Everybody's Working for the Weekend

I have finished my first week in Makuyu! Huzzah!

It’s been a busy week, but I’ve had a great time meeting all the girls (failing to memorize their names the first time – I’m trying though!) and interacting with the sisters and the other kids at the secondary school. I’ve helped an English teacher grade his tests (British English and America English – just different enough to be stupidly problematic), and updated the 2015 community chronicle (it was due in January – Sr. Shanty feels kind of bad about that), as well as teaching my first catechism class yesterday!

So suffice to say, there’s been a lot of stuff to do.

I thought for this post that I would take a moment to discuss the different things that the Mother Mazzarello community (MMV for short (yes, with a v)) do as a part of their mission in Makuyu.

First and most obvious is the secondary school.

Right next door to my house is Don Bosco Secondary school, servicing students between Form One and Form Four (basically high schoolers). Sr. Laurenzia is the principal, but she has a pretty cool supporting cast in the teachers and assistants. I actually man the library during the librarian’s lunch break so that students can continue to study while she’s gone –

(Take this moment to make all the librarian jokes you need. Please, take your time.)

– otherwise, they have to lock up the library. Now, while this wouldn’t be a problem in the US, the fact is that the students here don’t actually have their own textbooks. It’s simply too expensive. So there are the class books on reserve in the library that the students can check out for a while as they need for their studies. However, they can’t leave the library with the books because there is a theft problem when it comes to library books. This led to me accidently confiscating a student’s exercise workbooks on my first day (and I felt like a complete jerk. Sorry, Francis.)

This is also where I discovered that British vs. American English can cause some…confusion when certain things are being graded. It’s okay, I figured it out (kind of).

The next thing and the one that I have the most experience with so far is the Children’s Home.

There are just over twenty girls under the age of 15 that live here almost full-time (they do go home to friends and relatives during breaks). They go to the primary school down the way, but they eat, play, and pray here at MMV.

(And sleep. They also sleep here.

Obviously.)

The girls are super fun and always welcome me with a big smile and hug. There’s a lot of high-five hand clasps, too, but it seems that’s the way that Kenyans greet each other and I am always down for a high-five hand clasp.

There are also a few dozen secondary school girls living at MMV who are boarders. Today was actually parents’ day so a lot of families came to check and see how their girls are doing and the girls will get to see their parents for a bit before they leave. I haven’t spent as much time with the secondary school boarders yet, but I was able to hang out with them today and learn some of their names. I’ll get there eventually! But yeah, all the girls are great and I’m sure more stories will come up as I learn more about each of them.

The last activity this mission does is the dispensary.

Now let me make a disclaimer. I have not actually visited the dispensary yet. It’s off-site and this week first week has been a lot of computer work and doing things at the school. That said, Sr. Catherine Lee sometimes tells stories from what happened that day and going through the old albums (since I’ll be updating the new one) has given me a decent idea about what the dispensary is about.

Sick people. It’s helping sick people.

This can be medicine (which seems to be the usual case), helping with injuries, and surprisingly, lots of dental work. While looking through one of the old albums, I saw a picture from ‘Free Day,’ which is…come on, you can guess.

That’s right, it’s when the dispensary and its services are completely free of charge. Usually people do have to pay something for the medicines or services. Looking at the picture, it was completely ridiculous the amount of people who had come. The line was four people deep and went on forever. Over six hundred people came.

That’s a lot of people.

I’m sure that I’ll probably end up assisting in the dispensary at some point and then I’ll be able to tell you all everything about it and about whatever crazy thing happens that day.

But really, the next part is what you all want to know because it is completely and utterly ridiculous.

Interesting Story of the Week:

•  So I haven’t had any hot water at my house, which I was totally fine with. However, Sr. Shanty called a plumber to come and look to see if he could fix it. He arrived yesterday in the afternoon, climbed up into ceiling where the water tank is, and found that though he couldn’t fix it that day, he could come back on Monday with the part needed to finish up. Sounds good, right? I follow them out as they go and look the door behind me. This is at 5:45.

I come back to grab my camera at 8:30 to find water is dripping from the ceiling, running down the walls, and has made a small swimming pool of my bathroom area. It’s also dripping on my dresser and opening it reveals that it’s pretty close to dripping through onto my clothes. I run back and tell Sr. Shanty what’s happened and she grabs her phone and a mop and bucket, calling the plumber as she tells me to use the mop and bucket as needed.

Back at my house, I use a trashcan, the buckets, and three smaller glasses to catch the drips as best they can. However, the water isn’t stopping or slowing down, and I don’t want the ceiling to fall in from water damage. So I decide to do something that would make my mom proud.

I climb into the ceiling.

Now, I don’t have a ladder. The plumber took that with him when he left. So I…improvised. Stool on chair, me on dresser, push the ceiling tile off and then, viola! One Mary Margaret in your ceiling!

Of course, once I was up there I realized that the bucket the plumber had (apparently) placed had fallen over, dumping the dripping water onto the ceiling and leaving a constant quick drip of water coming from the tank. I was able to plug the hole a little better and prop up the bucket more securely under the dripping, and then I made my way back down onto the dresser, putting the ceiling tile back into place, and then lowered myself onto my stool/chair and then the ground.

My fix lasted through the night! Huzzah! I was paranoid the entire time that the bucket would overflow and I would have to climb up there in the middle of the night to empty it, but luckily that didn’t happen. This morning, the plumber climbed up into the ceiling again (after being completely baffled by how I managed it) to find the bucket totally full. He was shocked. There was some tag-team lowering of the water bucket (resulting in a bit being dumped on me) and eventually we solved the problem by completely emptying the tank and turning off the water valve leading to it so that no more water would enter. I took a shower today, so thankfully the water does still work. At least there’s that.

And that’s the story of how a simple plumbing job got completely out of hand and Mary Margaret climbed into the ceiling.

The End.

Kiswahili Phrase of the Day:

• Lauren wambui susan loripope.

(This is one of the girls in the Children’s Home. She’s been watching me type this and wanted to give it a try. So this is Lauren’s name as typed by Lauren!)

• Jecinta Lochomurut Nanyu

(And this is one of the boarding girls. She’s also been watching me type this and wanted to give it a try. So this is Jecinta’s name as typed by Jecinta!)

Kwaheri!