Daren and I are settling well into life in Africa. Daren is gone most of the day, busy with research in downtown Nairobi at the National Archives, an imposing dirty-sun yellow manse, surrounded by bustling dirt streets where dust is constantly whipped into the air by shuffling feet and furiously careening matatus ( 14 passenger vans, often stuffed with twenty people, but which you can take almost anywhere for 60 cents). Daren is complaining of a continuous sore throat, a side effect of breathing the grime in and out every day, but other than that is doing very well and is especially enjoying daily Swahili lessons with a woman from Lamu, an island off the coast of Kenya, where they speak, as a Nairobi native put it, “Very fine Swahili.” Since we’ll be spending most of our time on the coast, it’s awesome that Daren is practicing coastal Swahili which is smooth and lyrical instead of the harsher, more English spattered Swahili, or Shang, which is spoken here in Nairobi. I’m also taking Swahili lessons three days a week and having a blast! My mwalimu (teacher) is teaching me formal Swahili, so I’m looking forward to blowing people out of the water with my “very fine Swahili” when we get to the coast.
We are staying at the British institute while in Nairobi, a stone cottage with adorable spiraling staircases and large glass windows which open over fragrant gardens filled with exotic African flowers and trees, as well as a few, out of place yet sturdy, down to earth daisies which are sprouted in clumps here and there, belying their tropical setting but pleasantly remind me of home.
There are eight other people staying here at the moment, and for the four bedroom house, it makes for a comfy crowd. Leila, Jess, Sarah, Dave and Hannah are from the UK, and are mostly graduate attaches working on archaeological research. I’ve been helping Dave and Sheline (the native who is envious of coastal Swahili) with flotation, a process where soil samples from varying sites are floated in water which carries the soil particles through four sieves, each catching smaller and then smaller particles, such as bone and pottery fragments in the first, roots in the second and so on till the last, which usually catches such things as seeds. Yes, it may sound tedious, and I have reason to believe most people think so; when we first arrived and I offered my services, Dave jumped the chance to use me and has blissfully been engaged with other things since! I’ve always had a soft spot for archaeology, and believe in a previous life I must have been born with a brush and trowel in hand.
Daren is starting to teach piano lessons today to George, a young man in his late teens/early twenties, who we met this past Sunday. During the main meeting at church, the bishop invited anyone who could play the piano to please do so, and when no one rose, I kinda nudged Daren in the side and he soon complied. Singing may make the world go round, but accompaniment sure makes it go around a lot smoother! Before we left the US, Daren was morosely mewling (just slightly, I mainly wanted to use those two words together) about how much he was going to miss playing the piano, which, even through all his course work at UVA, he had tried to play a few times a week. Well, as they say, we were put here on earth to be happy, so now, no more mewling for Daren! Daren gets to play the piano at church once a week as well as teach a few of the members who swarmed him after the meetings, begging him to teach them.
Pictures and another post will follow later this week, but for now, I better get to that Swahili lesson!
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