the rural home

What I had originally planned to be a quiet, productive long weekend at home quickly turned into everything but. I'll start with Thursday, when we were supposed to get out of classes early with the prospect of no school on Friday! I had every intention to spend some time at home, get some work done, go out with Lisa and crew that night, then hit up Carnivore (a restaurant nearby) for Luya night on Friday and cook and start my research papers on Saturday and Sunday. Yeah right, T.I.A. (This Is Africa), so nothing will ever go according to plan. I was reading my Kiswahili book outside on Thursday with the rest of my class when a girl in the intermediate class, Meghan, came outside to get some water from a vendor. She said she wasn't feeling too well. Then she turned deathly pale and fainted in the middle of our university parking lot. Some quick action found me, her and another girl named Becky in a cab on our way to Nairobi Hospital, where we proceeded to spend the next 4 1/2 hours getting her registered, into a room, x-rayed, tested, etc... The strange thing about Kenyan hospitals is that you have to pay for everything BEFORE you get it. Since she didn't have enough money, I ended up footing her bill. It wasn't a problem because of course she'll pay me back, but I wonder why it's set up that way? I mean, if you have an accident and end up in the hospital, what happens if you don't have enough money with you to pay for your treatment? It's insanely expensive by Kenyan standards, and if you don't have someone there with you who can get ahold of a credit card or cash, you're basically SOL. But other than the payment issue, the hospital was good and she was given excellent care. So that took up pretty much my entire day. Then I walked back home. It was really hot and sunny, so by the time I got back I was really dehydrated and not feeling too well. Then my host mom announced that, if I didn't have any other plans, we would go to her rural home in Kericho......leaving at 5am the next day. I was too tired to remember the other things I had in mind, so I agreed. I would have agreed anyway though. I wasn't going to miss out on seeing where she grew up and where much of her family still lives.

Later on Thursday evening, I walked down the road to a nearby compound to visit Ashley at her host mom's new shop. It was starting to get dark, but I figured we'd just meet up and leave. Wrong! We waited there for her mom and when she finally showed up, it was already dark outside. We had no choice but to walk back to our compound in the dark. Since there were three of us white girls AND Ashley's mom, I wasn't too worried. But then we had to pass through a group of young boys. One of them felt my thighs, I'm assuming he was looking for pockets to go through...and then another one tried to steal my baseball hat right off my head. We're told to just let muggers take what they want and not put up a fight because they could potentially have a knife or worse, but my automatic reaction was the grab my hat back and scream "DON'T FUCKING TOUCH ME!" at the boys. Then I pulled a basketball move and swung my elbows back and forth to deter them from coming close to me. It was just a gut reaction, probably not the smartest thing, but it worked. I kept my hat, I didn't have any pockets for them to steal from, and then a concerned older Kenyan man walking behind the boys yelled "WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?" and the boys scattered. I then walked as fast as I could back to my compound. Not the worst that could have happened, but definitely unsettling. And at least they didn't get my hat.

What with the dehydration and the early departure looming ahead of me, I decided to cancel my plans to go out and just hit the sack. And thank god I did. I woke up at 4:45 to get in a nice shower before heading into a land of no electricity or running water. Now, you may all be surprised to learn that I've become very accustomed to cockroaches here. But I mean the little, light brown ones that are barely a few centimeters long. As I was showering, I looked down to find the GODZILLA of cockroaches staring me down. It must've been at least 3 inches long and dark brown and definitely looked like it could eat me if it felt so inclined. I stamped my feet hard and yelled to try and scare it away...but this only encouraged it to enter the shower with me. It chased me around for a few seconds until I gave up, grabbed my towel and fled back upstairs where I climbed into bed and hoped it hadn't followed me.

We ended up leaving Nairobi at closer to 6am. I passed out in the front seat with my knees squished against the dashboard (we were in a car that, if possible, is actually SMALLER than the Prius). But we couldn't have gone very far before we hit a police checkpoint and got pulled over. I woke up to a mean-looking, old policeman staring at me through the window. He spoke harsh Swahili to the driver, Geoffrey, and to my mom in the backseat. Then he reached through my open window and started tugging on my seatbelt. I did my best to ignore him because I had no idea what his deal was. Turns out he was one of those corrupt officials we hear about so often, and after making up a bunch of laws we were supposedly breaking, he tried to get us to bribe him with 1000 shillings. This is only about $13 USD, but is quite a lot in Kenya. So finally, 500 shillings shorter, we got to drive off.

