Do you like American Music?
I have two stories about music and my Africa experience that I thought have been pretty cool. First, my extremely cool neighbor. She tries to teach me how to cook, but it just turns out to be her making me dinner every night basically. She is aweswome, about probably 35, teaches at the school, lives with her niece, and we share the housing complex we live in. It's seperate houses, kinda like a duplex. Anyway she is great, and very religious. She will take me to church tomorrow I guess. She is always playing music (she calls it the songs of God) and I decided to introduce her to Gospel music with my ipod. She really enjoyed it, and said she prefers when church is energetic and everyone is dancing, so we'll see how it goes tomorrow. I went to church in Jenny's village the other week and it was interesting to see the similarities/differences. The church was pretty plain, but had more money it seemed then most of the village. The windows were tinted different colours, instead of pained glass, but there were a lot of statues. The walls were all white, and the ceiling was probably about 25 feet above the ground, maybe 35. The service itself was a lot like a mass in Kansas/Canada, with the same format. There was however dancers aged like 7-12, who danced to the keyboard and the singers (This specific week we went because Jenny's teacher's at her school were singing) There was a part of mass where a certain area of the village gave up an offering and they came dancing down the aisle shortly after the collection (or halftime as I call it). They brought bread, vegtables, and other items that they could give to the church as an offering. In the pues, the women sit of one side, and the men on the other. At the end, only a hand full of women and I think 2 very old men went up for communion. Not sure why that is yet, but I'm told villagers actually don't attend church as often as people in the city. We'll see tomorrow.
Anyway, the other music endeavor happened at my school. I was in the music room one day and I was playing guitar with the music teacher who doesn't speak a word of english. I tried to explain in my broken Kiswahili that I wanted to play guitar in the African style, and maybe I could teach him the American style blues music: Labda Utafundisha nikucheza guitar Kamma Africanne, na Nitafundisha wewe kucheza guitar Kamma Americanne- or something like that. We tried each others styles and I was really surprised that he was as bad at the American style, as I was at the African stlye. What was easy to me made him struggle. I also really thought it was funny that I was sitting there a white Canadian kid teaching an old black man how to play the blues. But it went well. We're good friends now, and he really likes that I can speak some Kihehe (his tribal language). That's actually the way to make friends here if you're white. Speak Kiswahili of course, but know some Kihehe and you're golden. People are even more friendly, they want to know where you learned to speak that way, and they don't seem to want to skrew with you on prices as much.
So that's what I got this time, hope everyone is having a good summer, it's been fun here so far after almost 2 and a half months, and I'm looking forward to seeing what's next.