Call Me Hafsa

March 8th, 2009

Let me start off by apologizing for this post, I will try to sum up the past 2 weeks in as great of detail as possible, but just thinking about trying to describe everything that I have done, seen, learned and experienced is extremely overwhelming! But I will try…
So about 2 weeks ago our group took the overnight train to Mombasa, which was in itself an adventure. The cars are tiny and very old, the train randomly stopped in the middle of the night (in the middle of the African bush) for 2 hours, no one knows why…the food was pretty much inedible but everything was made up for by the amazing view of a million stars and the sunrise in the morning. I am so sorry that I can’t post pictures at the moment, the view was incredible. We passed many villages, and people and children would run out of their houses to come wave at us as the train went by.
We get to Mombasa, the major city on the coast, and it is HOT. I have never felt heat like I did in Mombasa, and it was unrelenting for the entire 2 weeks. There was not a moment, except maybe in the middle of the night, where I wasn’t sweating. We walked the streets to get a feel for the city and we also shopped for kangas, the traditional dress which is basically a giant piece of cloth that comes in 2 pieces, one to wear as a skirt and the other to wrap around your head. They aren’t necessary to wear in Mombasa, which is used to scantily clad white tourists, but in Bodo they are required. Bodo is the coastal village where we stayed for 9 days, about 2 hours south of Mombasa, only 9 kilometers from the coast of Zanzibar.
So we dressed awkwardly in our new attire, we looked vibrant and also very nervous, we must have been a very amusing sight: 25 white students holding onto yards of fabric hoping to God they don’t fall off and expose us…and we arrived in Bodo. Bodo is basically a page out of a National Geographic Magazine. The streets are made of sand, palm trees are everywhere, the houses are built of sticks and mud, the bathroom is a communal latrine and the shower is a bucket beneath the shade of a baobab tree. We waited for our host families to pick us up, and I was the last to be placed. My mother’s name is Senema, and she is a very old but amazing woman. She taught me how to cook over an open fire, squat in a very impossible position for a person as tall as me, clean my clothes by hand and she taught me plants that can be used as medicine to cure anything from jiggers (parasitic worms that live in the sand and nest in your toes) to polio to malaria. She welcomed me into her home and was one of the most amazing people I have ever met. She named me Hafsa, and she treated me like her own daughter. At night after dinner by kerosene lamp, we would go visit my very very extended family (almost everyone in the village is related someway or another) and we would kucheza dansi (dance) in the streets with my brothers, sisters, cousins and any child of the village who was around. One night they asked us to sing traditional American songs, so we sang “Don’t Stop Believin”, “Build me up Buttercup” and “Wannabe”. It was one of the most fun and amazing nights of my life! The stars are probably the most notable characteristic of Bodo, you look up and I swear you could see the entire Milky Way and universes beyond, it was unlike anything I’d ever seen. I should add that no one in my family spoke ANY English…least to say I learned a lot of Kiswahili and the art of hand gesturing. We spent many days at a sandbar called Paradise Lost where we would swim for hours in the beautiful Indian Ocean.
At the end of the 9 days, everyone in our group was extremely exhausted. It was difficult to sleep, because of the mosquitoes, sunburns, sand fleas, jiggers and chronic diarrhea, but it certainly brought us closer together as a group! I can honestly say I have never felt so comfortable talking about bowel movements with 25 random people, and there are some stories I’m sure I’ll never tell again.
But we learned a lot, and on the last day our families presented us with hand made presents (hats, fans, baskets, fishing nets…etc) and painted us with henna and braided our hair. From Bodo we traveled to Mombasa, to recuperate from our adventure and wash ourselves. It was an amazing amazing experience, now I am back in Nairobi preparing for our ACTFL Swahili exam next week. We will be here for 3 more weeks, and then we head off on our educational tour to Tanzania. I hope everyone is doing well; I miss you all very much!!!