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Lara Kroeker Interactive

Zoe Blog 8

These past few days have been allot to process. Every day feels like ten. We came to Kondoa town 3 days ago and everything is so much more different than any of the big city’s me and mom have been in. 1 st day our plan was to go check out the bee boxes for the Ioli village and than buy the chickens for the other village i forget the name of.
The Bee box is going to be given to one village and the chickens to another as a part of Open Door Adventures, my moms company. The minute i stepped out of the car I was shocked. I had forgotten what it was like to be here. Everything is so surreal. Many young and old women dressed in traditional muslim head dresses swarmed around us and threw water and salt in our faces and around us, they even splashed it on the car. I found out later that they do this because we are strangers and they are welcoming us and blessing us in their community, they do this with all new visitors. The Women also put around our necks white necklaces that signified being safe and having a safe journey. Once the greeting was over we sat down and had Lunch. The food here is so different compared to back home. The main thing people eat here is Ugali that is cornmeal with water added to make a type of doughy paste. All food is eaten with hands and your meant to get really dirty. I kind of like it because using my hands is so much more fun than utensils. After lunch we sat down and the wonderful women taught us to make pottery. They work so hard just to make one pot its crazy. first they have to find the soil clay from the mountains. Once they find enough and cary it all the way back home they have to crush the soil into small enough pieces to grind. The grinding i s the hardest part, first you put the soil on a flat rock or surface, then you take another rock and spread some dirt out and rub it on top of it. Its really hard because you have to push down with a lot of force. the next step is to add water to the paste and start moulding. Once you’re done moulding they put the pots out to dry for a day. after that they put them under a hot fire so that the  pots turn a reddish brown colour. Me and  Lara tried the grinding and moulding part, which was fun  for a bit but got boring and repetitive fast. Making clay pots is usually only done by women and used by women. the pots are generally used for cooking and as bowls. It’s insane that theres so much work put in to making something you eat out of. after the demonstration we bought the chickens. I tried to catch them but i was way too scared to. Chickens are actually really scary because they cluck loudly and flap their wings violently. While all this was happening tons of kids came and were surrounding us. It was intense because all they do is stare at you and pretty much never look away. The kids are also very scared of me and mommy, i guess cause were foreigners. They follow you around all over too. Once we left we went to the village Ioli. There we took a tour around and saw the houses and how the people live there. The majority of houses are made of mud and have banana tree roofs or sometimes tin roofs. After the tour the real experience happened. We slept in one of the houses. It was amazing. Once the light was turned out it became completely pitch black. I slept by the window so i heard all the different animal sounds throughout the night. At one point I’m pretty sure a bird flew into my bed and landed on my head! I’m not completely sure because i think i might have been dreaming. Next morning we surprisingly felt really good. We washed our faces and brushed our teeth over a small bucket with homemade soap. We ate breakfast that was deep fried bread and tea. Pretty much everything here is deep fried but thats fine with me! After breakfast we went out to have another adventure.