The adventure continues...Bodo - part 2

So last time I pretty much set the scene for my week in Bodo. So now let me get into the specifics of what I did and how I spent my time.

Sunay was our first full day there, and they took us swimming in the Indian ocean. Bodo is on the water, but on a little bay type area, so we took a boat about 15 minutes out to a sandbar off the coast of an island called Funzi Island (it;s a big tourist island, so you might be able to google it and find pictures and info). It was so beautiful and we were all just so excited to be in Kenya and in the Indian Ocean - it was a pretty sweet experience. The water was so beautiful and it was such an awesome day. We all got pretty sun burnt, despite the bottles of SPF 45 and over we put on. But that's what we get for trying to go swimming on the equator. For the rest of the week, I was pretty much the sunburn expert. People who had never really had bad burns or peeled kept asking me things like "So, does this look normal to you?", "Will this peel?" and "So, how long will I be peeling for?". I think it's the only time that my vast sunburn experience has ever been put to good use. I'm glad to say that although I did get a pretty decent burn, I was not the worst one in the group by far.

For the rest of the week, our days pretty much had the same structure. We spent the mornings learning Swahili, had lunch and spent the afternoons working on a small group research project. Mine was about all the uses for a coconut and the tree. And they do use it for EVERYTHING. But more to come on that later. There were a few days were there was a locals vs. sit student football (soccer) and volleyball games. There were 4 games total, and we got killed in both football games, beat in one of the volleyball games, and despite a valiant attempt by us at the last volleyball game, we still lost. But it was a lot of fun and everyone really enjoyed it.

After class and the various after school activities, we would all go home and spend time with our families, which I loved. My family was awesome at including me in everything, and all I had to do was ask my brother "What is (s)he doing?" and he would explain it to me and then who ever it was would let me try it. I usually failed, but my family was very patient and had a great sense of humor about it all. Most of the things that I "helped" with involved cooking, so I think I should take this opportunity to explain a little bit about Kenyan food.

It is very, very carb based. Atkins would have a heart attack if he came over here (sorry about the bad pun, it wasn't intentional, I promise). I'll describe the food in the village, but its pretty similar in Nairobi too. The main staple of dinner is called Ugali. It is literally just boiled water mixed with corn flour until it comes to a consistancy that resembles mashed potatoes (but no where near as tastey). It is very dry and bland. So to go with it, they make a simple version of vegetable stew that is actually very tastey. It could also be served with cabbage, kale, both of which I really like. Other times it will be chicken - on the bone of course, or fish. Yes, I did eat fish. About 5 times in 8 days. And I realized that I really don't like fish. Before coming here, I hadn't had any fish in about 7 years, so eating it here was a huge step for me. Especially when my mom would just hand me a whole fish that had been boiled, complete with bones, the skin and the head still on it. Yeah, I was a little freaked out by that. But I sucked it up and ate it - I could tell that it was a rarity for them to have, so I didn't want to offend them. But don't get excitied - I do not plan on having fish for a very long time after this program is over. Other then that, we would sometimes have rice in place of the ugali, which was a nice break. For breakfast (aside from the chai of course) was chapati - its almost like a pita without the pocket and a little thinner. Hard to describe, but absolutely amazing. It has quickly become one of my favorite foods. We would also have mandazi in several variations - some were similar to biscuts or donuts or fried dough. They were also very good, although a little sweet for breakfast. And the funny thing is that they use the same spices in the mandazi as they do in the chai, so everything kind of tastes like the tea. But I like it, so it wasn't too bad. Oh, and we ate with our hands. And since it was a Muslim community, only our right hand. It was a little weird to get used to at first, but now I really like it. It was even kind of weird when I came back to Nairobi and all of a sudden had to use silver wear again. And when I tried to explain to my family that it was considered rude to eat with your hands in America they didn't really get it. Ahh, cultural differences. Gotta love them.

Anyway, my mama and sister would always let me help stir the ugali or roll out the chapati or mandazi and it was so awesome. And don't worry, my brother insisted on taking pictures of me doing all of this, so they'll all be up eventually, and I'll post the link when I can. Although, at slow connections that charge by the minute I don't think that's going to be until I get home in May...The kids in my family were so cute about taking pictures. I was a little hesitant to take it out at first, but they LOVED it! They would pose for a picture and then run to surround me and look at the picture I had just taken. They all loved it and I am planning on making them an album to send back to them soon.

Anyway, like I said, it was a Muslim village, so it was very conservative. I made the mistake of letting my knee show one afternoon, and my sister made it appoint to com over and pull my skirt down to cover it. And I wasn't ever able to go out of the house without my head covered by something. Definitely an interesting experience coming from America. But I got over it after a few days and enjoyed how ridiculous we all looked with our mismatching outfits and struggling to keep our head scarves on.

As far as daily life goes, hanging out with my family was definitely the coolest part. Even when they were all speaking in Kidoge or Swahili I enjoyed listening to them and trying to figure out what they were talking about. I'm not sure that they fully understood why I was there, but they were still glad to have me anyway. I was continually amazed by everything - women carrying 5 gallon jugs full of water on their heads, how welcoming everyone was, how resourceful they were, but mostly the kids - especially the young girls. My 7 year old sister would get up everymorning at about 6 to wash the dishes and sweep out the house. No questions asked. Young girls would be carrying babies that were about half their size and e totally comfortable with doing it. They all also know how to cook, clean and pretty much run an entire household by the time they are 10. I just kept thinking about what I was doing when I was about 8. I'm pretty sure I was still eating mud and playing hockey with barbie heads in the basement. And these kids are so responsible. They would play games and have fun, but they also just understand that they need to do all of these other things and get it done. Its amazing. I'm pretty sure my 7 year old sister is more responsible than I am.

They are also so generous. They share everything they have and even gave me presents! They gave me a really cheesy straw hat, straw fans, a little basket, and my favorite - a 5 foot long woven mat that is amazing. It's got these great colors on it - straw, maroon, green and purple and I'm in love with it. Right now its rolled up in the storage room at the SIT office, but I'm really excited to have a chance to use it. Oh, Gaby and Daryn - it is going to be somewhere in the room next year. You'll just have to deal with it.

So, in writing this, I'm realizing that I could go on for days writing about this one week alone. And this is already getting pretty long, so let me just wrap up with one more story. Like I said above, they use coconuts for everything. And as you may know, coconut trees are very very tall. Some were easily over 100 feet tall. So with no machinery or electricity to get them down, you can see the problem that would arise. So to get them down, they have special people who are trained to climb coconut trees. We got to see one of them in action and it was possibly the craziest thing I've ever seen. The get up the tree by using a rope (made from the coconut tree palms) around their feet and literaly jumping/shimme-ing up the tree. They go up so fast - it takes them less then 3 minutes to get up the 100 foot tree. Oh yeah, and did I mention that they carry a machete on their back in their shorts? Yeah, they do. Like I said, crazy. So once they shimme up the 100 foot tree with only a rope and a machete they cut the cocnuts off and they just drop down. Unfortunatly I couldn't see how they manage to do this without falling out of the tree - the palms were in the way and it was really really high. We only saw the coconuts fall and then saw him shimmi back down the tree. Again, in under 3 minutes. Then he cut them up for us and handed them out to all of us. Talk about fresh!

As promised, I'll wrap it up here. I hope the length wasn't too overwhelming for anyone, and I appreciate you reading this far! So until next time...