Back In Touch

Hello,
My postings will likely be brief & infrequent. It's tough to get to an internet cafe and the access speed is a killer! Things are going very well. We are actually staying in the village where we work. It's 25 miles south of Dodoma. It takes about an hour from Dodoma. The road is very rough. The village name is Mvumi. We are working on two homes ~ one in Mvumi and one in the next village. The work in going well and the people are fantastic. The first day I worked on site 1 and we learned a lot and worked very structured. Our mason was a good teacher. Day two I worked at site 2. It was a huge change. The mason and others spoke almost no English. We do not have enough tools so have a lot of down time. During that time we play with the children and actually get A LOT more tired doing so. They are so excited we are here. Yesterday taught them songs and games (hokie pokie, ring around the rosey, hopscotch, the limbo, Old McD, etc.) I brought pages from a Swahili vocab book so we also sat and had an English/Swahili class. The kids loved it. They thought it was fun to see my photos and listen to me explain what was in the photos using Swahili. Challenging, but very fun!

The conditions are so different and too hard to describe here. It's a whole different world. Today we came into Dodoma to email and have a birthday lunch for me. It's been WONDERFUL. I never thought having a "real" meal and a western toilet to use on my birthday would be so exciting. ;) In the scheme of things, it's the best gift I could have asked for!

As expected, my team is fantastic. I think everyone is great! I better try to post this. I only have 10 minutes left and it will likely take that long to post. I will write more when I can. It may be quite a while. For those of you who worry - you know who you are - please don't. We are doing very well and are in good hands! It's been a great experience so far.