Matoke!!! Left to Right: Joy, Holly, and Maureen
Maureen's daughter Maureen (yes, they have the same name) and I after making cookies.
The cookies Holly and I made!
Ivan, Maureen's son, making gipatie's.
Laundry in the rain!


Hello Everyone!!!

This weekend I got to spend at home with my African family! It is only the second time I have gotten to do that. And did we have adventures or what! Adventures in cooking, that is. Holly and I first learning how to make Matoke. A few words about matoke: you have not actually eaten a meal unless you had matoke, and you should probably eat a lot because it is the staple food in every meal! Matoke is made from bananas, but not the bananas you get a Safeway or Red Apple. These bananas you have to peel with a knife, and they should be green when you peel them. And you shouldn’t eat them raw, it is gross. So you first peel them with a knife, cut them in half longwise, and stick them in a pot to be washed. Then you gather banana leaves and spread them over a basket/bowl thing. You wash the matoke bananas and them put them on top of the banana leaves. You put more leaves on top of the matoke, and then tie the bundle together with banana fibers. Then you steam the bundle for a few hours and when you open it you have a large mass of yellow stuff without flavor! But I think it is good for me in some way.

After the matoke, Holly and I made chocolate chip cookies! This was a challenge as we don’t have an oven. But we made it work somehow. After making the dough we heated a pot over a charcoal stove, and then we kinda fried the cookies until they looked cooked. Some of them were a little burned. But they tasted great! And then we made gipatie (AKA chipatie). But by that time I was so tired that I watched more than I helped.

We then finished off the adventures with laundry. But partway through doing laundry it started pouring rain! So we moved to the porch and finished washing our clothes. By the time we finished washing them the raid had stopped. But shortly after we hung them on the line it started pouring again! Maureen, our stand-in mom, told us to leave them. So the short is that it took until Sunday afternoon for our clothes to dry! And then last week we found out that if you don’t iron your clothes little bugs will burrow into your skin… so we have started ironing our clothes.

After all of those adventures I was really tired, so I took a nap. And then later in the day I started feeling really homesick, and really sick of Africa. All we ever talk about here is Africa, and we only learn about Africa, and read about Africa. So I was just feeling a need to escape from Africa for a while. And lo and behold I had brought the Return of the King book with me! So Saturday night and Sunday I lived in Middle Earth and have been fighting alongside Aragorn and Gandalf to safe Gondor.

On Sunday, after church, I decided I needed to go out and do something. So I went and visited my friend Deanna. Deanna lives across the field at a farm-like house. Her family has chickens, and ducks, and pigs (including baby piglets), goats, AND PUPPIES! So I got to hold a little puppy for a while. That did something really good for my heart. I miss my dog, and I love puppies in general. So snuggling with a warm tiny furry body just lifted my spirits.

Overall I am ok. I get homesick a lot, and I get tired of Africa a lot, and especially I am tired of being uncomfortable all the time. But I continue to learn how to live with it all and I try not to think of how much longer I am here. Instead I find little things to look forward to. Like this coming weekend I am going to raft the Nile with the other American and Canadian students. And I think if I just do that then I will be able to make it through.

I also wanted to say THANK YOU to everyone for the notes of love left on my Facebook and blog page. They truly did lift my spirits, though often they made me cry as well. Please continue to leave notes if you think of it! And continue to pray that I will rest in God, and that He will gather my as a mother hen gathers her chicks. I read that in Matthew last night, though it was Jesus speaking of Jerusalem.

Love to all!
Joy