And today our kitchen has running water! I called the plumber, who came over and determined that the reason that we didn’t have running water to the kitchen sink was because nobody ever connected the pipes to the tank. Imagine that. So for less than $100 in parts and $7 in labor (before you judge – I was actually overly nice and paid a lot more for labor than they probably would have gotten anywhere else) problem solved! Well, except for the fact that now the second bathroom (not ours – the one our roommates share) seems to be down to nothing but a trickle, when yesterday it was flowing fine…
But we’re not worried. The plumber is coming back tomorrow to figure out why the bathroom always smells like something died in there, so we’ll have him fix it then. And also on the home improvement front, a guy showed up out of the blue today with a table for us to put the stove on in the kitchen. Apparently, the table was ordered months ago and the guy just disappeared. But now he’s back and claims that he will return next week to build us some shelves. (I can’t believe I moved thousands of miles from my house in Lawrenceville and am still dealing with contractors.)
Sid and I are settling in here and enjoying getting to know the area. Last Sunday morning, all of the women that work here – Margaux, Anushka, Veronica and I took an early morning hike up to a place called Sangalo Rock, where we found an unexpected guide in a young girl from one of the nearby farms who decided to accompany us. She didn’t speak any English, but we were glad to have her with us because not only did she help us to find the way, she even pointed out a bunch of monkeys sitting on a rock! She put us to shame as she scrambled up the rocks barefoot and as gracefully as the monkeys we were photographing, while we huffed and puffed behind her. She even climbed straight up a couple of vertical rock faces and pulled off some moves (barefoot!) that would have definitely impressed my rock climbing class instructors last spring!
This weekend, Sid and I went to Kisumu, the third largest city in Kenya, with our friends Margaux and Jeff. Kisumu was really interesting because it is probably one of the most run-down cities I have ever seen. It was hit pretty hard by the post-election violence this past winter, so it’s hard to tell if it used to be different. We stayed in a very cute hotel that was nicely painted and had balconies overlooking Lake Victoria. But many of the other buildings on the block were just black shells that had been burned during the violence. The man at the front desk told Margaux that many of the hotel staff hid out in the hotel during the riots and begged the rioters on the street not to burn the building down. It’s hard to imagine what it was like during that time in Kenya, because everyone is so friendly and it seems so peaceful here. But seeing Kisumu, it was a little easier to imagine. Bungoma, the town where we live, didn’t have many problems during that time, but I have been told that One Acre Fund helped a few employees who are from the tribe that was being targeted get to Nairobi where they would be safer.
Overall, we had a lovely time in Kisumu. There is a nice area that has a swimming pool and we lounged by the pool all afternoon, drinking cold Coca-Colas - something that I never drank in the U.S., but that I crave here in Kenya. That evening, we went for a fabulous dinner at a place called the Green Garden. It had such good pizza and lovely ambiance that even though it was possibly the source of the worst food poisoning Margaux has ever had, we are determined to go back (and in the Green Garden’s defense, it could have been any number of things that made her sick, including the Kenya Cane (sugar cane alcohol) mixed with passion fruit juice that we drank before dinner…) Good pizza is so rare (non-existent) here that we really can’t pass up a place that serves it just because it made someone a little nauseous (violently ill).
Margaux was feeling better the next day, so we spent the entire morning at the “Nakumat” – a grocery store with a huge selection of food and other items (as opposed to our local grocery store “Ketias” in Bungoma that has a row of Indian spices, a row of questionable cooking oils, a row of flour and rice, and a few random bags of pasta). It was such a treat to buy things like cheese, cereal, balsamic vinegar and some cans of garbanzo beans. They even had a few American novels, and since I have already read all of the ones that I brought with me, I was able to stock up!
The other exciting thing we found in Kisumu were other “mazungus.” This is the Kiswahili word for “foreigner” and it is what adult Kenyans frequently yell at us as we walk by in Bungoma. The children all yell “How are you, I am fine!” because this is all the English that they have been taught. We rarely (never) see other mazungus in Bungoma, so we found that when we saw them in Kisumu, we were as fascinated by them as the Kenyans are by us! We would point and whisper about them, speculating about who they are and why they’re in Kenya. We were even tempted to yell “How are you, I am fine!” at them. We did have the courage to approach one mazungu, a fairly harmless looking woman with several small children who told us that she is living in Kisumu and directing a CDC research center that studies tropical diseases. We thought about asking her if she had any advice for our friend and co-worker Lukas, who was supposed to come to Kisumu with us, but backed out at the last minute due to a double case of malaria and typhoid.
But don’t worry about us – our health is fine, we have been taking our malaria meds, no food poisoning yet, and we are not going to let Lukas do any cooking for at least a few weeks…!
As far as work goes…other than the hourly interruptions by plumbers and carpenters, work is going well. Here is my first One Acre Fund newsletter. I will be interviewing and photographing one farmer each month for this newsletter that is sent out to OAF donors… http://www.oneacrefund.org/MonthlyProfiles/2008September.htm
