Well, not a whole lot exciting has happened this week (hence no photos) but I do have a few things I can talk about, so I shall.
After returning from the West, I had two main tasks to do at the office. The larger one was to combine three reports from our trip to the coast (including my own) into one document. This was a little tricky because only one of the reports I was compiling had the information from the Swahili interviews in it, something I couldn’t check for content due to the language barrier. A lot of what I was doing, therefore, was re-writing. Doing that for ESL documents can take awhile though. The second task was to try to get some more information on the Green Forest Social Investment project in the West, so Bryson, Pat, and I spent time drafting emails to various affiliated people.
Friday was a more exciting day at work. I had basically finished my tasks but our boss came back to the office so we got to plan for the week ahead. We’re supposed to go to Mount Kenya tomorrow to see KEFRI’s work there (a bamboo project) and we may or may not get to hike the mountain. We’ll have to see when we get there. Other tentative plans are: returning to the West, going to Maasai Mara, and me going to Uganda for work stuff. We shall see. I prefer traveling and actively doing stuff to sitting in the office, so honestly the more jam-packed my schedule, the better!
Also, on Friday evening Bryson returned from his trip to the Mumias Sugar Company so the Fellowship was reunited. We had some nice veggie sandwiches for dinner and then lamented that our water wasn’t working again (in fact, it still isn’t—now I’m a bucket shower pro).
On Saturday we ventured into Nairobi—this time to Westlands, a new area for us. We went to meet up with my Bloomington housemate/friend Shannon, who is interning in Kisii. Before meeting, Bryson, Pat, and I wandered to a street lined with curio stalls. The hawkers, of course, were trying to draw us in and were definitely overcharging. Some also tried to bargain with our silly bands (courtesy of Bryson and his mom, intended as presents for kids) as a part of the so-called deal. I decided to get a few small souvenirs which I bargained for. I was proud that I made the vendor give a lot more than I did on the price, but I know I still overpaid. Ahh, being mzungu. After all of this, we met Shannon and had lunch at a nice Indian restaurant, wandered a bit, met up with another SPEA student, Kelly, and proceeded to the National Museum of Kenya. The guys went in while I stayed outside with the girls to chat. We sat on the patio of a coffee shop, which due to its location and clientele was like a typical American or European coffee joint. I got an iced coffee (which was a little underwhelming) and a piece of apple pie with ice cream (which was tasty)! When I saw pie on the menu I had to try it out of curiosity and it was worth it. The pie was surprisingly good and the ice cream was the first truly delicious ice cream I’ve had here so I was pleased with my choice.
After the museum we headed to Nakumatt, one of the Kenyan chain supermarkets. We needed groceries for the guesthouse and there is a fair amount of stuff we either can’t get in Nderi or is a lot more expensive there. We got some tasty granola, among other foodstuffs. Then we had to find the matatu home, which was an ordeal. After finding the correct matatu stage we ended up waiting for close to an hour as it got dark. Our matatu just wasn’t coming! Luckily we met a guy who was going the same route as us. Just as we were getting exasperated and were arguing with a taxi driver about his exorbitant (mzungu) rates, the guy told us we could connect using two different routes. We followed him and ended up at a town not far from our original matatu destination. We were really lucky to find this guy! It is satisfying to find nice people who are helpful after spending enough of the day trying not to be ripped off too. This guy even offered to pay for our matatu ride! He told us he was happy to help us because if he had family abroad he would hope that someone would help them. So the night ended well and we watched some of the silly TV here before bed.
Yesterday was a nice lazy day of putzing—we spent a lot of time outside just reading (my current book: Zorro, by Isabel Allende) and trying to get our modems to actually load webpages. And here I am at work again. Hopefully we’ll get more details about our Mount Kenya trip very soon. That’s it, ta!
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