Life in Taita

The palace is on that second hump and I live where picture was taken

The rocks we smashed

The foundation

Break!

Woke up to the sound of a rooster and the household blasting the radio at 6:30am. Took a shower (Kuoga in Kiswahili) ate bread and drank tea (chai) then it was off to work. Yes, manual labor. We walke to the local school which i was fortunate was not far from my house and we helped the locals build a library from ground up. We sledgehammered huge stones until they became pebbles which were used to start the foundation of the library.  We wheel barreled sand from on top of the hill to the foundation. This work started at 8am and lasted till 11am then we walked up to the "palace" which was 35 minute hike up a mountain. It's referred to as the palace because it's the best/biggest house in the village and it belonged to a member of parliament who rented out to my program. This is where we ate lunch cooked by a man named MC Hammer (because his real name in swahili means hammer) and had to have at least two hours of swahili lessons everyday.