All Before Lunch...

Hodi Hodi! Yesterday, was a day of visitors. Visitors of all sorts are common here, but I wouldn't say that this many is necessarily typical. Here is the roll call of people who came by before lunch:

1- Mama Amosi (our landlord's wife) came by to borrow some money. Her father is very sick in the hospital and she is traveling to go see him. Her husband works at the Gold Mine so they are pretty well off, but it is still normal to ask for help from friends for something unexpected like that.

2- Faid came by to find out when we can come visit him. Faid, who's name I am probably spelling wrong, is a guy who came by a while back asking for money because of a very hurt foot. Over the course of several months we've helped him pay for the surgery he needed and provided transportation to the hospital in the next town over where he had it done.

3- One of our next door neighbors came to ask if we had any work. Kind of random, but it is totally normal for people to come around asking for work, just not normally your next door neighbor.

4- The next door neighbor came again asking for soap. Carson gave her some laundry soap at which she said, "Oh this is great, but I really need the kind of soap you bathe with to take to someone in the hospital. So he gave her some of that kind of soap too.

5- Our teammate, Calvin, was out and about and dropped by for a few minutes.

6- Genesta and Hanna we were actually expecting. Genesta and her daughter Hanna are from a village pretty far from here. Her husband left her. We don't really know why, but it's not exactly an uncommon predicament. Her parents are dead, so when a friend invited her to come to Geita she did. Now the friend is gone and she and her almost 1 year old are in Geita with no real prospects. She comes around asking for money and we've helped her a few times. Yesterday, we had actually invited them over for chai and we offered to let her plant some crops in our garden. Hopefully she'll take us up on that.

Can you tell how cultural it is to borrow and share here? It's almost like you don't really have a relationship with someone until you have borrowed from them and given something to them. We are not always on the giving end. Our night guard recently told us that he can bring us fish anytime we want, no charge. He has somebody he gets good fish from. He also told us not to worry about paying him for the degaa (dried fish for the dog food) which he always picks up for us. Carson suspects he is going to ask for help next year when he starts building a house, which Carson is thrilled about.  Whatever it is, we'll be happy to do what we can. That's how relationships work here.

P.S, Can you do a P.S. in a blog post? Hodi is the word that people say over and over again to get your attention. It's like knocking on someone's door, except that people say Hodi constantly until you get to them or yell out that you are coming. It's super cute when Hailey Groen says it and super annoying when you are trying to get dressed at 7:30 am because someone is yelling it at the gate!