Katie's House (July 10)

Back at school! Today was cool because after our lessons, Jess and I went with Katie to her home instead of going to MIE for our class discussion. Dr. Kelly said this was perfectly okay and told us before that if anyone ever got an opportunity to go to a teacher’s home it would be a very good idea. So we walked about 30 minutes to Katie’s, it wasn’t a bad walk but I can see how it gets tiring, especially when the sun is beating on you the entire way. One of the children in our class lives with Katie, he’s her nephew, and she also has three children of her own. Her youngest son is adorable, we picked him up from the nursery on the way, and he’s 4 years old. Her oldest daughter goes to Domasi Demonstration Secondary School, so that’s really exciting, and I’m not sure where her other daughter goes to school.

We got there and she has such a nice house, nicer than the one’s we’ve seen, besides Annie’s house of course. Outside there was a little fire pot where she would heat her pots to boil water. She laid out a mat and gave Jess and I skirt wrap things so when we sat on the ground our clothes wouldn’t get dirty. She was teaching us to make Nsima! It’s a lot like grits but I actually really like it. All it is, is flour and water. No joke. It gets really thick and mush like, and then you can eat it. It’s the Malawian national dish, and so everyone eats it for nearly every meal. We helped her make it and got some pictures, it was really cute. We went inside where she served us the Nsima, pumpkin leaves, and goat meat. I never thought I’d try goat, but I did because I didn’t want to be rude. Surprisingly, it was fantastic! Such good meat. Jess and I started eating with forks, and Katie said in Malawi people eat with their hands. So we put away the forks and started eating with our fingers, it was awesome because we never get to do that in the states with food that messy. It felt really nice being so immersed in their culture like that, something that most of our group won’t get the opportunity to do. I learned so much. They also eat a ton, and I was getting so full but I didn’t want to not finish all my food. Afterwards I was so happy that we had the walk back so I could work off some of that nsima. Katie is such an amazing lady, she is so nice, and so is her husband, Ben. I was nervous going into that situation because you never know what the husband will be like, but he was cool. He works in Zomba, and he was so interested in knowing about America. He even asked about Michael Jackson and what we thought of him. It was funny.

We had a buffet style dinner tonight with everyone, it was great as usual. Peter and Brian threw another party, but this time I didn’t stay long because I did not want a repeat of last weekend. We played 5 card draw and the loser had to take a shot. I lost like 6 times. I finally decided around 9:30 it was time to sneak away to bed. So me and Jess told them we were going to the bathroom but just left to our rooms, haha. It was a good night though. I always like when everyone hangs out together.