One week past in a somewhere of Africa

Tomorrow will be one week of homestay already. I feel like I should have made more progress than I have, but that's water over the dam, or under the bridge, or a sunk cost, as they say.

I'm pretty sure my feet will be perpetually stained with the red dusty clay that is everywhere. It gets everywhere: soaked into the edges of your notebook paper, into your clothes, seeping into the soles of your feet.

Sometimes you feel like the land is claiming you. You feel like the heat and the water scarcity and the sun are all very good reasons not to be here.

But people are, have been, and will be here.

The ice cream bicycle man cycled by today as we were waiting for our ride to our group lesson today. Nothing sounds more tantalizing than the small bell chiming closer and closer every time he pedals his old bike with a green cooler of Popsicles bungeed onto the back. It was a bit of a Pavlovian moment.

But unfortunately our teachers advised us not to buy ice cream, because it could be made with contaminated water and could quite possibly make us sick.

The chimes moved away from us, growing fainter in the beating sun and waves of heat.