Safari Resort! – During our time on Safari we stayed at the Simba Lodge in the Masai Mara. After 5 weeks in Shirati, this place blew me away! We always had electricity, TV, a pool, hot water and SO MUCH FOOD!!! The food was all-you-can-eat 3 times daily and it was varied and delicious. I was so happy to be in this place that I debated skipping some safaris to just lay down, relax and enjoy the amenities. I’m glad I didn’t end up doing that as being on Safari is a unique lifetime experience, but staying in this resort after 5-weeks in Shirati was a huge compliment and boost to my trip.
The Masai Tribe – While in the Masai Mara, the group did an optional trip to visit a Masai Village. While most stayed back to relax, I decided to go on it for the cultural and educational experience, and boy am I glad that I did! The son of the Village Chief was there waiting to greet us and he gave us a complete 2-hour tour explaining their practices and traditions in detail, welcoming us to homes and answering any questions we had in the process. Our arrival was marked by a celebratory welcome dance that is performed by village warriors. The dance was intense and included a jumping competition. The warrior that jumps the highest in the competition has the first right to try to stab a lion the next time they go hunting one. Part of the welcoming dance also included a segment where the welcoming party’s chief must be honored and dance with them. Well our “chiefs” had all done this tour in years prior and decided not to join us, this left me as the eldest in the group and as the “Village Life chief” for this ceremony. I had the skin from a lion’s head put on me and was given the bone of an elephant to use as a guiding stick. I danced with the warriors and was properly greeted (although my jump height measured to maybe a fifth of theirs) before others in the group also joined in and danced with them. At the end of the ceremony, they offered me a drink as the final part of the welcome. The drink was a mixture of goat milk and cow blood, an honored and expensive treat for the Masai people.
Nairobi – Being in Nairobi was awesome. The villages where I work in call Shirati “the big city” but clearly I wouldn’t refer to it as such. Now Nairobi, on the other hand, that’s a big city! It was awesome to get to enjoy the luxuries that I’m used to in life, but to really appreciate them after having spent so long removed from them. I enjoyed going to the supermarket like I never had before. Walking into a mall felt surreal. Going to restaurants was an incredible treat. I also enjoyed the Nairobi National Museum, one of the most important archeological museums in the world where some of the earliest human fossils are found, and had a great time just seeing the city. But as Newton said, “for every action, there is an equal but opposite reaction”. For all the good that Nairobi has in comparison to Shirati, there is also some bad. Traffic is intense and one point I was stuck in it without barely moving for over an hour. The crime rate there is also high and one of the students with the group I’m with had his wallet and money stolen on our last day in town. Finally, Nairobi is home to some of the largest slums in the world. Coming from Rio de Janeiro, I’m familiar with large slums; but it was sad to see another city that is so socioeconomically divided. Overall though, I had an amazing time in Nairobi. I loved the city and it was a great break from my time in the little “big city” of Shirati.
The Resort/Nairobi Diet – As I mentioned in last week’s post, the Shirati Diet has not been too good to me. Unwillingly losing at one time 7 pounds here was not ideal. While I was happy to regain some of that weight, I was even happier to get out some and have some food that I’m more used to. And that’s exactly what I was able to do in this trip. Both in the resort and in Nairobi, I ate, ate, and ate some more. I could not stop eating. Normally, my friends back home make fun of me for how little and how slowly I eat. For the first time in my life, my friends here were making fun of me for how fast and how much I was eating. It was incredible. My first night in the resort, I had 3 full plates for dinner, followed by 2 plates of dessert. My first night in Nairobi, I had a double-bacon cheeseburger with fries and a milkshake for dinner, followed by a 2-scoop sundae over a brownie for dessert. I must say I even disgusted myself, but with 4 more weeks left in Shirati, I wasn’t about to stop. In all, I’m happy to say I am back to the weight I was when I left Little Rock 6 weeks ago. And it was delicious getting there!
