January 9, 2011

Hello everyone! So I am back in the game in Ilembo! After a whole month of travelling, speaking English, eating food that has already been prepared for me, and being around friends all the time (this is definitely the hardest thing to transition from). Coming back to Ilembo was a little challenging mostly because now that training has passed it is technically time for me to start doing work, yikes! Even though I have already started working in my village it is time for me to start thinking about projects and starting to teach, which just sounds scary. But the best part is I have 39 friends going through the same thing right now (yep, everyone in our whole group is still here which is really impressive!)

I came home to an incredibly messy house, my curtains had fallen down, Moshi had knocked everything off my table, there was many a spiderweb, and Karots had already been replaced(I guess there is not much time to mourn in TZ) with a crying scraggly cat that peed on I think every possible surface of my house. If you are familiar with the smell of cat pee you know it is quite unpleasant and hard to remove. This cat was so skiddish and scared it ran away the next morning and we have not seen her since. This event combined with the events of the past month, has led me to just feel a little over pets. I think Moshi will be enough for me right now.

So after spending two full days cleaning my house one of my really good friends from training came for a few days, which was a blast! I showed her Ilembo and we had a meeting with my orphans group. It is a really great group of people, not connected with the NGO, who are in charge of looking after orphans in my village. However, they are really interested in doing projects but I am not quite sure what direction we are going to take. I think some sort of income generation, maybe a livestock project. Not sure....right now I am in charge of coming up with a new name for the group. It was formerly called "Mama Kubwa" which translates as "Big Mama." But since there has been a switch up of some of the members we voted to change the name. Let me know if you have any ideas!