"shower"

do you know which "luxury" I missed in africa?
SHOWER - all we had was bucket of cold water (of course that I could heat up a kettle or two to make the water a litle bit warmer but those of you who know me for a while already know that I' m too lazy to do that, so I "showered" in cold water all the time. can you imagine how excited I was when I came home and I was about to take my first hot shower in 6 weeks? - yes HOT - I didn't care that it was summer, I didn't care that people were sweating all around me becase it even thought it as night, the temperature was still overwhelming. I just wanted my hot shower. And then after 6 weeks of cold buckets all I could manage was mild (almost cold) shower and still I felt as if I was washing with boiling water - even now, after almost 3 weeks of my "luxurious" normal life I can't have hot shower because it would hurt...I just got use to cold water and all what I care about right now is that the water is running and I can take cold shower every night - maybe I'll be back to normal around Christmas and I'll get my hot shower after my first snowboarding trip - or maybe not - I might shower with cold water for the rest of my life - who knows?
BTW mom thought it was fnny that after my first shower all bathtub was filled with red african dust, well, what can I say? - i was just one of the souvenirs I brought home from Kenya - people should learn to appreciate small things.

laundry

I don´t know if I already told you about our laundry experiences in Kenya but washing our clothes was pretty interesting ... we half-filled our bucket with cold water and then used old-fashioned laundry soap and "magic brush" (= ordinary brush which in fact does wonders - it makes disappear the red african dust) or Toss gentle detergent - then we tried our best, but whatever we did, we ended up with bucket of muddy soapy water and at the end we considered everything what was wet to be clean.
sometimes we rinsed the muddy soapy clothes in half-bucket of clean cold water, sometimes not...the more soap we keep in the fabric, the better it will smell - by the end of my stay I didn´t care much about stains, I just wanted something what smelled good better than the rest of my clothes.

shoes, my heart and evening prayer

Shoes are one of the few things which bother me now, after my come-back. I keep fighting with unbearable desire to take off my shoes on the most inappropriate places – in the shorring center, on the street, up on the hills behind our house (well there I gave up and simply walked barefoot as I did in africa but in public it´d be really odd)
And I enjoyed my barefoot summer in the middle of Kenya but still, it´s neither healthy, nor safe for kids to run around with no shoes on, so I left 3 pairs there and so I can say that together with my heart which I left in africa, there are also my sandals and shoes (any many many more items blah blah – not important).
Sospeter has my Teva sandals, big Joyce has my Crocs and Felister has my sneekers. I came home with no summer shoes at all and so daddy bought me new Teva sandals and I can´t wait to go back to africa – to meet my heart there and pass these new sandals to some other kid.
...

Prayer before dinner (only sound) – I absolutely love when they say: „...and then I pray!....“ David used to imitate them and it was one of my favorite moments of the day.

interesting stuff

I didn´t write much about past events in WWB, mostly because I didn´t know what to say, I didn´t feel like thinking about it again and again,..but the trut is I can´t stop thinking about them and I keep asking myself what happened?
...and I think world has to know, and I also promised to let you know... and then today when I chacked my dashboard Ifound David´s great post with facts and explanations for you guys, so... interesting stuff by David :

Everybody´s asking about Africa, more precisly Kenya, and everybody wants to know everything, and now after few days of doing-nothing, just enjoying my boring „normal“ life, the time has come, to tell you what exactly happened and what I learned...

Africa is different, different from our standards, from all what we´re used to. What did I miss the most? Shower – is the first thing which comes to my mind but the truth is that dirt didn´t bother me so much. The thing which I missed the most was COMMON SENSE. such word doesn´t exist there, for most of the people who we mwt.

Did I find what I was looking for? NO I didn´t. I found much more. At first as a„short-term“ volunteer you have to accept the fact that you won´t change Africa (at least not during your first stay there) but that Africa will CHANGE YOU.
What about experience? – it was the best experience of my life (so far) but no, it wasn´t what I expected. It was hard but after all it was positive.
Did we bring some change after all? I DO hope so, certainly we found problems and we didn´t go home without telling the world.
Africa was overwhelming, and sometimes too different to feel comfortable there, Africa was frustrating and sometimes so slow that I could hardly believe that world is still turning.
Now Geoffrey says that Dona was fired, that he will find the solutions for problems which we found and that he will try to change. –that´s little hope, but still, it´s more than nothing and if Dona´s really gone, then I can sleep better. I never wished anybody anything bad but wanting her to go away, to be as far as possible from our little angels was so important for me, now they are safe protected by all the members of the staff who love them so much.

Our group of volunteers left but all our hearts stayed there, in those small rooms with squeaking iron beds and dusty red floor. Our hearts stayed there with 24 amazing kids, and our hearts will stay there until we come back to be reunited with our wonderful children.

I won´t forget, WE won´t forget and every moment of our time while we´re away will be dedicated to the thoughts about them, about Africa, about our home.

I don´t want to say much about the problems which we faced for now,because now Geoffrey says they will be solved and until I know for sure, what´s happening right now, I´ll believe that it´s true and I´ll hope for the best :)