More Highlights from Mituntu

(6/20-7/2)

- Tea. We were served tea, on average, about four times a day. I’m hooked now!

- Kendi. Anne and Barnabas’ daughter, Kendi, provided lots of entertainment. She is only 5 and in kindergarten, but she knows a fair amount of English (more than she lets on). She would point to things and say, “This is a…?” and I’d have to fill in the missing word. The funny thing is she would point to things like the modem for my computer, or the power cord, so she learned some random words to add to her vocabulary. She even taught Mo and me a little Kiswahili, but mostly she just laughed at us when we tried to pronounce things. On our last evening in Mituntu, Kendi and I raced outside, hopping on one foot, jumping, running, avoiding cow dung, etc. When it started getting dark I suggested that we go inside, and she kept insisting, “THIRRRRTY MINUTES, then we go to the house!”

- Creepy stalker? There was one strange event where a guy walked with us from the SOTENI office in Mituntu all the way to the Kirindine junction, about three kilometers. He didn’t really say much and didn’t seem that interesting until we stopped to wait for a matatu. Instead of continuing to walk, he stopped and turned around and watched us. He tried to get on our matatu, but Doris, being especially assertive, insisted that he not be allowed on. Maybe he was just heading in the same direction we were, or maybe not. Mo and I both agreed that he was a little bit creepy, and we kept looking behind ourselves when we got off the matatu.

- The Cork Adventure. Anne is a deputy principal, but she also runs a wedding cake business. Over one of the weekends she catered two weddings, and after one she ended up with a leftover bottle of wine. Apparently wine is not a big thing in Kenya, and there was no corkscrew in the house. So, using a little ingenuity, we tried to use every sharp object we could find to open the bottle. After about thirty minutes of trying, basically all we had accomplished was absolutely destroying the cork. They did acquire a corkscrew a few days later and we were able to open the wine. Truthfully, trying to open it was more enjoyable than the wine itself. And Mo and I had to drink full glasses of it two nights in a row. Luckily we’ve gotten pretty good at just swallowing things without tasting them, but this was still pretty tough.

- THIEVES! There was one incident of insecurity in the village, something that is not typical of the area (so I’m told). One evening a group of ten men, split into pairs, robbed five different stores in the market. They shot a gun in the air to disperse people, and were not afraid to use violence to get people out of their way, even beating shop owners and using knives to injure people passing. The police responded, but the thieves got away. In the end everyone was fine, and I think Mo and I were lucky to have been inside when the event took place, since we probably would have been better targets than the shop owners.
Throughout the whole ordeal, everyone around us was speaking in Kiswahili, so we had no idea what was going on. Every once in a while, Barnabas would tell us, “There is no problem, just some thieves, the police are taking care of it.” Honestly, since we only knew bits and pieces of the story, we weren’t too concerned. The funniest part was that we were sitting with one of Barnabas’ friends who only knew two English words, I think: “free” and “America,” but not in the same sentence. So he kept making the extravagant gestures and speaking to us in Kiswahili and we would just nod and agree and make up what he was saying. At one point he even stood up, walked around some chairs and a table and sat down, as if that was supposed to mean something to us. It was pretty hysterical.

- Night in the hotel. On one of the days I was visiting the women’s groups with Maria, the women’s group coordinator, we started a little later in the morning and had to visit some nine projects. By the time we got to the last one, a fish pond, it was dark. My photos of the pond basically just show blobs of varying darkness. When we finally left, we drove down to a village where Andrew, our taxi driver, pulled into a little gas station. He got out, and then got back in the car and we drove to a second gas station. Of course, no English was spoken during this event, so again I had no idea what was happening. At the second station, he got out again and I could only overhear and understand bits of the conversation he had with a man outside. I kept hearing the word “petrol” repeated. I got a little nervous when Andrew got back in the car and we drove back to the first gas station. Suddenly it all made sense – at 8 o’clock, all of the gas stations were closed, and there was no petrol to be found.
I couldn’t come up with any logical solutions, considering I had no idea where I was or how I could get home from there. Maria turned and logically suggested a hotel. Well, I guess this was logical for her, but not so much for me since I couldn’t imagine there were any safe hotels in the area. Little did I know there was one just down the street. We pulled into the back of the hotel, drove into a garage-like thing (the main reason was so no one would see a mzungu, but they kind of tried to hide that fact from me), and then went to our rooms. It was actually a pretty nice little place, and it did seem quite safe. It even had running water. But then the power went out at about 9, so I just went to bed and hoped we’d find petrol in the morning! (We did. I made it back. Don’t worry.)

There were many other interesting and hilarious experiences (particularly when Barnabas was around – he was very kind to us, and also made us laugh constantly, especially at dinners), but clearly I have written more than enough for now. Hope everyone’s enjoying summer!

Baadaye!

By the way – RIP Michael Jackson – have to say I was pretty shocked when I heard that on the news!