Movie Theater – One of the biggest urges I had while in Nairobi was to go see a movie. I really wanted to find a movie theater and watch something; I didn’t even care what. Luckily, the mall that I went to with the Village Life group had a movie theater on the top floor so I jumped at the opportunity. I was even more thrilled to find out the movie that was playing was one I had a decent urge to see (Pirates of the Caribbean 4), that it was in 3D, and that the movie theater was a 2-story mega movie theater. I could not have been happier or more excited to wait 2-hours for the movie start time. I even went into the theater a full 45-minutes early since I was so excited. Well the time came, and went. No one else was in there with me and 10-minutes after the movie’s start time the manager came in to tell me that because no one else showed up it wasn’t worth it for them to run the movie just for me. He gave me a refund and made me the most disappointed man in Kenya.
Spencer Arrives – The day after Village Life departed back to the U.S. I received a new companion. Spencer Lucker, a classmate of mine, arrived to join me for my last month here in Shirati. He will be working in a different project with Village Life in Roche. I was with a driver and went to pick Spencer up at a friend’s house. When we got there, Spencer was standing outside but I didn’t recognize him and told the driver to keep going. I was looking for my long haired blond friend and seeing a bald kid didn’t make me think twice in ignoring him. A friend of mine in the car said “is your friend bald?” I said “definitely not. He has long blond hair, he’d never take it off”. Well the driver kept going and eventually we circled back to the only mzungu around. “Are you sure he’s not bald?” I decided to look just for the sake of confirming it wasn’t him. To my shock, it was! Spencer shaved off his hair to not have to deal with it hear. I barely recognized him, but nonetheless, I’m glad he’s joined me!
Carnivore – That evening, my Village Life friends who were coming back to Shirati and I decided to go out for a good last meal before heading back. We had heard of a place called Carnivore, a famous meat restaurant in Nairobi that serves exotic meats. We decided to go there and it was another great decision. The restaurant is Brazilian steakhouse style, they come around to your table and serve meat in skewers in an all-you-can eat fashion. The big difference is that the meat they serve is not meat you’d normally find at the market. I had everything from Camel to Giraffe; Gator to Ostrich; and even a pair of Oxen testicles. I must say, of all the things I ate the testicles were by far not the worst in taste. Gator, closely followed by Camel was much worst. The winner, in my opinion, was the Ostrich meatballs and of course, the token Lamb they brought around to give us some stability after our culinary adventuring. The ambience was fun and the food was great!
Soccer Love – During the 5-days I was gone during this trip my soccer teammates called me no less than 4 times to tell me that they missed me. They called each day just wanting to check up on me, ask how things were going and tell me they missed me. It was really touching and nice of them. Truth is, after spending two hours a day with them, seven days a week, and hanging out with them a whole lot more than that during days I don’t work, I very much missed them too. It’s going to be a tough goodbye in a few weeks…
Bus Ride – Since there was a group of us going back to Shirati, we decided to take a bus back instead of renting a car, which is a much cheaper option. With cheaper price though, comes more adventure. We got on what we thought was the 6 am bus out of Nairobi. We waited, and waited, and waited sitting on the bus but it didn’t budge. After several hours everyone got up off the bus in unison. We had no clue what was going on. People were yelling and screaming at each other and fist fights broke out. I still have no idea what was going on, but just as suddenly as everyone got out, everyone got back in and the bus finally left. It was 9:30 am. 40-minutes into the trip, still inside the borders of Nairobi, the bus stopped and again everyone got off. This time, there was no indication people were planning on getting back on anytime soon. We eventually found a passenger who spoke English and was able to explain to us what was going on. Turns out there was a police checkpoint a few kilometers down the road and, for reasons we still don’t know, people were scared of going through it. So the bus decided to wait out the police. 3-hours later, we were once again on the road. Despite the crammed environment, and the heavy bumping on the dirt roads, the rest of the trip went relatively smoothly, just 6-and-a-half hours late from what we expected.
