CALL ME MAYBE!

October 18, 2012

This Sunday started off with me waking up to Call Me Maybe playing on the sound system in my house! Yes, as crazy as it sounds we do have a flat screen TV and surround sound. It was a great way to start my day! My family loves to play music ALLLL day which I also love and my host brother John, who is 17 loves American music. I have tried to explain to him that rap music videos DON'T reflect the typical lives of Americans. I still think he believes that everyday we pop champagne and guys have girls shaking their booties all day erry day. I'll keep working on changing his mindset.

Sunday, was another successful day in learning how to live in Kenya. I'm a little ashamed to say.......it was my first time washing all my clothes by hand.  I have washed shirts or skirts before by hand but never without running water. Without running water, washing ANYTHING is extremely different and more laborious as you can imagine. Like washing dishes. I have to get use to the idea that everything might just be a little dirtier while I'm living in Kenya but that's totally okay! I'm really learning what it means to work for my clean clothes, my food, and to live. I'm also learning how soft my non labored hands are. As Catherine and I were washing clothes, she kept correcting me on my scrubbing technique. I was scrubbing in ALL the WRONG places. When it comes to trousers, you scrub where the end of the pant leg is, for shirts where the armpit place is, for socks you take either end of the sock and scrub together. These places seem quite obvious but I thought you gotta scrub everywhere to get the clothes clean but she told me it was a waste of time, I would be spending hours trying to scrub every area of all my clothes. Rule of the day: Only scrub where it's needed! By the end of my load, I was tired, my legs hurt from squatting and my hands were as red as hands would be when all they have had to do in the past was throw clothes into a washing machine. But despite all that, I felt so accomplished! I just worked hard to have clean clothes. I realized at that moment after all was done, how spoiled I have been and how fortunate American's are to have washers and driers. I think it's a good thing to wash your own clothes without running water at least a few times. Realize the effort it takes millions of people around the world who don't have the luxury to buy a washer and dryer to have clean clothes. I challenge anyone who reads this, for one week try to wash your clothes without running water. Or at least fill up your buckets with the running water because I don't think there are going to be many wells or rivers you can get your water from haha and then wash your clothes by hand and hang them to dry. You will appreciate how easy it is to throw a load into the washer even more then you do now and save a lot of money on the water bill!

 A 

After washing clothes outside and might I add with the chickens running all around us and my little host brother Brian, who is five and doesn't speak English, staring at me while I washed my clothes. Probably thinking, what is this fool doing?!? haha It was time to clean the house and my duties were to clean my room. I used a Kifagio a picture-->

 I believe everyone has seen one, it's a bunch of sticks held together by rope. It is a great cleaning tool and can be used for all sorts of cleaning. First I watched my Mama and Baba, meaning Mom and Dad, sweep the entire house with the Kifagio. Then they used the same broom to wash the floors with. They threw water on the ground and swept out the water with the same broom. In America you need like 5 different brooms to do all that work. Another pertinent technique to my successful living in Kenya, was the get low technique. When you sweep with this broom there is no up right standing. You have to bend those knees, get closer to the ground, really have a sweeping arm lol You hold the broom more vertically then horizontal like were use to. I got the technique down and my floor is spick and span!

Even though my Saturday and Sunday doesn't sound all that thrilling to most, to me they were phenomenal because I have learned so many things in just two days. I'm slowly learning how to navigate my way through a drastically different life style and culture. I'm remembering what it is like to truly truly appreciate all the things I have back in America. I'm living, not just reading what it takes for families to live in a 3rd world country. I'm getting to know, in my mind the strange concept of having a flat screen TV but no running water. I'm getting back to some basic ways of living for my own standards.

And what's funny is that this is just everyday life for my host family.

This standard of living is middle class in Kenya. There are many people who would think this life style is luxurious but we all have our lifestyles and I think what is most important is that we appreciate what we do have.