Happy birthday Brotherrrrrr

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6-22 Wednesday @ 7am
I woke up and 4.30am and I've just been restlessly laying here until the light came out, and now I guess I'll fill you guys in a bit on the hap. It doesn't matter what time I wake up, once I wake up... I just can't go back to sleep - those of you who know me well, know that's not the case at home! I do go to bed very early here, I'm so tired by the end of the day but they don't make dinner until around 8.30ish so I eat at the am usually in bed by 9. We don't eat with the family, its just jake and I and than the two housekeepers, Bibi Sara and Shakira, who are sitting with the screaming babies feeding them. Those babies eat more than any child I've ever seen. They literally eat every hour.. not even kidding. And they SCREAM at a pitch that my eardrums have never had to register before. Oh my goodness, its crazy. I think screaming babies are one of those things in life that you just can't tolerate unless it's your own child. The first few weeks I somehow blocked it out and just dealt with it.. but it's starting to really get to me. The second I finish my meal, I head to bed (which is right next to the living room so I hear it all still) but its still not at the direct source so its a relief! So I went and bought a bunch of new pencils and sharpeners and erasers and chalk and all of that school supply type of stuff and brought it for the kids yesterday. I gave each one of the kids a new pencil/eraser to keep in their backpack so they can have it at home and practice. None of these kids have that kind of stuff at home, so they were pretty excited. It was Julia's last day (one of my sweedish girls) so she brought lollipops for the kids and that was pretty great! I do have a bit of an inner battle with that though, some of these kids have teeth that are just deteriorating completely and they're 5 and have only had the teeth for a couple of years! Others have cute little smiles, but there are some rotten teeth - and dentists don't exist in Usa River so these kids clearly don't get any dental care. Toothbrush/ Toothpaste is also an expense that may not seem neccessary to many of the families. So I LOVE seeing the kids eat sweets, I mean they absolutely love them - but I would love to see some dental care here!
I don't think I've mentioned it but I read a bit here and one of the books I read was Three Cups of Tea - I absolutely loved it and if anybody is looking for a good read, that's the one. It's truly inspirational and it's written from such a perspective that it really gives great insight from a western view entering the middle east. It's a true story, but quite exciting and really just incredible. I also found it a bit of a trip, seeing that I read it while in sub-saharan africa, and reading about rural afghanistan and pakistan - places that are so far behind in development that where I am! I mean, the villages described in the book are completely undeveloped, without even the basic neccessities such as a school! even here in Usa River, there are heaps of schools - government schools, english schools, and i think that there may even be a bording school.. though the people with money send the kids away to bording school usually in Arusha. Even though there are many schools here, there are WAY more kids and there are a disgusting amount of children that don't attend school. I just don't understand how a government can charge such high rates for young children to attend school in their country... the children are the future of the country, why would it be beneficial to create such a barrier between youth and education? And why does it cost so much to attend an english speaking school, when the "National Language" is Enligsh?!?! I still cannot believe that because nobody speaks english here!! I've picked up some swahili - its a very difficult language to learn for me though, just becuase it's so foreign. The latin based languages are much easier to pick up.. just becuase words often have similar roots and the conjugations are consistant. Swahili is much different because of the prefixes... conjugations take place through prefix, so when somebody says something, it's impossible to look it up in a swahili dictionary beacuse you have to figure out the root of the word, figure out where the prefix ends, and than look up the word. For example, hahahahahah, ohh this was classic- so Shakira, the new houseworker, always tries to speak to both Jake and I but she says some much so quickly that we are always lost... but I have a swahili to english dictionary, so I attempt to look up things she says, but its often tough becuase of the prefix thing mentioned above.. anyways, she's young and always giggling and thinks everything is funny, so we often interpert her words wrong, but this one way just great. She was holding the baby and kept saying all the stuff that we had no idea of, and than she kept saying, "umenielewa" so we looked that up in the dictionary, but it wasnt there.. so we realized that theres a prefix that means "you plural, or us as in a group of people" so we looked up the root word and 'lewa' means to get drunk.. and we were shocked! She's sitting there holding a baby, and when we were like "are you asking us to get drunk with you!?" she just giggled and smiled, because she has no idea what we are talking about but we all think that we are at an understanding, but Jake and I are a bit dumbfounded by the whole thing, like.. is she kidding- she's here to raise babies and she's been here a week and she wants to get drunk with the white kids living at the house.. what!? jake and I spent days laughing about it and talking about it, and I said that although it would be great to have drinks with the houseworkers (theyre both just great) but they are with babies all day, there's absolutely no way I would do that.. only if they got a day off or something (which doesnt happen, the live in the house and theres no such thing as a break or vacation or anything... I often think about how they are expected to have lives or meet people or anything.. quite sad) but anyways.. a few days later, she was saying it again, but also saying something about my shoes and water, the only works I could pick up.. so we started trying to figure out what she was saying and we came up with something along the lines of Shakira trying to say that we will put water on the table so noone will no she's drinking alcohol with us, or something like that. ANYWAYS, I'm so shocked by this whole thing that I ask her to write down what she is saying again (and keep in mind, this has been mind boggling us for the past 4 days) so she writes down the same damn word! I said to Jake that we HAVE to be missing something, theres no way she's asking us to get drunk with her.. but whenever we said "get drunk?" she would nod and smile than giggle, so we were quite convinced. I go and grab my dictionary again and start analysing the word again... I decided, MAYBE, just maybe, the prefix isn't umenie, so i take off the last 'e' and look up 'lewa.' Guess what 'lewa' means... IT MEANS, ' DO YOU GUYS UNDERSTAND?' and it turns out she was trying to tell me that water spilt on the table and got my shoes wet and now they're hanging outside, and she jsut wanted to knowing we understood. WOWWWWWWWWWWWW. Jake and I still laugh about that... but how similar is that?!?!? Umenielewa and umenilewa. WOW.

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