Sunday, October 9, 2011

OOPS!!!!

Sorry to have ended the previous post so abruptly.  Hit the wrong button.  Oops. I was also having some technical difficulties and didnt want to use up more web time trying to sort it all out.  Let me try to finish the tour of my house before I move on to other topics.

This is my guest bedroom with bunk beds and another cot in the same room.  Father is well prepared for his guests.  This house came fully furnished (except for kitchen) which saved me lots of shillings.

This is Mitas and her baby girl.  Never did understand what her name is cause I dont speak Samburu.  Mitas milks her cow every morning then brings me a liter of milk.  I have to boil it before drinking which means I have cappucino daily but I can deal with that.

On to other items now.  IM GETTING A PUPPY!!! Father's mama dog had six pups and I get the pick of the pack.  I have recently made friends with the Mama dog (no name) but she still wont let me near her babies.  I have picked out the one I want--cute little black thing with a white splotch on the head.  Dont know if its male or female yet.  They are two weeks old now so I will officially get "it" in another 6-8 weeks.  The pack is mutts but look like mama had a fling with a german shepherd.  Father also has a cute mutt he bought on the street that looks like a shepherd mix.  She is about 8-10 weeks and I named her CoKa (after my boys Cognac and Kahlua) and I play with her daily. Father even agreed to keep my "it" for me when I am away and to take it back when I go home.  I will train them both together as a thank you for Father deciding I can stay in his house till July.  I still have to vacate for the month of December so his guests can visit.  Im ok with that since I will be gone most of the month anyway.  I will move in with another volunteer for the one week gap though.

New subject.  If you ever visit Kenya DO NOT FEED THE LOCALS!  Here's what I mean.  When muzungus (white people) come here they feel sorry for the pitiful situation, kids having shabby clothes, hauling water jugs, no shoes, yada yada yada.  So they throw candies from bus windows or even shillings.  Then they also go to restaurants and leave big tips (even though the food is cheap by comparison.) So what's the problem here?  Well, for those of us that are now "local residents" all the kids come up to us on the street begging "give me a sweet, give me shilling, buy me water" etc. It's a real pain in our ass.  We have to re-educate the kids by saying "tabia mbaya" (bad manners) which results in stern, confused looks. So please dont do any of those things cause you make it really difficult for those of us living here.

I did manage to have a getaway weekend recently.  Another volunteer and myself decided to link up with 10 other volunteers in Meru for the weekend.  It was a 12 hour one way trip.  What a slog!  It involved three different matatu changes but was still worth it to see other parts of Kenya.  We split up after dinner to find lodging and since all of them are "kids" I knew it would be a sharing situation on the cheap.  Four of us decided to share and Samantha and I went to book the hotel room.  The receptionist saw the two guys lurking outside and asked where they were staying and of course we lied (they charge by the head here).  So we snuck the guys into the room in the wee hours and of course the next day got busted.  At least one of the guys did. The other one jumped over the balcony and strolled away scott free.  Reminded me of the old college days when we would all go to the beach and have 20 people in a room, right?

On the 12 hour return trip to Maralal I had the privilege of sitting next to a woman holding a baby who crapped his pants a couple of hours into the ride, without a diaper!  Poop was oozing out as she happily bounced the little bugger up and down on her lap.  If I had had breakfast I would have chucked it.  Since I was next to the door with a window, I yanked the window wide open for the remainder of the ride.  I preferred getting blasted by the road dust to sniffing poop.  And boy was I coated.  When I got out I wiped my face and neck with a scarf and the scarf was dusty red all over.

So now you are all caught up.  I have moved from being frustrated to just plain bored at work.  Will spend the next week looking for something fruitful to do.  So I leave you with this:

Six industrious ants. One dead worm.  Breakfast for at least a week for the whole colony!

Odds and Ends

It's a lazy Saturday afternoon, nice breeze, warm sunshine and the carpenter bees are busy boring their holes in the wooden eaves outside my living room window.  My little house is all clean, clothes folded and cobwebs wiped from the window sills and ceiling.  Tomorrow morning I will have to wipe them all away again as the spiders will have launched their webs to catch their evening meal of skeeters and gnats.

Time to catch you up on things for the past few weeks.  Work is still incredibly slooooooow.  Watching paint dry would be more exciting!

I remembered I had yet to share the story of the International Camel Derby that took place the very first weekend I arrived in August.  I had actually read about it in my travel guide once I learned I would be posted here.  I guess the writer never attended because what a joke!  Don't understand why the call it "international" unless it's because the heritage of the camels must be from somewhere outside Kenya.  Nothing international about it.  The Derby has been going on for about 10 years and was intended as a fund raising event for local charities.  They don't charge to attend but if you want to actually race a camel then you pay.  The price is negotiable and you do that directly with the camel owner.  Then you get to hop aboard the makeshift saddle, race for a quarter mile, hop on a bicycle and ride for the same distance and then turn back around and run it.  Somehow it never really works out that way.  Most of the entrants are muzungu tourists passing through on their way to somewhere else and they heard about the Derby.  There were only five people who actually raced and only one that made it to the end.  The judges got confused about the order of the race so the bicycle part never happened.  Some people fell off the rickety saddles, some jumped off (that thing hurts your ass!) and some of the camels just quit.  At least it was a nice sunny day for all the mishaps.
Those in the green shirts are officials or potential entrants