obama the musical

to celebrate Obama day here we did a program with the kids at juvenile about change...the obama slogan. popo talked with them about how christ can change them (romans 12:1), renew them, etc. for the art activity i gave them a pile of trash and junk and told them to change it into some sort of sculpture. this was partially successful...again the language barrier can be an issue. there were some creative ones and some blah ones, but overall they seemed interested. in the afternoon i went to the other juvenile school. i spent a long time talking with Eric. his mom lives in america, according to him. i think that's actually true too b/c he spent a long time explaining how he lived in the states for a year, offering proving details. like how he enjoyed going to old country buffet and eating macaroni and cheese. i had them paint the paper mache masks. mostly we turned a lot of the grass outside blue and yellow and mixed the paint to nasty brown colors. but again, i think they had fun. it's a huge challenge painting there b/c it's hard to find water. with another group of kids we worked on this poster for a contest on saturday. the poster was about AIDS. i had them write "face the facts about AIDs" then we glued one of the masks to the center and wrote a list of facts underneath. the mask looks a little goofy there b/c it's painted all random sorts of colors and hardly looks like a face. it's quite random but i was feeling rather brain dead.

last night i went to watch Obama the musical with popo, sam, and vincent. hilarious!!! so quirky and random. there was lots of african dancing, my favorite part. one fave line i remember was "you are the omena (fish) in my soup" which was obama's father speaking about his wife. i'm not sure this play would have flyed in america. there was one song all about how obama was not the same as osama even though some people thought that. the guy who played mccain was so funny trying to imitate his mannerisms. i was confused at who everyone was for a while b/c all the characters were black, even mccain and palin. and the mccain guy was really tall. he came marching in at the beginning with all these army troops. the whole thing really didn't talk that much about obama's life except for his kenyan roots. but i truly loved it. before it started there was a group of guys playing these jimbae (sp?) drums outside the venue. it was so awesome watching them. popo thinks they're around every week so i would love to go back. the bathrooms at this place were super sweet too with rock walls and countertops. i felt very cultured yesterday.

on sunday on my way home, the matatu driver would not give me my change of 50 shillings. this is less than a dollar, but a lot of money for people here. it really irritated me b/c people are always trying to rip off americans. i'm not sure if he really didn't know that he owed me that or if he was just trying to make some money. but when it was time to get off i debated this for a bit until i realized there was no way i was going to win. so i frustratedly said, "fine, you may be lying but God knows the truth" and i marched down the street to my house. okay, so maybe a bit preachy, but again, i get tired of being the stupid white girl walking around.