A weekend with Leboy part 4.

Today was a strange day. As planned, we drove to Esilalei to drop Leboy and the school supplies off, which was a fun drive and full of different sights, including camels! Leboy kept quizzing Corneille and me about things he had learned at school ("what is red + yellow? what is 23 + 14? True or false: we don't look both ways before crossing the road.").

Driving into Esilalei was a weird experience for me. It had been two years since I had last been here. It must have been even more strange for Leboy.

All the women and children came to greet us. The women kept asking Leboy questions, while the children circled him in silence. It was a slightly unsettling sight: he was one of them, but it seemed like he was being treated as thought he wasn't entirely. The fact that he was wearing clean Western clothes while the other children wore tattered shukas only made the difference more palpable. He seemed uncomfortable.

His parents live in Ngorongoro. The only relative who lives in Esilalei, which is approximately half the distance to the crater, is his grandmother. At one point Leboy tugged at my sleeve and said "We go back now?" He did not want to stay.

While I found this slightly unsettling, Corneille just laughed it off. We dropped the school supplies off, got on the car again, and went back to Arusha, stopping on the way to eat some chips. Leboy would stay with Corneille until his father would pick him up in a few days.

I left early the next day, but not before getting a big hug from Leboy and a promise that he would continue to work hard and keep aiming to be number one. See you soon, Leboy!