A Tribute to Mama Meggi

I got so lucky having such a wonderful Msambweni family to make me feel so at home in such unfamiliar surroundings. Everyone is truly wonderful, especially my Mama Meggi. She works long hours at a hospital in Tiwi Beach, about an hour away from home. She rises each day with the sun to get ready for her day and wakes me up each morning at 6:30 before leaving for work. I love that I get to start my day out with a big good morning hug, and she never seems to care what a sweaty mess I am after waking up and just laughs as I flail around in my mosquito net trying to break free.

I’ve was sick last week when some scratches on my legs became infected (because of course I’m going to get a leg infection while in Africa… but thankfully it’s fine now!) and she took such good care of me. When my fever first started to rise last week she took my temperature and then stated very matter of factly, “Well, it’s probably not malaria, those fevers are usually 39C or higher. Yours is 38.6C so it could be an infection or it could be sadness.” After assuring her that I was plenty happy in Msambweni and didn’t think my ‘hotness of body’ as they call fevers here was being caused by sadness she took me to get some antibiotics which took care of the infection.

Each night she lets me help cook dinner over our little jiko, or charcoal burning stove. I haven’t mastered my favorite food, chapatti, yet, but I have gotten pretty good at cooking fish and coconut rice. It’s a mission of mama’s to put some weight on my while in Msambweni, and the morning that she heard I ate 2 chapatti’s with my breakfast she was so thrilled that she proclaimed, “Molly! This day will surely go down in history!”.

I had a blast with her at the wedding last weekend and I’m excited to be going to an event to celebrate the Prophet’s birthday with her this upcoming Saturday. (I don’t know what that celebration entails, but I’ve learned to just go with it and it will surely be fun!)

Mama taking care of a chicken at the wedding

Mother and daughter :-)