Service Day and Meru Dance

This morning was like every other morning, but we realized that we had an entire day of service. It was our last day so there was some excitement for what’s to come, as well as sadness for leaving our mason and school children friends. The morning was cloudy, a nice temperature to be working in. The kids didn’t have school since today is Saturday, so they helped, which we all appreciated because it was definitely needed.

After lunch we had a discussion about the people that we want to interview. We want to ask the masons some questions about their daily life. We also want to talk with some teenagers, too. We are looking forward to these conversations tomorrow.

The village where we are, Njoro village, is of the Meru tribe. This afternoon the Meru cultural group did a traditional dance for us. Their singing and dancing had a great sound and feeling, we joined in and it was easy and fun. They dressed in dark blue cloth and had beautiful African beads as earrings, headpieces, belts, anklets, necklaces and bracelets. One woman beat on a drum and other had metal rattles on her legs. They were in the middle of the circle of dancers. Everyone danced in step together to the rhythm of the song the dancers chanted. There was a Q&A after the dancing, and we definitely had a lot of questions to ask. They even had to stop us because we had to get to work and we were spending all the time asking them. They also took a while to answer because we felt like they wanted to answer thoughtfully for every question. After all the fun with dancing we were excited to learn that they had recorded a CD of their songs. We bought a couple of their CDs and are looking forward to listening to more of their work. Eventually we had to go back to service but we enjoyed that experience.

After the dancing the masons told us that we didn’t have any more work to do. We still had to clean the tools and buckets to take back to Mama and Baba’s house. That took a long time because cement was stuck on all of the buckets and some tools. The kids in town watched and played with some of us, so that made the time go a bit faster. On the way home fat raindrops started falling so we ran back to Mama and Baba’s house.