Msifuni Bwana (Praise the Lord)!



Sunday is a lazy day, but I try to begin by going to Mass which, in Swahili, is a delightful experience.  I’ve always enjoyed going to services in a foreign language, whether Latin, Spanish, Italian or now Swahili.  Here, the Mass goes on for about an hour and a half, and there’s a lot more singing, clapping and swaying.  The experience becomes more mystical for me because I don’t understand it, much like chanting.  Every religion seems to have some version of chanting, repetitive prayer, mantras, which transports the believer into another mental state.  So, beyond what I actually believe, the mystical state is what I’m after. 


Of course everyone stares at me, being the only light skinned person.  The children, especially, are not shy about staring.  Another CMMB volunteer in S. Sudan said that children actually fear her and start crying because they’ve never seen a white person. Usually, I give them a smile and they will eventually smile back before breaking eye contact.  When Leigh and I go to the market on Saturdays, it’s always a circus.  Everyone wants to greet us “mzungus” with the broken English they know, especially of course the men want to talk to my young blonde Canadian friend.  We take it in good stride, with humor, and that goes a long way.


                                   

The other day we got brave and went to a bar where there was supposed to be live music at 6:00 PM, but when we arrived closer to 7:00 the crowds were watching soccer—the national sport that no one was going to interrupt.  So we watched soccer for another hour and a half, which was pretty fun.  The musician eventually started playing along with some canned rhythm but by then he didn’t have much of an audience because the crowds left after the soccer game was over.  We did run into a friend of Ryan’s, who invited us over for lunch on Sunday.  That was our first time being invited to a local’s house, so we were excited.  Patrick, Ryan’s friend, is actually Ugandan, and Ryan had spent Christmas with him in Uganda. They live in a tidy little apartment on a dusty road. Patrick’s wife Faith is quite pregnant, but somewhat lonely, as she knows no one here.  They are here for Patrick’s job, which involves social services with another NGO. We talked about the differences between Uganda and Kenya, what it’s like to get married and deliver a baby in both countries, what their families were like and so on.  Faith made a delicious rice dish and served us papaya, and we watched Ugandan TV on a big screen.  Wow; middle class life in Mutomo!

 

 


Often in our compound, we see the local livestock wandering through, and of course lots of birds, stray cats, geckos, and the occasional hedgehog (which comes out at night), and sometimes a baboon. We are a bit intimidated by the baboons, which make a dreadful noise when they are fighting.  They live in the distant trees, but one night I heard a clattering sound and a strange mammalian laugh just outside my window.  It sounded like an animal knocked something over on the porch and vocalized in a way that was almost human.  It scared the living daylights out of me!

Another time we saw a baboon go into Ryan’s house and steal 2 carrots off his kitchen counter; he was actually in another room at the time and never even noticed.  They can be pretty bold…


This week I realized I am hitting the halfway mark, and now feel a sense of urgency about how I want to spend the rest of my time here.  While I’m hoping to observe the community health volunteers, and maybe some of the outpatient clinics, I’m acutely aware of not wanting to be the volunteer that has to be babysat.  People have their jobs to do, and I don’t want to be in the way.  I still have some ideas of ways to be helpful, but this always has to be tempered by cultural sensitivity.

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