Settling In

One week ago Wednesday I arrived in Musoma and have been starting my new life here. My house is wonderful and my roommate a lot of fun. So here’s the lowdown:

My First Furniture! That’s right folks, up to this point the only piece of furniture I have actually owned is a bookcase that my father made for me when I was about 10. And I do love that bookshelf, but how much fun to have something made especially for me (pictures to follow). I got both a bedside table and a dresser made and both turned out really well. Nothing hugely special, but very fitting for my needs, a good cost, and it’s MY furniture. At age 27, I have finally taken this step. Now my things have a place and my room is beginning to feel lived in.

An Office Job: I have to admit, when signing up with this organization, I didn’t really picture myself sitting at a desk all day, but alas, that is how a good portion of my time will be spent. I am finding the transition to the 40 hour workweek a challenge. Those of you in medical residency, I do apologize; I know you work 80-100 hour work weeks. But for me, leaving at 8am and getting home around 5:45pm is definitely something new. Add into that working in Swahili and the steep learning curve in my job, I return home utterly exhausted and a bit anti-social. Hopefully this will improve as I adjust to the new schedule.

Things I love about living here:
• Fresh fruits and veggies, cheap! I can buy massive avocados, loads of fresh tomatoes, the yummy tiny bananas, and scrumptious pineapples. Yippee!
• Visitors: I live on an orphanage compound and the ladies who care for the children come over and visit. Also kids from my roommate’s Sunday School class come over. It’s nice to have people just drop by and have a cup of tea. It’s also good for my Swahili.
• Greeting: Greeting people is really important here. That means everyone you see who you know, you need to ask them how their work, family, home, etc, are. This can take some time, but I like it and it makes you feel like people care.
• The cows! There are cows on the compound to provide milk for the kids. They just roam around, and I love it. I love sitting down with my coffee in the morning and seeing a cow wander past my window. I wonder if this will ever cease to amuse me.

The Hard Things
There are some difficult things as well. It’s a new place, and of course I don’t feel like I fit quite yet. I’m very timid to go out and about by myself and can get to shy to talk to people. We live pretty far away from most of the other missionaries, making it difficult to connect during the week, especially because it isn’t very safe to drive at night. Swahili kinda kicks my butt; I’m learning, but it’s still very frustrating to not be able to participate because I have no idea what’s going on. The tasks that lie ahead of me can easily overwhelm me. There is so much that I don’t know. I am the newest person in the project, so this feeling is compounded because no one is in the “totally new person” boat with me. This is humbling.

So that’s about it for now. Thanks for listening /reading. Write me an email too and I just might write you back!