My family is SO sweet- Mama (Wanja is her name) is 38 and has a 7 year old girl (her name is Malaika--she turns 7 tomorrow actually) Baba Mordi (Dad in swahili--he's 42) is the east african regional director for a wildlife organization so he travels a lot but was home this weekend and I luckily got to meet him. He's leaving for Ethiopia tomorrow morning for the week, but will be back for the remainder of the month after that. My host mom has her phD in ichthyology(the study of fish) and works for the national museum doing research. She also travels a lot to attend conferences where she speaks about the depletion of fisheries around the world. Next month she will be gone for a week traveling to the US for a meeting (crazy that she will be in my country while I'm in hers) My little sister is SO cute. She's an only child and is loving having a bigger sister around. We've been attached at the hip since I arrived yesterday. She's such a diva and so hilarious. I'm sure I will be posting lots of Malaika quotes throughout the semester. Yesterday she asked me if I was pregnant (awesome) and today she was telling me I was crazy for not being married at 20.
Yesterday, right after my family picked me up from a retreat center where all us SIT students were staying, they brought me along to a wedding with them. Malaika was actually in the wedding as a flower girl. Being there was SUCH a cool experience. Kenyan weddings (or at least this one) are a mix between your average modern wedding and African traditional culture. I'll be posting pictures of the wedding on facebook when I upload a new album sometime soon! I thought it would be rude to ask but I'm pretty sure the people getting married are some sort of big deal in Kenya...one of the wedding guests was the attorney general of Kenya. There was also security there surrounding the church and scattered throughout the crowd during the ceremony. I think they were sketched out by me (I'm really pretty frightening) because some guy with an earpiece was glaring at me every time I looked over at him. He would look at me and then say something into his mic piece. It also could have had something to do with the fact that I was the only mzungu (Kenya's word for white person) in the whole crowd of about 500...who knows..
Today we spent the day at this pool near my family's house celebrating Malaika's 7th birthday. Again, everyone stared all day as I was the only mzungu in sight...I feel like I'm just going to have to get used to that.. Besides the stares, I really enjoyed the day-- I got to meet Malaika's cousins aunts and uncles and really felt like I was part of the family. Tonight when we got home I helped Grace (their house help) prepare dinner. My family speaks English SO well and they do not speak too much swahili in the house, but Grace speaks a lot more swahili and her English isn't as advanced..so she has agreed to take me under her wing and teach me a lot. As I helped her prepare stew (mom you'd be so proud--i'm finally learning to cook) she began teaching me new swahili vocab. I also told my family that tomorrow is an all swahili speaking day in the house to help me learn, so we'll see how that goes.
Tomorrow I also am attending my first full day of school at the office. 3 hours of swahili before lunch and then 3 hours of a health and society lecture after lunch. It finally feels like I'm studying abroad as opposed to just being abroad :)
Hmm..well I think those are all the updates for now! Until next time!
Megan
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