Where the details are reveled in

Daily Life

Yesterday during our Swahili lesson I was able to use many new words to tell what I had done the previous day.  My life here as a nurse is still to be writ, but I have been keeping busy as the partner of a busy working professional.  Here is a log of Wednesday’s activities:

• Wake and ready for the day, including a necessary significant amount of food to ensure a healthy stomach (we are taking a prophylactic malaria med called doxycycline which can cause very upset stomach or esophagitis if not taken with food) and applying of sun screen (doxy also increases sun sensitivity).
• Walk to Swahili lesson, 45 minutes
• Swahili Lesson- Verbs, Tenses, 1 hr
• Get a ride into town part way with a supportive researcher and our conversation centers on her suggesting three other contacts about public health opportunities.
• Walk the rest of the way into central town, taking a few snippets of video with my phone ( the phone is easy as I am a rather self conscious photographer at this point…) 20 minutes
• Browse in Nakumatt looking for suitable hair trimmer/beard trimmer. Not found.  Notice there are bicycles for sale (not that I yet have the courage to ride on the road). Pick out some beverages for tonight’s ensuing dinner with company. I choose 2 cans Sierra Amber, 2 bottles Whitecap, 2 small bottles of dry cider. Also purchase more candles to help with the weekly planned outages as well as some unplanned ones. 25 min
• First leg of walk home. I take a new route and struggled to keep the dust and dirt from blinding my eyes as the wind whips and trucks blow by.  I consider taking what seems like a short cut along the train tracks and away from the main road. 45 min.
• Stop at small produce kiosk to buy a kilo of tomatoes (nyanya- this is a great word and is also used for “grandmother”) for the equiv. of $1 U.S. Surprised to see another mzungu, a blonde woman with sunglasses, this far out from the center of town
• Walk rest of way to house. 20 min
• Wash dust and dirt from face. 5 min.
• Write a bit for this record, learn how to upload videos. 30 min.
• Warm up and eat left over Indian food from last night’s dinner out. 20 min.
• Send email to researcher thanking her for contacts regarding public health projects.
• Begin cooking black beans which have been soaking for past 2 days
• Polish my dust caked shoes (this is the second time for my shoes since arriving, it is a thing that is done here- that’s all I’ll say for now) and polish Deb’s too.1 hr (I will get faster)
• Begin cooking squash, add onion/garlic to beans
• Wash clothes. (we are lucky to have a small electric machine which helps. The process is a bit more involved than back home though, and attention is needed every 10 or so minutes to manually move to next cycle and the machine is only effective if a little bit is done at a time.) Hang clothes to dry. 1 hr
• Take out compost, harvest kale, cook rice. 10 min
• Finish cooking meal, set table and greet Ben and Deb as they arrive from work to the house after walking from town.
• Enjoy beverages as we show Ben the amazing garden and house and continue remark on the somewhat strangeness of finding ourselves living here in this house
• Have a dinner of black beans, rice, eggs, squash, and kale (a staple here called sukuma wiki- our tutor explain it literally means something like “to hold out or make it through another week”)
• Have a nice evening enjoying Ben’s company
• Wash big stack of dishes, heating water to help with the cleaning of dishes
• Boil water to tomorrow put though the filter for drinking
• Climb under the mosquito net to sleep.