Takaungu

My village is four miles down a dirt road from the main dirt road. There is quite a range of houses here – some have electricity, most don't. Most are single story (ours being an obvious exception, it must be the tallest building in town) and houses are made from coral brick or mud and sticks.

This is a predominantly Muslim village, although I understand a good number of Christians live here to. There are five, count em, five mosques here who all conduct their prayer calls at the same time and seem to have a competition regarding who's is the loudest and longest.

There's a house nearby that serves French fries from 4-4:30 every day and provides dessert for us twice a week. Another store sells chapatti (kind of like a fried tortilla) and beans, which has been our lunch a couple of times so far. A store called "Mohammed Ali's" sells fabric, pencils, snacks, and other sundries, the Takaungu answer to Walmart. There's a government run primary and secondary school, though students who wish to go to high school have to commute to Mombasa, and a Muslim school which provides religious instruction in the afternoons.

Men have a difficult time finding jobs and we see many sitting around during the day. Kids walk back and forth between school and home. Women – who almost always have a baby strapped to them – may be seen carrying water and firewood around and are invariably in the middle of some task.

There is a very low crime rate here, practically nonexistent even, perhaps because everyone knows everything about everybody else. Even so, we keep the door to the house locked at all times and return before dark. At night the house allows in all of the sounds of the evening – we hear the neighbors talking, kids playing, goats, cats, dogs, and some strange other noises I just can't identify.