This time I was determined.

During the break, we have the opportunity to take Swahili again. Since I had made a fool of myself on the last one, I was determined not to make my instructor laugh.

Which is tough to do. In general, Kenyans are a very polite folk, and would think it would be the height of rudeness to laugh at an inept, earnest American. Last term I managed to make them laugh quite often, but this was this term, and it was going to be different.

I did ok the first two days, ‘but on the third day, we had to speak in the negative tense. I had to say `I am not something’ and I was so thrilled that I understood which tense to use that I realized that I didn’t know what I wasn’t. So I improvised.

The teacher looked at me with a shocked expression, and then held his hand to his face. At this point, I knew I was in trouble. When someone is determined not to laugh and loses it, he loses it big time. Between gales of laughter, he said `You just said you are not a toilet!’ Then he tried to regain composure, and then loudly said `YOU SAID YOU ARE NOT A TOILET!!’

We broke for chai, and I went to run an errand. When I stepped into the break room, he looked at me and then broke down again, and told his wife, who was the other instructor, `HE SAID HE IS NOT A TOILET!’

It was a long week in Swahili class, but the instructor called me a mzee, which is an elder, and prefaced it with `This is an insult to white people, but Africans like to be called elders; it means that we are beginning to be respected.’ So when I return to the states and I get lip about how old I am, will I have a retort.

We went to the hospital today, and saw the usual sad cases. So much of this year has been hard. We have seen the most brutal things in Africa. There is so much poverty, so much illness, so much desperation. When you leave the country for a year, you find out who your friends are, but more, you find out who aren’t, and that is a hard thing to see. The economic cost has been great, and you have so many goals you realize you won’t achieve in your last few months.

But a little boy in the hospital just couldn’t stop grinning at the truck you gave him, and his father’s eyes filled with tears. A little girl got her first baby doll, and promised me she would take very very good care of her.

As we left the hospital, Matthew told me `Dad, I know its crazy, but every time I go to the hospital and play with those kids, I feel like I’m changing the whole world.’

It’s been a tough year, but it has been worth it all.

YP