Taxi Ride – The bus didn’t quite stop at the border. It stopped about 20 minutes from it. But once again, everyone got off the bus and only the 4 mzungus were left in it. We soon realized the bus wouldn’t be completing the voyage we hoped and we would have to get to the border through different means. We got on a taxi along with 1 other person from the bus who needed to get to the border. The taxi was a compact Hyundai that could comfortably fit 4 people and with a squeeze could do 5. We squeezed super tight for 6 (us 4, the other passenger and the driver). Then the driver told us we’d have someone else joining us. So we squeezed tighter. But the new passenger actually had a friend who also was planning on joining us. We thought we were off the hook at that point and that the driver would just tell both to wait for some other car. Nope. We had 8 people in the car. 4 people sitting in the front seats (2 in each seat) and 4 people sitting in the back. It was insanely squeezed but for a 20 minute trip, it was worth it for the fun value. We made it to the border, took another taxi to Shirati and finally were back in town. What had been a 7-hour trip the first time I did it with a car, became a 16-hour trip with several confusing and unexpected stops. We were welcomed back to Shirati with 4 straight days without power. Its good to be back…
Google Reaches Out – I received an email from Google this week informing me that my blog has averaged 400 visitors a week during the past 5 weeks. Wow! They offered to put ads on my blog and pay me for that. While I politely declined the offer as it’s not the direction I want to take with this blog, I was honored to know that so many of you are enjoying reading about my adventures here. Thank you!
Playing Volleyball – My first practice back from my trip was an interesting one. The ball once again flattened after hitting a thorn on our field, and as we waited for our coach to run downtown to have the ball fixed the boys pulled out a cloth ball and decided to play volleyball, using the top bar of the goal as the net. It was hilarious to play volleyball with them because frankly, they were awful! For all the skill they have in soccer where they destroy me, they seem to have very little practice using their hands and arms in an athletic way. After a while, the boys started to use their feet, legs and head (soccer style) almost as much as their hands and arms. Of course, they were MUCH better using their soccer skills and soon the game turned into “futvolley” where they played volleyball using their soccer skills. Now that became a game I could not participate in as the boys dribbled and bounced the ball off each other in expert fashion leaving just starring in amazement. So much for volleyball though.
Swahili Lessons – In my third week here, when I first started playing with my soccer team, the captain of my team pulled me aside and asked for money to buy a cell phone. He told me of how desperately he wanted this phone and how it would help him in his daily life. The cost: $10. Obviously, I knew that I could afford to give him that money but I struggled deciding how to handle this situation. On the one hand, I wanted to help my new friend. On the other, I didn’t want to start giving things out to people knowing that doing so would lead to hundreds of other requests from everyone in the community. I consulted some friends who were staying with me at the hostel at that time and the suggestion was made that I should hire my friend to do some menial task for me and in return pay him the equivalent cost of getting the phone. I thought it was a brilliant idea and after a few weeks of discussing it with him and figuring out our schedules, this past week I finally started taking “Swahili classes” with him. We meet 3 times a week in our “stadium” and sit on rocks under a tree for an hour as he teaches me useful words and phrases that I might need at the market, at the store or just generally out in public. I’ve learned numbers, animals, how to bargain with prices, how to ask for the bathroom and how to ask if someone has seen my friend. Its been a great deal for both of us as I have been learning, he will soon be getting his phone and we’ve both been having fun and bonding further in the process.
The Ambulance: An Update – Remember back in Week 2 when we got our first ambulance for the district? In that post, I mentioned that there was still some issues regarding maintenance and who would pay for gas. Well, I’ve recently found out that those issues have not yet quite been resolved. In fact the ambulance has yet to be used. Before it can officially be used, it needs to go through preemptive maintenance in Mwanza (4 hours away). Getting there requires a lot of gas and no money has been found yet to pay for that. Because of this I was amazed at seeing the ambulance roaring up and down the main street here last Friday night with its sirens blazing. I thought the problems had been fixed and it was already busy at work attending to calls. Unfortunately, I found out the next day that this was not quite the case. Rather, a doctor from Shirati Hospital was getting married that evening and he paid for enough gas for the ambulance to make 4 trips up and down the main road wailing its sirens in celebration of his marriage.
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