Mom's Taxi

These are some of my friends. (left to right) Stella, Elsie, Me, Williet, Johan and Japheth.

This week our church had a 4-day youth activity for kids ages 12-18, it's called Youth Conference (my b-day was close enough that they let me do it). The second day was sports day. We played all kinds of sports: basketball, soccer, card games, spoon races with limes, running races and a lot more.

Anyway, lets get to the taxi. So after the games one of the girls named Stella asked if my mom could give them a ride home. My mom asked how many people they had.  Stella said that they had 6. My mom said that we had only 4 seats left (because we were already taking home 2 other people). Stella said that we would make it work, and they all start running towards us. 

So we put up the back row and stuffed five people in the 3 seats back there. Then 3 other people asked if we could take them home ( you can just imagine how my mom felt, being used to only putting one person per seat). So we stuffed 6 in the middle and 2 in shot gun (rock and another guy).

This is what it looked like, with only half of us in the picture.

We were about a mile down the road when one kid said,"Madam, I forgot my bag." In my head I said oh joy just a little bit longer stuffed in a car that stinks! So we dropped off about 5 kids at their home and drove back to the park to get the kids bag.

As he was getting his bag, 5 more 15-16 year old's asked if we could drop them off. OK, when they are kids my size we could make it work but these are like big guys. So we put Rockwell in the back with these 5 boys. I moved up to the front and we put the 5 other people in the middle. As we where pulling out of the park one of my friends and her older brother (who was about 21) asked if we could drop them off at the church too. So we put the 21 year old in the middle row and his little sister up in the front with me.

Now we have about 16 people in this 8 seat car. It was so hot, smelly and squished. When we got to the church it was like a circus car, every one just piled out. Two of the girls that were already in the car with us asked if we lived on the university, and we said yes. And they said that they lived on the university too. So we took them to their house and then we drove home.

The funny thing is to them that was totally normal. After, I realized that that wouldn't be the last time we would do that, uh-oh.

Why 'Hannah Plantain'?

Some of you might be wondering where I got the title for this blog. Let me tell you.

We have been here almost a week and we have had lot of different kinds of plantains: fried plantains (sweet, hot and very different), plantain chips (salty, crunchy and tasty) and just plain, old sweet delicious plantains. Best of all, all these plantains are sold on platters on top of peoples heads! BTW some people carry big 3ft tall jewelry boxes on top of their head... it's so crazy- me and my mom hope to learn how to do it too.

Back to the blog title. Anyone know a different name for plantains?...hint: some of you might have had this cut up on your cereal this morning.

My blog title is just one of my nicknames with a little African flair!