Haraka!

-Hurry!

So as I've mentioned before the daladala rides can be quite exciting. A couple of days ago we were waiting at the corner of my street waiting when  a daladala comes driving up. Before it even stops the conductor, who has been leaning out the open door and is wearing a Western Michigan sweatshirt, is out running at us yelling, “Mzungu, Haraka! Haraka!” and starts shoeing us into the nearly empty van. Before we are seated and the conductor is even in the van the driver starts the van. Knowing that it would eventually get crowded I sat right behind the driver facing backwards toward Amy and Emily. The van is going quickly down the bumpy dirt road filled with potholes as we start looking at each other wondering what the rush is all about. Then we notice that there is another daladala ahead of us that we appear to be racing. The other van reaches the next stop before us, so our driver pulls around it and stops at an angle that blocks the other one from being able to move, as the conductor tries to get people waiting to get into the other daladala to come over to ours. As soon as we get a couple of people the conductor jumps aboard and yells at the driver to go before the other one can get around us. This process continues for the next 4 stops or so, with our daladala apparently winning. At one point the conductor playing around told me to take over his job. As the van started to fill up the conducer literally grabbed Emily’s knees and yanked them around into the aisle! He then pushed the lady next to me over since she could now put her feel there and put another person on the seat with us. As we reached our stop the conductor playfully yelled, “Mzungu out! Haraka!”

--------

I had my site placement interview yesterday! I can’t wait for a month until I find out where I am going to be placed!Things have been going pretty well over the past week or so. The Swahili is slowly coming along. I feel like I can now formulate my own thoughts although I am still generally pretty lost when it comes to understanding what other people are saying. Is it weird that I understand the Portuguese Mozambique channel better than the language that I’m actually studying? Speaking of television apparently one of the really popular programs here are Spanish soap operas dubbed over in English. I’ve had trouble explaining to my family that it is dubbed over but its fun to translate what is written on the screen from Spanish to Swahili.

Sunday is laundry day! And guess what it does every Sunday! It is always fun to spend an hour or so washing your clothes and hanging them up to dry. Then after a couple of hours a torrential downpour soaks them again, but I guess its just making sure that I really rinsed them out well. nI finally got to play soccer with some of the kids this weekend. I took part in two of the neighborhood teams practices, during which we mainly scrimmaged. The first day it didn’t appear that anyone had a position so I never had any clue where I was supposed to be. I didn’t help that I had no idea what they were saying. However the second day I was told to play right back and I thus played much better. About half of the kids play without shoes on. They have shoes, but they just seem to prefer playing barefoot. I’m not sure what they normally play with but, they love that I have a soccer ball and always want to play with it. Unfortunately I have missed games the past two days, but I guess that I’m not just here to play soccer :)