I live in Africa!

After maneuvering my way through 5 different time zones and 4 different airports in 3 different continents, my 4 giant pieces of luggage and I landed safely in Africa! I stayed in the capital, where my supervisor lives, for a week of orientation before heading up to the desert to meet my 2 more permanent homes. It is about a 6-hour drive from the capital to “G-Vegas,” the name my teammates have given the town where our house is. The town is small, but has most of what we would need. The house is great! There are 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. The kitchen has everything (except a dishwasher). There is even an air conditioner in one of the bedrooms, but we won’t use it much because it can be pretty pricey to run. I do have access to internet, but it is dial-up and a little sketchy, so just know that posting pictures will be difficult :)

On Monday, I got to go to “Yosemite,” the name my teammates have given our village. It is about a 40-minute drive through the desert, which is awesome! Driving through it feels like you’re on a Land Rover commercial or something! There are rocks and riverbeds, giant thorn bushes, shepherds with their flocks, donkey carts, and lots of sand. It is so much fun to drive our 17-year old truck out there! Yosemite is amazing. The people are SOOO welcoming and love having us there. We live in our own mud hut, which is part of a family’s compound. Upon arriving at Yosemite, we went to the mayor’s family’s compound so that I could be given my African name. The mayor was out of town, so his wife named me. It was so much fun…everybody was gathered around the mat where we were sitting and when she named me Nyame (NYAH-may), everyone clapped and all the little kids started yelling my name and wanting to shake my hand. She gave me the same last name as the mayor’s family and started pointing around to everyone in the compound saying the last name, then to me, and told me that we are one. I almost started crying…but that would have been bad, so I locked it up.

Every day, we walk across to the hut where our village “mom” is…I’ll call her H-Mama. We help cook meals in a pot over a fire then we all eat out of the same bowl with our hands. I’m actually not as good at eating with my hands as I thought I’d be…it’s kind of difficult! We help around the hut as much as we can and go out to “greet” people. Greeting people is a HUGE deal here. We go to the mayor’s compound a lot and to a few other families’ compounds which Abby & Sarah have made friends with. One of the ladies, I’ll call her Jenny, has already offered to be my language helper…which is awesome because I didn’t know how long it would take me to find somebody!

I hope this gave you a little bit of an idea of what my life will look like. It has already been an adventure and I really can’t wait to see more of what God is doing!