January 7 – Ndwara
I got up this morning and showered in the Ndwara way, with a bucket of hot water and a scoop. I asked for less water since it is in short supply, and did my best to remember the techniques that I learned a long time ago living on a boat…how to get clean using the minimal amount of water. Travelling to Ndwara always makes me thankful for my shower at home. When I came out of the shower to get dressed, I was met with three sets of fascinated eyes as I dried off. Apollo’s kids seemed fascinated by everything I did, including combing my hair.
I walked across the yard to Mama Doris’s for breakfast to be greeted by an elderly woman. She didn’t speak English, but she had walked from home to arrive at 6 am to speak with me. She was a widow with one son, who had married and had one son. Her son and daughter-in-law were killed and now she was raising one grandson by whatever money she could make. She showed me her hand and arm, which were badly mangled, while explaining how difficult it was to provide for the child. He had just finished Standard 8 with good marks and was eligible to join Kipasi Secondary School, but she couldn’t afford the fees. Although I had said that we would not support any more students entering the school, I found myself saying that I would pay his fees for one year. If he worked hard and was a “good boy” I would for the next year. She committed to making sure he was clean and fed, and that he had enough time to do his school work. Some students here suffer because their parents give them so many chores that they don’t have time to study. She started to smile, and then it seemed she couldn’t stop. Each time she would stop and try to thank me, she would just starting smiling again.
During the night the electricity went off, and the refrigerator dumped water all over the floor, and flooded my bag. No harm done, just a lot of wrinkly paper. There’s still a gap between having electricity, and having reliable electricity.
I met with the parents of the kids who had just finished their exams, and Joseph asked them to tell me what difference it had made to have their kids have the opportunity to go to secondary school. Each parent told about opportunity, but the one that brought tears to my eyes was the father of one of the girls. She had not done overly well in the exams but she had be a good student. He said that without the sponsorship to attend secondary school, she likely would have ended up pregnant – that going to school gave her the chance to choose her future. He is committed to paying for her to get a certificate at a technical school, in design. At the end of the meeting, the grandmother from this morning passed me a basket, and there inside was the cutest chicken looking up at me with its little beady chicken eyes. I decided not to name this one or get attached to it, and gave it to Mama Doris.
This evening it was time to learn a new skill – making chapattis. They are a very common food here, and I really like them. Jessica, Apollo’s wife makes really good ones, so she was the designated teacher, Mwalimu in KiSwahili, and his sister Rose and I were the students. On the surface it looks easy, but the reality is quite different. Making and preparing the dough went fairly smoothly. There is no recipe, so you just have to add things until it seems right. It’s definitely one of those skills you have to learn through supervised doing. The rolling out was the real challenge: I made a perfectly round one, but Jessica said it “was “too small, I made a bigger one, but unfortunately it was shaped like a map of Africa, and they are supposed to be round, then I made a bigger round one, but it was “too uneven”. Not only that, but rolling all of this dough is actually exhausting, and by the time we were done I was covered with flour, which, because I was sweating, was rapidly coating my body with dough. The scene was funny enough that people kept sticking their heads into the kitchen to see what all the laughter was about, and I’m pretty sure there are pictures on some people’s phones. Eventually, with a lot of help from Jessica and Rose, we produced about two dozen chapattis. We had them for supper, and I have never enjoyed them as much.
Pretty exhausted by bedtime.