continued!

Tomorrow I'm going to a village called P. with Vicki and an evangelist from there.  Last Monday Vicki started going there for health teaching.  This week I will observe and help her with a skit and then next week we'll start alternating.  We're doing a series of lessons called "Community-Based Prevention of Blindness" about hygiene practices and flies spreading trachoma, that we got at our seminar in Nairobi.  Mark the evangelist will translate for us.

Then on Tuesday I'm going to start learning Mabaan with Butros, a sweet Mabaan man in his 70's who's been working with Vicki and Grace.  He's super cute. He lives just outside the compound and comes and translates often when we have patients.

I've asked him to help me find a lady who can be my language helper on Wed, Thurs, Fri.  Please pray that we'll find the right person.  It's going to take a lot of preparation on my part because this lady/girl will not speak a word of English most likely and we'll be starting right from scratch.  I'll need to use lots of pictures or objects in the beginning.

It will be good to have Butros on Tuesdays so I can get some explanation of grammar (I also have some exercise books to work with), ask "How do you say..." so I can have a few useful greetings and phrases to try with people, and get him to communicate with my other language helper how I'd like to go about the lessons.

I also hope to spend time each day studying my tropical diseases, in preparation for the time when we open this health center for real.  I also would like to start visiting the neighbors to try to practice my Mabaan as I learn.

On Saturdays, Vicki is teaching at another village called G. and Grace and I may or may not join in on that, depending on how busy the rest of the week becomes.

I moved into my tukul (mud hut) yesterday.  Until then I was staying in Rob's safari tent while a guy made my bed and the mud walls finished drying.  I love my little house!  The walls are actually not finished yet.  They need to be plastered still.  Normally it's done with mud but the ladies around here started charging way too much for it so Rob decided we would wait until a guy can come from Kenya in October and plaster my tukul and another one with cement.

So I have cracks in my walls which is not terribly comforting but hasn't been a problem yet!  A few moths get in but mostly swarm around my light.  There's an open space all along the sides of the room from where the grass roof ends to where the mud walls start but that is covered with screens and chicken wire so it lets the air in but keeps critters out.  My grass ceiling is covered with clear plastic which is a good thing because lizards crawl all through it!  I can see them but they can't get inside!  It stays remarkably cool in these tukuls.

Well, I could go on and on but I really need to go and do some work.