Erin and the Chicken!

Well, life continues apace here in Kenya...

The other morning before class, I was taking some of the breakfast scraps out to feed the chickens, (yes, I do actually live on a farm- I have several chickens, a turkey and a cow) and on the way I passed by this old mama coming up the path towards the house. I fed the chickens and on my way back to my room to gather my stuff for Kiswahili class, my Mama called me into the main room of the house. The old lady was having tea, and as I shook her hand, my Mama hands me this *live* chicken! The lady is a neighbor, and brought me a present! This was a little strange, as I had never held a live chicken before, so I grabbed it by the feet and hurried back out to the chicken coop to throw it in. My Mama was telling us that we should keep it, as the hen would lay eggs for us, while outside Titus the cook was teaching me the Kiswahili word for 'to slaughter', and illustrating the language lesson with throat slashing motions... So the chicken is still alive, but we'll see how long she gets to continue laying eggs!

Training is pretty intense, our training is almost completely community based, so we spend a lot of time sitting on the ground underneath mango trees... Kiswahili is coming along pretty well for a language I have absolutely no experience with and that bears no resemblance to any language I've seen before. I wrote a paragraph in Kiswa the other day, I'll post it for you if I get time later on!

I'm adjusting, there are hard days, and then there are days when being here and walking down the road is even a great experience. The public busses (called Matatu) are pretty scary, they tend to play chicken with bicycles and pedestrians quite a lot.

--I eat almost a whole fresh papaya every day, my host family is really trying to fatten me up as much as they can, and they've realized that I like the fruit, so they're shoving as much as they can into me. I can't wait till mango season!

Well, I've got to get going, I've got other people waiting behind me, and they want to get online!

Take care of yourselves!