Thursday, January 21, 2010

Day 20: The closest I'll probably come to Africa


I'm the secretary for Delta Kappa Gamma which is a woman's educator's organization that meets monthly for dinner and a speaker presests some interesting topic. Our speaker this month was Monica Wernette, who spent many years in Africa working for the World Health Organization. She was a fantastic speaker and even brought props. She started off by passing around this item and asked us what it was. My guess was a plate - it had a handle on it and you could just shovel what little food they had to eat in their mouths or for those of us that are messy eaters, we would be less likely to miss our mouths if we brought the plate closer to it. So what do you think it is because plate is not the correct answer. Read further to find out (yes I know my own wicked way to get you to read to the end..haha!)

She told stories of when they first discovered Aids and her mom sending her cream rinse and shampoo and hershey's bars. It took 18 months in the postal system to get to her and her thrill of seeing the hershey's bars were dashed as she realized they were covered in maggots. I love chocolate but not sure chocolate maggots are a delicacy in any country.
A fertility God statue. There were some of us that were scared to touch that thing.

I guess I imagined someone carving these out and making the beautiful designs on the serving bowls.


A ceremonial mask was admired by all.

We can't wait for Monica to come back and tell us more of her stories abroad. Oh yeah and the pic of what I thought was a plate is actually a pillow. A pillow? I would never survive in Swaziland, Africa!

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