Like this:

I say “Jambo” and you say “Poa” which means I’m all good or Cool.  Todays adventures were many. We went to Services near the school. The preacher was the one with kupendaand the service was in English and Swahili. Most of the music is in Swahili. It is simple but veryi melodic. After everyone goes outside and forms a line and shakes hands. There is lots of music and they usually only have someone playing the bongo drums for the beat. All the rest is accapella.  Then we went shopping at the open market in Malindi which is the city near us.

The entire shopping is done on the bartering system. Everything is handmade and made out of beads cow horns, wood, soapstone,coconuts, ect. Their money is schillings and its about 75 schillings to the dollar. It is an amazing experience. You walk from little shack to little shack and they come up to you and beg you to come into their store. We were prepped for this so we were fine. I did really well with this. Its difficult because you are constantly trying to convert the schiilings to dollars. They start really high and then they say let’s negotiate. LOL they are so very poor that they need your business. If you pretend to walk out you get your price. If we go back, I’m going to write down the money exchange so we can negotiate a fair price. I’m feeling like I did too well and I want to pay a fair price for my crafts. Tomorrow up at six to work in. The schools for the day. I will be working in the cerebral palsy classes. There are 3 of them. So I will sign off now toi go to sleep. It is 11:30, earliest night this week. LOL. Love, Fran

Advertisement