Welcome to your new life- part 1

As of Tuesday, I have become an inhabitant of the city of Moundou! Following an 8 hour bus ride from N'Djamena, which I spent comfortably snoozing and marveling at the increasingly beautiful landscapes out my window, My friend Ruth and I arrived at the bus stop into the capable hands of two men connected with MCC. I'm sure I will introduce you to them later. We had a delicious meal, together with our host families, and then parted ways. I am living, at least for now, with the director of Village Altonodji, the school where I will teach.

When we arrived at home, my host mother showed me to my beautiful room! That is also something that deserves it's own blog post. It is huge and could easily double as a living room, but I have it all reserved for myself! I was then led to the living room, where my host mother, Christine, and I sat and got acquainted for the next couple of hours. Now, it's time to mention that Moundou has very spotty electricity, and for the majority of my first few hours there, we were operating without lights. This hardly posed a problem during daylight hours, but it became very apparent as we sat into the evening. As if it's not hard enough faking your way through a conversation in a different language, try doing it as the sun sets and you can no longer rely on any visual cues to guide you! That's not to say that I didn't have a wonderful time getting to know my host mother. We spent a lot of time drilling Ngambai phrases, as it is my ambition to hit the ground running with my language study.

The best part of the evening came when Christine told me she wanted me to listen to a song. She took me by the hand and led me into her daughter's section of the house where a worship song was playing on the television. Almost mischievously, she smiled at me and started dancing a little. I joined in, much to the delight of their niece, who saw and started shouting for her cousin, Christine's daughter, to come watch. We danced around the room while the two laughed at us, and I'll even admit that some air instruments were pulled out. Now, of course I felt pretty silly playing an air keyboard and marching around someone's room basically upon meeting them, but I've got to say, if I had to describe a personal philosophy about how to happily live with a host family, based on my experience in Senegal, and now in Moundou, I think it would be that if someone asks you to dance, even on the first night, you better get your hips moving straight away!

At night, and every night since then, my host mother sat with me in my room and prayed with me. Among other things, I heard her ask God to bless me as I work hard to learn French and Ngambai, which made me feel like this host family was already invested in my well-being, and I found very comforting. I went to bed happy on my first night here!