It is our first day of kazi ngumu, and we have begun to understand that it truly is very hard work! Before we had started we had assumed that we would be able to put in a standard North American 8 hour work day and we had wondered why we were only scheduled to be working from 9am-1pm. After about one hour of working at the earth with jambe and kijiko (hoe and shovel) we realized that quitting time at 1pm would be appropriate. It is customary for Kenyans to have a traditional name as well as a Christian name. When we had met with the committee members we were told that we would all be given a traditional Kikuyu name and within the first few hours we had all been assigned our new names. In our group we have Ciko and Mwangi which are tribal names, Twiga (giraffe) for our tallest member, Mkubwa for our largest member, Nyakanini for one of our smaller members, Makena which means "always jolly", Njeri which means generous, and Daudi which translates to David.
DWC Team
Kenya, May 2012
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