These are the days

We did our family picture this morning. As soon as the volunteers from down the road arrived with their camera, my mama hurriedly put her pretty black shawl on, and summoned my baba from his room. We waited a few more minutes, to get our neighbor couple and their daughter into the picture. The six of us posed, me with the only toothy smile (many adults here take having their picture taken very seriously).

We had more Swahili lessons this morning, then went up the road to the next village to learn how to make tippy taps. Tippy taps are a simple construction to provide hand-washing stations wherever needed, such as a home or school. It is basically a water jug with strategic holes that is suspended on a simple frame, that, when made properly, will tip out a sprinkle of water when you step on a foot pedal. My homestay actually already has one, but it was good to see how one is made from scratch.

Today was very hot, and after our learning session several of us decided it was a soda baridi day. So we walked the mile or so to get cold soda. Always worth it.

My village trainees split off on the way back to take our last trainee's family picture, as we need to submit them tomorrow, to be sent to the city, printed, and framed to be gifts for our host family. The sun fell hot on his courtyard, but we spent a few minutes relaxing on the mat on his front porch, the breeze and shade taking away the heat.

Our final task for the day was to build a fence for the garden we have started to build near our "school". We gathered our tools and started to formulate our plan, hammering poles into the ground surrounding our garden. We were soon assisted by a young boy, probably ten or eleven, and another guy about our age, who live nearby. The boy schooled us on machete skills, and the guy took charge of our slow decision-making and directed us in the construction. Building a fence had never been so much fun as the six of us speaking two different languages, not really understanding what one another was saying, but understanding the project we were working on.

The sun set and we headed home. The mountains were beautiful in the distance.