Mijani,

Home stay time!
Wow. So much to say!

I will start this post by sharing that every morning I wake up to cow bells, moo's, and cock-a-doodle-doo's. And yesterday I almost got run over by a cow in the middle of the road!

I moved into my home stay on Thursday. I am staying with my friends Sara and Lan. We are living with the Masuku family - with mama Ivy, and her two daughters eulandah (22) and Amu (18). Their husband and father passed away in 2007. Both ivy and eulandah are currently unemployed and amu is a senior in high school at a private boarding school in acornhook, a town about an hour away. She was the one who decided to host us and she has amazing English so we can communicate most easily with her. She keeps saying over and over again how happy she is to host wonderful white people (Valungo).

when we arrived to our village, all of the relatives and neighbors came over to greet us! The whole community is truly so excited to have us.

The house grows mango trees and peach trees and peanut plants, corn, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, onions and spinach. And we have 15 cows and a couple of chicken!!! This is all so cool - I'm loving it! This morning we all just picked mangos off the trees and ate them...I could really get used to this!

Breakfast consisted of pap - a soft porridge (it will take some getting used to). They don't really understand me being a vegetarian but are very accommodating.

I took my first of many bucket showers (which I will be doing for the next three weeks because there is no running water)! Also - going to the bathroom consists of the outhouse or in a bucket for the middle of the night.

the people in the village rarely interact with white people so it is an especially big deal that we are walking the streets and talking villagers. as you can imagine - all of the boys are trying to hang out with us and coming over to visit, and all of the grandmas want to set us up with boy-friends so we will stay!

I am already learning tsonga - the language the shangan people speak here. Its a challenge but I want to communicate with mama Ivy and it is really fun to impress the locals with a few words!

Yesterday, I went to church with the girls and the Masuku's. I had to cover my hair knees and shoulders. Amu wrapped my hair so I would fit in. though we were told that church began at 230, we arrived at 1. Little did we know, singing and dancing in circles of women and men separate took place from 12 to 2. After a few minutes of watching on the side, we joined in the dancing circle and tried our best to sing along. At a certain point, we lined up so the priest could sprinkle holy water on us. It felt great because we were dancing outside in the boiling sun. We were then introduced to a priest as visitors. Once we entered the open roofed church, women sat on the ground on the left and men on the right. The priest translated the whole service for us to make us feel welcome. He read a passage from the bible about the importance of welcoming visitors to your home because you never know if they will be angels. He then introduced each of us and asked us to wave when he called our name. Everyone was clapping and truly so happy to have us. It was such a wonderful experience.

I've loved playing with all of the little kids in the village (who keep coming over to see the white people) and talking to people my age and older. I'm slowly getting the hang of life here and really appreciate how communal it is. Everyone welcomes everyone else and feeds all visitors. All people treat each other as family (which I noticed when no one knows exactly how they are related, or if they're related!) I believe much of the community and sharing and taking responsibility of one another stems from the poverty present in the community. Because of the poverty, the people live much more sustainable lives.

Although this is only my fourth real day in the community, I already feel the warmth and comfort of living here, and am greatly enjoying changing the conception of whites to the village people. Maybe I will help them realize that in the end skin color is just skin and deep down we are all just people.

oh yeah- I saw elephants and giraffes on the way to class today!!!!

ayoba, cool. I hope you enjoy!

Shabb (bye in slang )

Jess