so I moved my things into my new home. Here they call them servant’s quarters or an SQ which is probably a more accurate description. Then Bridget got a text message in the middle of the night on Sunday saying my other bag had arrived so I tried calling on Monday but no one would pick up until about 4 in the afternoon. I told them to drop it at Bridget’s house which is much easier to give directions to, but no one came until yesterday morning. After finally getting all my things in to the SQ I thought…great now I can get myself organized…so I opened the bag to unpack it and what did I find? Well all my things which is good since sometimes things go missing, but everything except for my slippers and one sweater were all wet…if only bags could talk.

Getting back to the weekend, on Sunday I went to church with Elizabeth (the lady I’m staying with) since I haven’t quite gotten the transportation thing figured out. The service started at 10:30 and ended three hours later…by the time we got home it was after 2pm. Those of you who have gone to an African church service you’ll understand this next bit, the rest of you just keep reading. We’re in a small room with concrete walls so everything echos, African’s, especially women feel the need to sing at the top of their lungs almost all the time no matter how off key they might be, and the sound system is kind of old and turned up way to high which amplifies the sound and the echoing. Kind of like being in a tin can. Once you get past all that, and standing for at least half of the 3 hours it was pretty good.

For the record, and to the disappointment of my dad I have not eaten or seen anything like monkey meat. Lunch at the office is whatever we find, pizza from the place around the corner once a week or someone walks next door to the grocery store to buy sandwich stuff. There is also a really good smoothie place just down the road that makes you feel like you’ve eaten a whole meal. At home however it’s a different story. The family I’m staying with is Congolese. Their food is similar to traditional Kenyan food but a little different. Omletes…really just eggs and onions…and bread has been breakfast since Sunday until today when no one had eggs to buy. Instead there was bread, peanut butter, and some canned, super oily fish which I passed on. Tea is also usually made but it’s a malted drink that tastes more like drinking hot chocolate. Not that I don’t like hot chocolate, but not at 7:30 in the morning, so yesterday I went and bought something that is more like what the rest of the world calls tea. Yesterday I also got a gas burner thing, not really a hot plate, more like a small propane tank with a burner that screws into the top and then a round metal piece on top that serves an the element I guess. Having it means I can heat my own water in the morning for my “shower”. Shower in quotation marks because I fill a tub, not a bath tub but a round plastic one that takes up most of the room in a normal sized shower, and then use a bucket to wash. It was a little awkward to start but I’m getting the hang of it. Using my own shower this morning was nice because I don’t have to leave the SQ until I feel like communicating with the rest of the world.

Anyway I should get back to real work now…which I’ll try to write about next time.