Thursday, February 25, 2010

A bell rings, and minutes later I hear girls singing to fill the empty, chilly air. There are no children crying or roosters crowing. I can hear nothing but the singing. It is 5:30am and pitch black. It takes a minute until it dawns on me that I'm not in Namanga anymore. I make my way out of bed when I hear someone's footsteps crunching on the stone pathway to my door. I take my delivered bucket of steaming hot water and get ready for my bucket bath. After bathing, I am brought a thermos of the milk taken from the school's cows the night before. This is my new life, and I love it.

Namanga will always be a part of me: the duka owners, market mamas, and the in-your-face mountains. I will never forget the students and how much they meant to me in my year there. I will never forget their attempts to teach me their mother tongue(s) and how they welcomed me into their lives without question. I will never forget my little neighbors, Eric and Sandra, who had just learned to call me Rose instead of mzungu. I won't forget my last night in Namanga, taking goofy pictures with the families in my compound, and eating dinner at my neighbor Victoria's house, wondering why we hadn't made dinners together earlier. As much as I was sad to go, my only regret is not being able to say my goodbyes...and never making it to the rock face that I woke up to every morning.

It has taken a lot of energy to start over, but I am excited. My new life presents me with challenges different from those I found in Namanga, but behind those challenges are opportunities: I'm not teaching many classes, so I might as well try to start a bakery, milk cows, organize the library, and figure out what to do with all of the water pouring from the tank; my new school canes the students, which allows me to continue the discussion on alternative to corporal punishment (while concurrently coping with the actual caning). On the ride to Mitheru, the matatu stop to my new town, I realized how much Kenya has changed me. On my first trip to Namanga I was excorted by the principal, nervous about everything, and maybe just a little bit teary! This time, I caught my own matatu to Mitheru, made a friend along the way, and enjoyed the lush, green, curvy ride. I wasn't worried about the driver forgetting to stop in Mitheru, or how I would get from Mitheru to my new school in Mugona...things just work their way out.

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