Cheesy Mama Matayo

Hellllo electricity! I just returned this past saturday from Engaruka a small village that sits just along the rift valley wall about 6 hours outside of Arusha. I was in the village for one week and it was so amazing. We lived with Louis who was born in the village and was the only one in his family to attened both primary and secondary school. He worked first as a porter on kilimanjaro before becoming a guide and then a safari guide. While he was a safari guide he startted taking muzungos to the village and after that he began working with Work the World.

Our boma(compound) had one main house, a kitchen building, a drop toilet/ shower room, his uncles house, and one unfinished house. All of the buildings are made out of a stick frame and then a mud and cow dung mixture is applied to the stick frame to make a paste that is applied to the frame to make the house. There is no electricity in the village so we used flashlights at night although most of the time the moon was enough light to get around outside at night. There was a huge mango tree that was in the center of the boma that we had "simba time" (nap time) under every day. The whole village was just so relaxing and wonderful. It was a lot less then we have in Arusha but was everything you truly needed. I absolutely loved my time there and Lewis and Namela were the most wonderful hosts. The house really felt like home at the end of the week and i was so sad to leave.