Genuine Hardships

To many people, poor electricity and rusty plumbing would be greater hardships to overcome than going to school or shopping in an open air market. In Africa however….
School is hard just because I’m the new kid. I’ve got friends, it’s just that it’ll take them a while before they really get to know me and get a feel for my personality. Sterling and Hannah are jumping right in and are already settled with their circle of friends. I make friends in an entirely different manner. I choose a few people to be my best, closest friends. Then, we work together to build a friendship that will last a years and years. I don’t know why I make friends like that, but I do, and it seems to work well; I’ve still got friends that I made in first grade. The downside to that process is that it take quite a while. I’m not sure how that’s going to work since I’m only going to be here a year…. On the bright side, I’m not having any trouble with the classes or the homework. I had been told that the curriculum was very advanced, and that had me worried that I would be placed in a lower level. Not so. I’ve found that Hillcrest is very similar to American private schools. In fact, besides the ridiculously strict dress code and the odd collection of different nationalities, it is exactly like an American private school.
The market is beautiful to look at and offers fun experiences, but when you really get down to hard core shopping, it becomes quite the challenge. The same kinds of items are often sold in the same general section of the market. First, you have to figure out which section you’re going to and what it’s called. This is especially difficult because many missionaries have one name for it, while the Nigerians have their own. Yesterday, for example, my mother was trying to make our driver understand where “Fabric Alley” was. This name was completely alien to him, but when mom mentioned the name of a nearby store, he perked up and said “Oh, you mean *blah blah blah*. Okay, I take you dere.” Finally, you have to pick out what you want and bargain for it. Seeing our white skin, many shopkeepers add several hundred Naira to the price. You can’t seem to eager or to desperate to buy the item, or they’ll know that you want it badly enough that you will give in after a while and pay their price for it. On top of all this, you have to make sure you are dressed appropriately (pants of any kind really aren’t acceptable) and watch your step on the cracked and eroding sidewalks. Mom took Emily and I shopping yesterday. I had just come directly from school, so I was wearing jeans. I was sooooooooo self conscious. I don’t know whether I was imagining it or not, but it seemed like little whispers were following along behind me. The actual shopping was very fun. Walking into a fabric shop is like a giant brain teaser. All the patterns are hung up so that they are overlapping each other, and they seem to blend together in a big, randomly colored blob. A very pretty blob. You have to separate them in your mind lest you be confused to the point of insanity. I ended up getting a pale green with brown stripes. It sounds weird but it’s actually very lovely.
Under normal circumstances, I too would have voted poor electricity and rusty plumbing the worse situation, but being an M.K. tweaks your viewpoints just a bit.

Camille, age 13