My Family and My Hut

I recently wrote this to a class of third and fourth graders who are sponsoring me while I'm in Africa, so I figured I would go ahead and post it here as well. Enjoy :)

Hello from Africa!

Some of you had some questions about what it's like to live in a hut, so I thought that I would tell you a little bit about my family here and where I live.

I live with a family here in Bere, and the mother and father have 10 kids! The father's name is Pierre, and the mother's name is Hawaa. Pierre works at the hospital giving people the medications that the doctor tells them to take. Their oldest son's name is Innocent; he's 25 years old and he's not at home right now because he's studying to become a nurse like me. There are two girls who also don't live here at home, and their names are Elodie and Bernadette, but I've never met them since they live in other villages. So those are three of the kids who don't live at home.

Of the children who live at home where I am, Bruno is the oldest, and he's 18 years old. I don't see him around very often, but he's very nice. Berthe (pronounced like Bertha) is 15 years old, and I have a lot of fun talking with her. She really likes to sing, and she sings in the church choir almost every Sabbath. Next is Ruth, who also sings in the church choir. She is 11 years old, and she is very funny, but she doesn't talk as much as Berthe. Then there is Anne, and she is 8 years old. She is very daring and likes to go swimming at the river and ride the horses we have here at the hospital. Esther is 7 years old, and she is very good at math. She's a little bit shy, but she also likes to dance and sing. Dorcas is 5 years old and she just started school today. She is a lot of fun too, and she's very smart. She can already speak three languages! The last of all the children is Bezalel pronounced Bay-zah-lay), and he's just 2 years old. He doesn't talk very much yet, but he's very funny because he always wants to be doing whatever his older sisters are doing, even if they're just going to school. So that is my family here in Africa.

Living in a hut can be lots of fun, and it's a lot like camping. Inside my hut I have a cot with a net that hangs over it to protect me from mosquitoes at night, and I have a table and a chair. It gets really hot inside the huts during the day, so I don't usually spend very much time inside. But at night time, it can get cold so I have a
nice, warm fleece blanket that I cover up with when I sleep. Every day I wake up to the roosters crowing outside my door. After I get up, I go over to our well and drop a bag tied to rope down in it to fill up my bucket. I take the bucket over to the corner of our yard where there's a grass wall set up as the shower room. Once I'm in there, I take a little cup to pour the water on myself and I wash up. Sometimes it's really cold in the morning, but usually it feels really nice when it's hot outside.

After I take my shower and get dressed, we have breakfast as a family. When we cook food here, we have a little wire basket that we put charcoal in and make a fire, just like you would for a cookout. The food here is pretty different than what we eat in America, but I'll have to tell you more about the food later.

Love,
Kristin