Charlotte's Web: Swahili Begins

Greetings from paradise! It seems like it has been quite cold back home, and I'm pretty glad to be in such an amazing place with absolutely beautiful weather. Classes began Monday, with 3 hours of Swahili each day this week. Our language classes are held at the language center about 15 minutes away from the compound and we are bussed there each day by our driver Njau. We had been warned that Njau is a timely man who waits for no one when it comes to our daily commute to class. We found that this was very true on our first day of classes as the bus began to drive away from the compound at exactly 8:30am, with only 5 of the 18 students on board. Luckily, Njau was feeling nice and waited for the rest of the group. Now we know to be on time for the bus or else we will be finding our own way into the city.

We are heading off to our rural homestay on Thursday, so we spent the first few days of classes learning the basics of Swahili: greetings, introductions, food, etc. One interesting thing that I've learned about Swahili is that when one greets another person and is asked how they are doing, there is no negative response. Even if that person is having a bad day, the response is always, "nzuri" (good).

I've included a few photos of the SLU compound below. I was able to find two perfect trees to hang my hammock underneath and spent one of the first few days here hanging with Sean and doing some reading for our classes. I've gone on a few runs with a friend around the neighborhood, which is a very swanky suburb of Nairobi called Karen. The neighborhood is named after Karen Blixen, author of Out of Africa. (Thank you Clare for the book!) Most of the neighboring homes are gated communities, private schools, or mansions, so it's interesting to see how different the suburb is from the different areas of Nairobi that we have seen so far. I'm excited to see the countryside tomorrow on our way to the homestay since we have really only seen areas in and around Nairobi so far.

Tomorrow (Thursday) we are taking off for our rural homestay, and will be with our host families for an entire week starting Friday (January 24). We will be in the Nyeri region of central Kenya, each on our own with a host family. I won't have access to any forms of communication but I will take plenty of photos. Hope all is well for my readers back home. Stay warm!