1- Welcome!

Welcome {Karibu}! Please, walk with me up the dusty trails. Don't mind the continual puffs of dust, or the fact that your feet will never stay clean. This is Africa, embrace it, cuz it won't help to get frustrated and annoyed.

One of those dusty trails leads to my little house/bedroom. It's the cutest hut you've ever seen, constructed with mud brick, and a mud plaster neatly smeared over all, giving it a tidy appearance. The grass roof overhead shows signs of needing to be replaced, but it's another 6 months before the rains come and until then, it's not an urgent need. Two little vinca's are planted on either side of the door, a welcome sight in the middle of the dust swirling at my feet.

Give me a moment as I unlock my door, and then welcome you into my cool room. The grass roof really helps to keep the heat down in there, and it's refreshing to find a cool spot. It's a cozy room, and now that I've settled in and added some touches from home, it's beginning to feel like home for me. I look forward to the many memories I know will be made in this little mud hut.

Another house across courtyard where the other 3 girls in our team is where the majority of the activity happens around this place. Cooking, visitors, patients...you name it, it's probably done in the main house.

I look forward to being able to call this village “home”. When memories have been made, friendships have been formed, and everything that consists of a place being “home” has happened. But, without a fluency in the language, this is not going to take place. So now that I've settled into my room, and did my laundry this morning, I'm settling into language study for the rest of the day. I hate not being able to communicate with all these lovely ladies and children and greatly look forward to the day when I can converse with them.

My first day here gave me a crash course in the clinic. The very first patient I saw in Ivuna was a 4 month old little girl rushed here in the middle of a group of woman. Upon removing the kanga (cloth piece) wrapped around her, we were horrified to find her badly burned across her back and down both of her arms. As Beka got the coolest water we could find in our warm little house and begin gently pouring it over the burns, we heard more of the story. Somehow dear little “Sarah” had been unfortunate enough to be in the way of a pot of hot mandazi oil. Her mother cried on the floor, not looking at us much as we tended to cooling the burns and eventually layering salve and gauze on her poor little body. This morning we heard that they took her out to town, and we desperately hope they took her to a hospital that knows what they are doing. It wouldn't take much at all for little Sarah to become severely dehydrated, or to develop a huge infection, and many prayers are being sent to the throne on her behalf.

Last evening our missionary team joined together for a time of sharing and prayer. It was refreshing to connect with the hearts of the others and begin to find my place as the newest member of the “Ivuna Crew”.

The adjustments are many, and they look big. I ache to know the language and have already been told by the other missionaries, “but you've only been here one (or two) days! Give yourself time!” I recognize some, but not nearly enough to not look stupid every time someone tries to talk to me. Of course I'm the laughing stock of the village right now, and I laugh right along, knowing that someday, I will be as fluent as the rest of them here.