Day 13: Muriega

I woke up just in time to head to breakfast, Mathew caught me on the way to say kwaheri since he had to leave for work. I was quiet and mostly kept to myself at breakfast because I knew I was leaving my friends at Bantu and I am terrible with goodbyes. After breakfast I went and packed up my things. Charles came over to help me carry my luggage to the van.

I walked over to the restaurant area and gave everyone I saw a hug goodbye. I went back to the lobby and a few classmates wanted to buy a coke so I found Steven and Charles and asked them to open the lounge so we could buy cokes and then we were off. I knew I was deeply going to miss Bantu. I felt like I was leaving right as I was getting comfortable enough to ask the questions I wanted to and another part of me felt like I was leaving home.

We made our way to Kambi Primary School. The children all ran in a very disciplined fashion to greet us on the lawn. We all introduced ourselves and having met the head teacher before she had me greet the children in the Kikuyu tribal language. Luckily I had recently refreshed my memory on how to do so. All the kids giggled at the sound of me, an mzungu (white person) speaking Kikuyu. From there we set off to plant 300 trees in a "forest" nearby.

We all hiked along a trail. I quickly found myself separated from my classmates and surrounded by the school children, mostly girls. They would just look at me and giggle, I would giggle back. At one point one student told another to stop laughing. I said it's good to laugh otherwise life is boring. Every now and then they would ask me a question. Several were about the United States, my family and if my piercings hurt. They were very curious as to how many siblings I had and if I was the first born.

We arrived at the forest and the arborist taught us how to plant the trees. Each student brought a gardening tool of some sort, pitchfork, hoe, machete and so forth. We spread ourselves out in a somewhat orderly fashion and began planting trees. The students laughed at our digging skills being they've grown up on farms and knew very well how to dig most efficiently with the tools they had. Eventually all the trees were planted and students flocked around us. They looked at my camera and again asked me if my piercings hurt. They asked about church, if I go and if I could teach them a church song. I really did try to think of a simple one but all the words escaped me under the pressure of thirty girls surrounding me and maybe it just wasn't meant to be.

They gave me the Kikuyu name Wanjiru, which I had also been give at Bantu, except they told me it would be Chiru for short. We then broke into large groups and started playing all the games we had to share that could be done without equipment: hokey pokey, duck duck grey duck, red rover, singing in the rain and others. They then put me and Brandon in the middle facing each other and had us hold hands. They split up behind us and started pulling on us. The object, I think, was for me and Brandon not to break apart. All of the sudden one, or both, of us would fall to the ground and break the chain. All the kids would fall with us and immediately twelve hands would be helping me get up.

After a few hours of play time it was clear we were exhausted so we headed back to the school. Again we were giggle at and got asked lots of questions such as:

"What are houses made of in your country?"

"Do you have cow in your country?"

"Do you have siblings?"

"Are you the first born?"

"Did your piercings hurt?"

"What religions are in your country?"

"What religion are you?"

"Do you eat snakes and snails in your country?"

"If you own something and you buy something to replace that item what do you do with that item which has been replaced?"

I think I fielded all the questions well. They seemed more in tune to life then I did at their age. We went into our dining hall, ate, listened to a speech that nearly put everyone to sleep and then met our homestay families. The lady who had us seemed very excited that she did and kept saying she was happy to have two more daughters. Together we all watched musical and dramatic performances by the kids that were so beautiful they gave me goosebumps!

Tina and I were together for our homestay and we had a lot of luggage so Purity, our homestay mother and Nancy, our homestay sister helped us carry it to their home. We ducked under a barbed wire fence and passed a bull that was just hanging out in the yard. I was nervous at first but then realized it was on a rope. Nancy laughed at our nervousness and we just kept on.

We dropped our luggage and got a quick tour. We then just sat and rested in the family room with was wallpapered with pages of calendars. The ceiling was decorated with streamers of greeting cards. We sat on the couch and watched the roosters play fight with each other while our hosts prepared hot water for our baths.

I went to take my bath first, it was a rock garden surrounded by our wooden walls, a bar stool and a bucket of water, I splashed water all over myself, lathered up and splashed again to rinse. I knew washing my hair was going to be a lost cause for the next few days so I was happy I had gotten braids in my hair as it made styling a lot easier. After my bath we at dinner with Purity, Nancy, Esther and John, the neighbors children who were being taken care of by Purity while their mother was in the hospital.

The exhaustion must have shown on our faces because immediately after dinner Nancy escorted us to the bathroom and then to bed. The floor was dirt and there were spiders everywhere including what I considered Kenya's version of our daddy long legs on my mosquito net. Maybe the slight anxiety about being in a completely different world had gotten to me because I freaked out and Tina had to kill it for me. I crawled under my mosquito net and into bed. I was asleep before I knew it.