Sista Sky

5/20/10 PM
Sooooo….Today we ate French toast for breakfast. I also cut up an apple and ate homemade peanut butter with it. The peanut butter literally tasted like Leonard made it 30 minutes before breakfast. Yum. I also learned that the fried chicken we ate yesterday was bought from Ms. Mono next door. I personally saw her chicken coop today by the way. It was kind of sad to see the chickens in the coop, but I was kind of glad to know that my chicken was as fresh as it could get. No KFC, Bojangles or Shomars here!
Today we went to town (Kolomo) to exchange our money for Kwacha (I totally don’t know if I am spelling that right). $1 is equal to about $5000 Kwacha. So I exchanged $180 dollars and got over 800,000 dollars in Kwacha. Wow. It seems like a lot of money to get from the bank in hand. I went to the store and bought a Sprite for $5000 Kwacha. What?! That is very expensive I thought! Then I remembered that it was only $1 ;) It takes a while for you mind to wrap around this idea after you have spent some much time dealing with our money system. When we went to the market I was looking at a piece of cloth and then they told me that it cost 10,000. What?! $10,000 for a piece of cloth? Well sir I have over 800,000 Kwacha in my pocket sooooo I guess I can afford it!
Now the market is literally tree branches strategically placed so that you can put cloth over top to make a roof…..It is a huge maze kind of thing. One of the men came up to me “Sista, Sista….******.”
Marja: I’m sorry sir I do not speak Tonga; however, I do speak English. Do you speak English?
Man from the market: No I do not speak English.
Marja: What do you mean? You just spoke in English.
Man from the market laughs…
Man from the market: You money? I hungry. I eat (Man laughs)
Marja: I’m sorry I don’t speak Tonga. ( I walk away…quickly) (You have to be careful about how and when you show your money, etc.)
Now, I am the only person of color in my group so all the girls thought it was absolutely hilarious. Actually it really was because “Sista” didn’t know what was he was saying. Now my new name is “Sista”.
Actually we all came up with travel names before we began our trip. My first travel name is Naomi but my second travel name is Sky. Some of the other names are Kenya, Maple, Charlotte, Chloe and I don’t remember the rest right now.
I am having a wonderful time here. We are taking this week to meet the people and get adjusted to the community. Next week we will begin working with the children in the Haven. First we will help the Aunties (this is what they call any woman who cares for family or children) take care of the children. If they need help changing them, feeding them, etc. Our main purpose is to help with speech and language needs; however, now we want to do more helping than getting in the way. It will take some time for the Aunties to get used to us being around so we will just go with the flow at first. We will work on feeding the little ones with special needs and will begin having language lessons later on next week. We have a huge shipment of medical supplies/speech-language supplies coming so that we can teach the Aunties how to teach language lessons with different themes, etc. The children have responded well to the lesson/themes left from last year.
I am really excited about the work here. This morning we went to chapel and heard beautiful African harmonies. We were also introduced to the first year college students. Dr. Tullos and Dr. Weaver will be teaching introductory classes while we are here. There is another speech therapist from Tenn. who specializes in feeding. I will help with speech/language lessons and supervise the graduate students in these areas. The other SLP will help with feeding and supervise in this area. I am eager to learn new trends in feeding and she is eager to learn more about serving young children in speech/language groups.
I don’t want to talk them up but mosquitoes are not really a problem. We do have spiders in our living space though. No biggie. Tonight I took a shower by head light. Sounds great doesn’t it? Super romantic right? Wrong… Our power went out briefly so I had to take a shower with the head lamp. The water is either hot or cold. It is a waste of time and water to try to find a happy medium. So imagine me in the shower with a head lamp trying to maneuver around extremely hot water with steam coming billowing up into the dark It is different from the US but it is really not that bad at all. I am really enjoying everything. Each experience brings about new adventures. Even when the lights went out we just laughed, lit a candle, put on head lamps and kept it moving. The atmosphere is so positive.
Ohhh yeah…Ms. Mono (the lady with the chickens) also makes really nice bags. You can take her your cloth and she will make you anything you want. She has really beautiful sling bags and little purses/wallets for you to buy. She is very kind. She also grows a lot of the vegetables that we have been eating (cabbage for the slaw and the tomatoes) .
The students said that they will teach us to sing and African dance. I am the one who has come to give of my time, experience and knowledge; however, I think that I will come away with much more than I can give. Until next time!!!
“Sista Sky”