There are only 2 roads to Kericho from Nairobi. One goes through Nakuru (the town where we did our first week of orientation) and is a very nice, well paved road. The other goes through Narok and is still incomplete. For some reason I still dont understand, we took the Narok road. It was mostly unpaved, potholed, red dirt road and our little car had a very hard time of it. I would sleep for a few minutes in between every crater sized pothole we had to drive through. And the parts that are paved are only partially finished, so they are swarming with giant construction vehicles. What should have only taken 1 1/2 hours ended up taking 3 to get to the first middle sized town on the way. We stopped, got some awesome samosas and stretched out before continuing on to a small town near the Masai Mara called Bomet. My mom has a few relatives and tons of friends there, and we stopped for a quick meal with her niece and friends before continuing on. Then we stopped at a random little outpost on the road to pick up one of my mom's sisters. She squished in the back and, a couple hours later, we finally got ourselves to rural Kericho. And when I say rural, I mean REALLY rural. I had ignorantly pictured something similar to a midwestern farmhouse...only without electricity or running water. Kind of amish-like. I was dead wrong. Tons of family members live together in a small compound of about 5 mud huts with either tin roofs or thatched roofs. There's no doors, no windows, no water, no electricity, nothin. There were small forests all around, small patches of fields for the animals to graze on, and a few other huts dotting the surrounding hillsides. Its the most isolated place I have EVER been. The kids have seen so few white people, that they were actually afraid of me at first. And since they speak only the local language, no Swahili and no English, we had trouble communicating. But the adults were very kind and welcoming and the kids warmed up to me after a few hours. Just as we arrived, it started POURING, so we stayed inside the dark huts and I listened and tried to communicate with my mom's relatives. They have a few chairs and a small coffee table, but little other furniture. They made us ugali and beef stew, which was actually quite good considering how I don't like those things in Nairobi, and they got a kick out of me eating the ugali with my hands, like a Kenyan. And that's pretty much all we did until it got dark. They lit a few old-fashioned lanterns, we had dinner (the same thing plus greens) and I took some pictures and let the kids play with my camera. I had to go to the bathroom, but seeing as they were across a field, 2 of the kids grabbed a lantern and guided me there. The lantern was too big to take into the latrine with me, so I was in a tiny stall in pitch darkness with a hole in the floor that I couldn't see! I did the best I could to aim, not fall over, and be as fast as I could. When I got back to the house, everyone had a good laugh at me because they knew how difficult I had found it. Then I was so tired, I had to pass out. They made up a bed for me and I plopped into it half asleep already. It wasn't til I woke up the next morning that I realized they had given me one of the 2 beds they have, and that the rest of the family had slept on the floor inthe next room. I felt incredibly guilty, but later learned that guests will never be made to sleep on the floor, so there was nothing I could have done about it. I brushed my teeth next to a cow in the yard, had some chai with the family, then walked around taking pictures. I stumbled on some of the kids peeling potatoes for our lunch and sat down to help. They thought this was absolutely hilarious and had a great time watching me slowly cut the potatoes. I stopped only when a bunch of ants became too interested in my ankles and started biting.

We ate a hasty lunch (rice and fresh fresh chicken), then took off to get to Kericho town and visit my mom's in-laws there. Kericho is famous for its tea plantations, and as we drove along the road, I took a lot of pleasure in viewing the miles and miles of rich green tea. It's a nice change from the red dust I'm used to seeing everywhere we go. Not much happened at the in-laws. We had tea, chatted, I finally met my other brother Kip (who has been working in Kericho since I arrived). Some funny things happened that night when we hung out with Kip and his work friends, but I'll elaborate on that later. Pretty uneventful, and I was exhausted from all the driving and a nice sunburn I had gotten that morning. I went to sleep early.

The next morning (Sunday), I woke up and made breakfast for everyone with some food I had bought the night before in town. Kenyans supposedly don't like cheese, but I took a risk and made scrambled eggs with onions and cheddar. I think they actually liked it, if they weren't lying to me to be polite. Then we squished back into the car, this time with me in the back plus my mom's brother in law and his son, mom in the front and Geoffrey driving. Pretty uncomfortable, but there was nothing to do about it. So I alternated reading and sleeping. We took the road through Nakuru this time, so it was easy enough to sleep thank God. Next thing I know, we're stopping in a random town to buy fresh meat. The animal parts were hanging from hooks in the ceiling in a delapidated wooden shack, but this is apparently one of the best places to buy from and I enjoyed watching my mom's brother in law negotiate the price and cuts of meat he wanted. He also bought me a roasted corn from the side of the road, which I tried but seriously disliked. The maize here is nothing like the sweet yellow corn we get at home. It's starchy and flavor-less, if you ask me.

Another couple hours and I looked up to find our car surround by at least 15 men in white, butchers coats running alongside and yelling at us. We had pulled into an open-air "restaurant" where they sell fresh nyama choma (roasted meat) and these guys were all jostling to get us to come to their stall. I was soooo not in the mood to be harassed, so I sent them a mean look and they stayed away from me. We picked our meat and it was brought over to a plastic table for us to enjoy. We ate with our hands and oooh that meat was DELICIOUS! I stayed away from the intestines and other unknown organs, but the actual meat itself was as good as anything I've had. And the hundreds of flies that buzzed around, landing on us and the meat as we ate, only added to the authentic feel of the place. I loved it. :)

We made it back to Nairobi with no further distractions, and I tell you I have never been so relieved. The weekend was great and very eventful, but we spent a majority of our time in a car, with me getting sunburnt in the front seat or nauseous in the back. If we had stayed in just one of the places for the whole weekend, I think I would have been able to enjoy it more, but I'm not complaining. I had a taste of what most Kenyans live like outside of the city, I experienced things both good and bad, but always interesting, and I met a lot of wonderful people. Now, I'm tired and I have to go back home and entertain my friends. I'll post again soon.

Until next time! XOXO!