Stone by stone...

Today I slept in pretty late--we were all really tired from yesterday even though most of the day we were just sitting in the car. I went into Karen with one of the other volunteers and bought some postcards. We met an older man who was buying a postcard for his grandkids--he has sent them one every week for the past two years that he’s been there. He works for himself and has a nonprofit called African Communities Against Malaria (http://www.acamalaria.org/). He said that even after being here for two years, he’s really only beginning to understand parts of the culture here.

Today was just a lazy day. I finished reading Unbowed (amazing book by the way!) and played a couple games of Stones with the girls. Stones is a game they play a lot. You draw a circle about the size of a large dinner plate in the dirt or on the patio. You put a pile of about 20 rocks in the circle. Each of the two players grabs on stone and the first player throws the stone up in the air, knocks 2-3 stones out of the circle and catches the stone they threw. Then they throw the stone up again and push all but one of the stones back in the circle. If the person does this successfully (without dropping the stone or not getting enough stones out of the circle or not putting the right number of stones back in the circle) then they get to go again. Otherwise, the other player gets to go. You go back and forth until someone “finishes you out” to where there is only one stone left. Then the person whose turn it is has to throw their stone up, knock the stone in the circle out, and then throw the stone up and knock the stone back in the circle, counting 1 out, 2 in, 3 out, 4 in, etc. up to 10. If the player doesn’t do it successfully, the other player gets a chance. And you go back and forth until one of you gets to 10. It’s really fun---and really hard! (Well, hard for me, anyway--the girls are a lot better than me!)