Today, a group of us wanted to go to the market. Mama Mary (Grace, Ume, and Rebecca’s mama)
said she would take us so we met at their house around 10:30am. I was prepared to take a dala-dala to the market
but nope, mama Mary wanted to walk. Considering
the dala-dala ride is 15 minutes, I was not looking forward to this 1+
hour-long walk. What I thought would be
a one-hour walk soon turned into a 3 to 4-hour tour around the town of Moshi,
and we never made it to the market.
First, mama Mary wanted to stop at this garden-jungle-ish place to buy a
plant. That took about half an
hour. While we were waiting for mama
Mary to pick out a plant, I think I took a picture of every single type of
flower that was in the garden. Next, we
stopped at a church so mama Mary could pray.
The church was pretty big and really pretty inside. There were many stained-glass windows that
are typical of most churches, but there were also these colored shuttered
windows that surrounded the top of the walls. It’s hard to describe so I wish I
could have taken a picture, but cameras weren’t allowed. After mama Mary had a chance to pray, we
continued our walk. There are no
sidewalks and the entire walk felt like a hike.
It’s hard to look up and enjoy the scenery because there are so many
rocks and branches and ditches—I play it on the safe side and stare at the
ground when I walk. However, I almost
got hit by two cars (mom, don’t freak out when you read this). The cars drive so close to the sides of the
road though! One car was literally
centimeters away from me and going pretty fast.
I swear it came out of nowhere, but it was pretty scary. Apparently a lot of people get hit by cars
here. Maybe that would explain why there
are coffins everywhere (something I keep forgetting to mention). On our walk to school, we pass by
approximately 10 bars and 15 coffin kiosks.
I kid you not, it’s real weird.
We stopped by the YMCA club which was really nice. All of us were saying that we want to go back
there and go swimming on the weekends.
There was also a really funny sign next to the pool that read:
“??”. Mama Mary was hungry, so we ended
up staying there for a while so she could eat.
I bought a cool soccer jersey from there before we left! Finally, we were getting close to the market
and some of us were running low on money so we stopped at an ATM. That was a whole fiasco… Becca accidentally
withdrew 400,000 shillings instead of 40,000 shillings and her and Matt somehow
did their math wayyyyy wrong and thought she withdrew the equivalent to
$56,000. Needless to say, Becca panicked
a little bit. Really, 400,000 shillings
is equivalent to roughly $250. But Becca
was uncomfortable having that much money on her person so she tried to convert
some of it back. We ended up waiting at
the ATM place for 45 minutes. So many
street vendors were coming up to us and trying to get us to buy their paintings
and jewelry, etc. At this point, we were all getting really tired too. After the ATM problem was solved, we
continued on our way. We ended up
stopping at two shops and spending 15 minutes in the first one and 30+ minutes
in the second one. When we were done in
the second shop, some people were hungry so we sat down to take a food break. At this point, mama Mary and everyone else
was so tired, we decided it was no longer a good idea to go to the market. As Adrienne said, you could look at today as
a success or a complete failure. It was
definitely a failure in terms of our purpose to go to the market; however, we
did get to see a lot of Moshi and we were able to go to a couple shops. So I guess that’s a success!! Also, all the walking gave us some exercise
(we called a taxi to go home though).
When we got home, mama was gone and I left the key in my backpack on my
bed so we were locked out. Adrienne and
I were fine with just playing with the kids outside, but Matt and Mike had left
their stuff in our room and they wanted to go home. I was determined to get the key from my backpack. I opened the window to my bedroom and tried
to reach my backpack through the window.
I was so close yet so far. Next,
Mike tried. He was closer, but still not
close enough. I searched around the
house for a stick and found a thin piece of wood that we could use to reach my
backpack handle. First, Mike tried and
failed. Next, I tried. It was really difficult, but I was able to
turn my backpack around and hook the strap onto the stick. Thanks for the muscles Jeremy. I got the backpack close enough that Mike
could reach it. Just as he had my
backpack in his hand, Delke walked up to us and handed us the key that mama had
left. Really Delke?? Haha…I guess that’s what happens when you
don’t know the Swahili word for “keys”.
Once we got into the house, Adrienne wanted to take a nap and I dropped
my stuff off and went outside to play with the kids. Delke, Rookia, Mwajuma, and Na wanted me to “take
a movie of them”. Unfortunately, the video won't load :(
Favorite girl! Found out her name is Na :)
I also
entertained them with a game of angry birds and introduced them to temple
run. Rookia was a pretty quick learner
with temple run, but they were all so amazed when I would play and would crowd
around and watch me, haha. I really didn’t
want to play… but they kept asking me to!
I played with them for about an hour but then I started getting sleepy
so I went inside and joined Adrienne with a nap. I slept until dinner time, and mama served us
chips na maiya again (fries and eggs).
That was my first real meal of the day, so I ate the entire thing. Afterwards, I took a bucket shower and went
to bed. Tomorrow, Ume, Adrienne, and I
volunteered to go to a 3-hour church service at Muchame church and deliver
books and toys to Muchame school.
In America news: Congratulations to my cousin Eileen and her husband
Greg on getting married today!! I wish I could have been there!!
No comments:
Post a Comment