Fly catchers and teenagers (Theresa and Jeron)

Today was the second day of no plane rides! The sleepover the night before was a no-go for the ladies - it was cancelled last minute because we didn’t want to leave one person out because she fell asleep early. This morning we got up and went into the city and had our first experience with flycatchers. It was unbelievable the persistence of the flycatchers trying to sell you stuff. In one of the two groups a flycatcher showed up while they were getting their money from the ATM trying to sell stuff and the guard had to shoo him away. We were told not to tell them what lodge we stayed at in case they showed up tomorrow trying to sell us items. We got to go to the blue zebra and it is a shop that sells artwork. It was started by a former flycatcher, who was a friend of Mr. McMorrow’s, and he received some money from a Cathedral parent and now he has 4 businesses around the Tanzania and Kenya. As we continued our traveling, we arrived to our first experience in a market. It was very overwhelming with all the shop owners coming out and following us along in the store and really trying to sell us their artwork. It was also very scary for most of the group because it was most of our first experiences bartering, but to see all the handmade art and all the work these people put into their living was very inspiring. After all the chaos at the market, we made our way to the Uru Secondary School. They gave us a tour of the school grounds and showed us everything from all the animals that they raised to the new basketball court they are creating, that we are actually going to help with as our manual labor project. When we met the children they all go into a big group and we introduced ourselves, after that we said our names and they would all quietly repeat our names. They really enjoyed Matthew’s name because when he said his name the kids all bursted out laughing.  They also liked Mason. On multiple occasions he was referred to as Jesus. After introducing ourselves to all the children we met with the top kids in each class, at first we got to play a game to get to know each other by asking each other questions about their lives and aspirations. During this we found out about how serious education is to the kids, how important their future careers are to them, and how caring they are to their families and their community. I asked this kid what he would do if he had $1,000,000 and he said that he would pay for his schooling and then with the rest of the money he would give it to those who needed it most and also set it aside for his parents to live off of.  We experienced the kids for who they really are, some of them even showed off their talents, such as when Jeron convinced one girl to sing him a song, and she was actually very good. After our personal questions towards each other, we asked each other questions as a group to learn about our varying cultures. One of the main questions that stuck out to us is that we asked them if they were allowed to have boyfriends/girlfriends. They responded that dating really isn’t prevalent in their culture and that they are too focused on their studies to worry about having a significant other. They also told us about all the work that they have to do at their school and how they have to cut the grass with blades, which shows how easy we have it in America. We then said our goodbyes, which was very hard, but we get to see them tomorrow. After all our fun events of the day, we all just got to hang around and played games. Rachel, Theresa, Will, and Matt all played a card game called Kemps, which got a little rowdy because the boys couldn’t figure out the girls signal to show that they had all the same suit. Lastly to top off the day, we watched a movie, thanks to one of our hosts David, which was perfect after a long day. We are all excited to start our projects at Upendo Orphanage and St. Louis Primary School.