Lazy Mzungu

SO much has happened since my last post I'm not even sure where to begin.

Since getting to Morogoro training has more or less consumed our lives. The first week was A LOT of Kiswahili, which doesn't end when we leave for the day as we go back to our home-stays to speak and learn even more language from our families. I can tell the work has started to pay off however because yesterday I had my most successful discussion with my family in Kiswahili to date. Unfortunately, the discussion was about my apparent laziness.

The plan originally was for me to do my laundry on Sunday (our only day off) but there was some sort of water problem in the village, so it didn't get done. Now, Nora, my dada, is supposed to show me how to do the laundry, as I have never done it by hand before. But, without water it was impossible, and she told me that we would do it kesho (tomorrow.) I was perfectly fine with this of course as Sunday was our first day off since being in Morogoro, and my training group took advantage of the time to work on a group project at the local bar.

I didn't think anything of it and I assumed that Nora would tell my mama, who had gone on safari for the weekend. Little did I know, this message was never passed along and the story was somehow twisted when it was told to Mama. So as we are sitting in the darkness of that night's power outage before dinner my mama asked me something that I understood completely, accept for one word. What does that mean? I asked? "Lez" they translated. "Lez?" I asked. Grace, my youngest dada was sitting on the couch to the right of me. "Lazz" she tried to enunciate. I still didn't understand. "Lazz" they all said together. "O, LAZY!" I said with excitement as I deciphered their translation. "Wait, lazy?" I reconsidered. "You think I'm lazy?!" The room exploded with laughter. "Hapana maji jana!" (No water yesterday) I exclaimed. The laughter was uncontrollable and for all of the embarrassment I should have felt, instead I felt incredibly proud as the ENTIRE conversation was in Kiswahili, minus the new vocab word for lazy that at this point escapes me.

It was really a great moment and made me feel even closer to the family. Even better, the conversation that followed (again in Kiswahili) was about at what time today we would wash my clothes which are in GREAT need of the attention...

Hope to have more photos by my next post!