Language

Jambo!

Each day, I spend the morning giving advanced English lessons to the resident doctors. They are overworked and yet motivated to do more. I've enjoyed getting to know their personal war stories and volcano stories- it's hard to find someone who hasn't been impacted by either disaster.

In the afternoons, I head offsite to the local Language School where I meet with the Director and we brainstorm long and short term plans to stabilize the future of the school. His English is phenomonal and I enjoy hearing him say things like, "at any rate" and "I slept like a log". I feel like I'm in my element when working with the Language School- combining business and organizational skills with language is one of the many things that makes waking up each morning in Goma worth it.

I find that I'm using more French than Swahili, which I should have expected. I really dug into my Swahili phrasebook before we arrived to the Heal Africa compound, so I'm anxious to use Swahili when I can. Nakupenda, kitabu kiswahili, mangu!

We had our first thunderstorm this morning around 2am. If anyone slept through it, I'm surprised. The lake that our accomodations are on, lit up at least every 20 seconds. It was both frightening and beautiful. Hopefully someone caught a photo and will post it.

We get our fill of passionfruit and this other amazing fruit that looks like a tomato on the outside and a cantelope with red seeds on the inside.

Days are simple but long, friendships are growing... and there is an abundance of work to be done here.

Mungu Akubarike-
Svetlana