From my letter to Derek May 5th
The traffic on the streets is crazy. It reminds me of what you said about New York
driving how the rule is to do whatever you want except hit someone. Because drivers will merge in and out, create
new lanes, anything possible besides make an accident. One of my favorite things to see as we drive
are the sellers who walk between cars trying to get us to buy from them. They walk with gigantic loads on their heads,
sometimes carrying more in their hands.
They stare into the cars, holding up their sunglasses, fruits, water,
candies, whatever they have to sell.
One of my absolute favorite experiences has been at the fish
market. These were some of the happiest
and friendliest people I have ever met.
Our cute little guide (whose name is literally “Nice-one”) made sure
that we knew we could talk comfortably with all the people there. When the children came running to us, we were
to pick them up. “Everybody here in
Jamestown is family” he would tell us.
And the children really did come running. The cute little black children with big
bellies and big eyes came as fast as they could, trying to vie for attention
from us. (Being white people in Africa is the closest to celebrity-dom we’ll
ever get.) I picked one up and he just
stared at me in wonder. Other children
pushed and shoved in order to be able to be in a picture in order to see what
they look like. These children are
literally the most beautiful kids I’ve ever seen.
The babies here are beautiful. All of us are diagnosably baby-hungry. They are to die for.
We’ve all had a painting class and they all turned out
pretty well actually! In proper
Kaylie-fashion, mine’s probably the messiest, but I still love it so much.
One night at our hostel we had a cooking lesson. Oh, it smelled so heavenly as we put the
smooshed tomatoes, onions, peppers, etc. all together in a pot for soup. We all were amazed at how good food could
smell. What’s more is, for this meal, we ate it WITH OUR HANDS!!! A pretty fun cultural experience actually We
took cooked yams in our hand and then scooped up the soup into it and into our
mouth it went.
[insert picture of us eating with hands.]
Our driver here is named Yaw. (Pronounced like “ouch” with a y at the
beginning and without the ch.) Oh my
heavens, he’s such a wonderful and good man to us. We have so much fun with him. Also, he has the cutest laugh.
We were able to the temple!
Six of us did a session, six did baptisms. The temple was absolutely beautiful.
After our temple day we left the next morning for
Abomusu. It was about a 3 hour drive all
squished in the car. Not only was it fun
but oh my goodness it was one of the most beautiful drives I’ve ever had in my
entire life. The sky was dark, deep
blue. And on both sides we had rolling
hills of jungle trees and plants. Think
the trees in the Lion King. It was just
beautiful.
We drove and drove until we arrived in Abomosu. It smells so clean, and it’s so beautiful
everywhere I look. There are still lots
and lots of little places selling things so that’s fun.
It’s pretty funny. A
lot of the kids look soooo much younger than they are. We’ll look at them and think they’re like five
years old, but they’ll be nine or ten.
Some of them look six, but they’re like twelve. But it goes both ways. They think we look young. Last night after playing a little bit of
soccer with them (they’re so good!) I asked them how old they thought I was and
their guesses were: 14, 9, 17, and
16. So funny!
We went to church today.
Towards the end in the middle of the prayer, I opened my eyes to a
little girl standing right in front of me.
“Will you please be my friend?” she whispered to me! Awwwww!!!!
Okay so cute. She took my
notebook and started coloring and wrote her name which is Precious. (precious, right? ;) ) For the rest of the church day and the
baptisms that took place after church, we were besties.
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