ISP Bila Regrets

I keep hearing about people who actually read my blog, so I figured I should try and update it. ISP is rapidly coming to a close here, it’s unbelievable how fast the time is going. This also means that I’m going to write a 30 page paper in the next 8 days…hakuna matata.

So I’ve been in Kisumu for about three weeks now. Can’t say I have anything too shocking to report. I spend a lot of time chilling at my house here in Usoma village…it’s very relaxing and paradise-esque. My favorite spot to do work or just read is at a table through the field in the backyard overlooking the banana trees and the lake. Everyone in the village knows me as the mzungu who does “roadwork” in the morning, aka they recognize me as the crazy white girl who runs every morning.

Some animal friends that we share the house with. Onek raises goats and chickens (pretty standard in this area) so we have plenty of those to go around. In fact, some baby chicks just hatched so now they poke around the yard too. There’s one chicken who has an affinity for laying eggs in our bedroom (specifically under Jess’s bed). Problem being that Jess is afraid of chickens so I spent a whole day chasing the terrified chicken out from under her bed before we gave up and decided to just let it lay its egg and go. We also have quite a few bats that live in the house and probably have faulty sensory systems because they fly super close to our faces and hit the ceiling fairly frequently at night. There are lizards everywhere too and sometimes they lose their grip on the ceiling and fall out of the sky…sometimes on your lap if you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time. We also have a rat that makes the occasional appearance (aka it fell from the bookshelf yesterday and went crawling off under the couch somewhere). Monkeys also hang out in the trees around the house, but they only reveal themselves if you’re lucky. Oh, and I discovered the other day that we also have two owls living in the backyard!

Best animal story so far: One day last week I woke up and ants had invaded the kitchen. There was a line of safari ants marching from outside, across the floor, up the wall, and across our food shelf. I ran outside to grab the broom that was out by the bathroom only to find 5 monkeys on the roof of the bathroom building. They sat there and watched me but I ran over, grabbed the broom, and hightailed it back to the kitchen only to find that I had left the door to the house open and the chickens had gotten in. So now there were chickens all over the kitchen and baby chickens pooping on the floor and ants still climbing all over kingdom come. So I shooed out the chickens and swept out the ants and the chicken poop and all was well again.

Also, we went to the Impala Sanctuary in town one day, which we thought was kind of like a nice park where you walk around and occasionally see animals. It turned out to mostly be a kind of zoo, which was rather depressing. But, we did get to pet a cheetah, so that was cool. Although if I look weird in the picture it’s because I’m terrified since the cheetah had just tried to eat my friend Helen’s hand.

Another day I went with Onek to the market to buy greens for dinner and while we were driving on the bike some guy yelled out, “Hey, give me that girl!” And, without missing a beat, Onek yelled back “Cows first!” (If you don’t get the reference it’s because here a man has to give a woman’s family x number of cows or goats before he can marry her). We got two more marriage proposals shouted at us on the way home so we decided that I’m probably worth about 25 cows, 50 goats, and a million dollars.

This past Satuday I took a matatu to Eldoret with Katie and Jess (my roommates here). It’s about a 3 hour matatu ride northeast of here. We got there Satuday evening and located the hotel of our choosing only to discover that it had no electricity or water. The receptionist lady assured us that the power would come back on at 7pm so we went to dinner and when we came back, obviously, there was still no power and it wasn’t coming back on. Instead, they gave us four candles and we pushed the 2 beds together and had a nice romantic snuggle fest in the dark. You'd be surprised how used to power outages we are...and I never have running water so that didn't even phase us.

You should have seen the bathroom, that was the real gem.

 Sunday we checked out of our top-notch hotel and spent the morning watching the KASS Marathon! There was a surprisingly large crowd out to watch it and a lot of very speedy and very skinny Kenyan runners. You could tell we were in running country just by the footwear of the masses. I saw more nice running shoes in that one morning than I’ve seen in this entire country. I was tempted to ask people where they get them and do some shopping since my running shoes grow a bigger hole every day that I run in them.

Tell me we don't look good.

Huyu ni numba one!

Other than that I spend some days visiting beaches and conducting interviews. I met this nice guy named Ernest at the Kenya Marine Fisheries Research Institute and his assistant John acts as my translator. I’ve visited 4 beaches and am not sure what to conclude at this point other than the fact that women here have pretty limited economic opportunities. The women at Usare Beach that I interviewed today wanted to give me a young man from their beach to marry. What a generous offer.

Big fish fresh off the boat at Usare.

That’s pretty much the extent of my life at the moment. I also watch the sunset over the lake every day and watch the Mexican soap opera Triumph of Love every night. Kenyan’s love their Mexican soaps. Here’s to some more adventures before ISP is up.

Happy Thanksgiving to all…it’s weird to not be celebrating it at home but we’ll do it up Kenya style from here!