#3: Living Mativo

By the time Saturday came, I was ready to settle in to my host home. Mama Sally met me at the bus and helped me move all of my belongings inside, where I was excited to find out I had my own room! Well I was until I realized that as a result the three host children were now sharing not only a room barely bigger than mine, but also a bed... Mama Sally is the sweetest woman, and speaks English extremely well, so do the children and my host father, Martin. I have had so much fun getting to know them over the past few days and learning to fit myself into their lives! My host sister Joy is the youngest at seven years old, and by far helps me the most in learning Kiswahili. My brother Martin (Jr.) is nine years old, and my sister Angela is the oldest at 12 years.
Mama Sally works at a salon just a few minutes away from our home and my host father is an academic director at the University of Nairobi. I have had the privilege to hang out at the salon with Sally and the kids and learn about how Kenya women like to do their hair :). My host father was gone for the weekend away visiting family for the weekend, but I was able to finally meet him last night. All of my family members speak English extremely well, but most of the time converse in SHENG, which is a uniquely Kenyan mixture of English and Swahili. Thankfully, they are making efforts to use Swahili as much as possibly to aid in my learning of the language, which actually gets easier to pick up every day.

My family also has a girl named Purity from the rural areas who works in the house cooking, cleaning, and other chores. She speaks the least English out of everyone, but it forces me to use my Swahili :).

Since classes have begun at our office here in Nairobi, I have had three hours of Kiswahili instruction every day in the morning and lectures each afternoon. The Kiswahili is intense and at times overwhelming, but we have three instructors who trade off teaching us in groups of five, which helps.

The food is delicious here and the people are wonderful! I'm feeling more at home every day and find the area to be extremely accessible, despite the lake of internet, reliable electricity, and running hot water in my home.