An overflowing heart of thankfulness!

Some moments from the past week, both the mundane and the exceptional…

Laundry:
I did laundry by hand for the first time. It was quite a lovely experience. Here there are two options for laundry. You can pay three dollars and get the mamas to do it for you. They come Mon/Wed/Fri and wash your clothes so well you wouldn’t know that that your socks had been red-brown with dirt before the mamas turned them white again. The other option is to do it yourself in a bucket with some soap and whatever skills you happen to have. There is a print we have in my house in North Carolina of some Samoan women gathering in seaweed along the rocky shore of Samoa. When I was doing my laundry I felt just like those Samoan women, except I was doing laundry in a bucket instead of gathering seaweed in the ocean. I worked super hard at getting my clothing clean and darn if I didn’t do a good job I don’t know who did (besides the mamas!). It was also a wonderful moment for me of really being present with what I was doing. Here, there is so much to process and think about and understand and learn, that my brain is working overtime even while I dream. But as I washed my clothes there was nothing for me to think about or do except just be there with my soap and my red-brown water and my slowly getting whiter and whiter socks. I thoroughly enjoyed this, and I also enjoyed putting on my clean socks today and knowing that it was all due to my own hard work.

Orphanage:
Well, we went to an orphanage, just like every other cliché American group of students… and it was quite incredible! We built them a seesaw and a clubhouse to play on and in, laughed and ran around playing ball and soccer, and loved every minute of the dusty afternoon. There was so much joy and love and real life inside of the children. The orphanage we went to is known for their deep care for the children. It turns out that people in this area of African have started orphanages purely to make money for themselves. This may seem contradictory, but orphanages often get a fair amount of money from NGOs, the gov, and private donors and so people are able to fee the children the minimum, and make a fair amount of money for themselves. I know this may come as a shock or just pretty messed up, but at this point I feel like I am learning all the sides to every coin (it turns out most of them have more that two). I can imagine that maybe the family who started the orphanage had nothing before and now they can feed themselves and send their children to school. I am not saying that this is the case for all of them, or that it justifies using the orphans as means to make a living, but I am saying that the story may not be as clear as it first seems. In any case, we went to an orphanage with a very good record of sending the almost all of the money and donations they receive towards the health and well being of the children and it was a beautiful and rich experience of joy, love, and play.

Jiguz Night 2010:
Jiggers (spelled jiguz by our Swahili teacher when he was sounding it out!!!) are sand fleas that burrow into your fingers and toes and make egg sacks and live in your skin until they feel like going somewhere else or die. In a nutshell, they are repulsive! I have so far had three, as has my roommate and another student. Jiguz night 2010 was an evening spent in the chumba (dining room area) digging jiggers out of at least three students feet one of which was the biggest jigger anyone in the whole camp has ever seen! Eeewwwwww! It was huge and the egg sack was giant and the whole thing was super satisfying and utterly gross! So far no one has had a jigger get infected or anything else bad happen (besides having them in your feet or hands in the first place), which has been nice. It has also made me incredibly aware of my feet and their cleanliness, which can’t hurt.
Hope you enjoy!
Lovingthepinkandorangesunsetseverynight,
Sara