Day #4

10:40 AM

Well! Today was an interesting day! Jenn had been sick through the night, so I called Dalton and asked if he could come at 12 instead of 9. Funny thing about time here. You say 9, it means 9:30. You say 12, apparently it means 10:30. So, off we went. This morning we were going to Dalton's mother's house. We thought it was supposed to be a meet the family, and see where Dalton had come from but apparently everyone decided that this would be the perfect time to hit up the muzungus for money for their various needs/ desires/ ambitions. We gave 1000ksh to Dalton's sister to take her baby to the doctor. We later found out that it would only cost about 50 ksh for the tests the baby needed. Whlie there, the same symptoms Jenn had experienced the night before started hitting me, so we asked Dalton and John to just take us back to the lodge. We didn't recognize the way back, and when we pulled up to a little shanty, we realized we weren't heading back to the lodge anytime soon. John wanted to introduce us to his family, which actually turned into a subtle hint at the fact he needed money so his daughter could get a brain scan. He said it was cerebral palsy, I don't really believe that. By now I was really feeling like dirt, so we rushed the visit, and left. When we finally go back to the lodge, I passed out for a few hours, and woke up feeling much better. We decided to head into town to do some shopping for the dust bin, and to go to the internet cafe. Lucky for us, Elvis, one of the many amazing staff members here was going into town so we had an escort. We were able to pick up the stuff we needed in no time, and get home by dark. We came across our first street boys begging us for bread, or money, or whatever we had. We gave Elvis money for a sim card and a phone card so we can hopefully use my phone while we are here. We made PB & J sandwiches until about 10:30pm and when we tried to wash the dishes, Elvis wouldn't hear of it! I tried to be all intimidating but he actually chased me out of the kitchen! Persistant little pain in the butt!

As for swahili, so far we have learned the following words (forgive the bad spelling):
lala- sleep
wewe - you
wewe rafiki yangu - you are my friend
asanti - thank you
jambo - hello
karibuni - welcome
karibou - you're welcome
hakuna - no
pole - sorry
pole pole - slowely
baya - bad
sawa - ok

-Breezey