Memory 4 Life

I cooked for Thanksgiving and it actually turned out to be absolutely wonderful and delicious. Even got to skype the family after their dinner, which was fantastic cause I sure miss them :).

From Kenya Part 2

However, we passed out early in order to make it to our 9:30AM bus in town to go to Uganda for the weekend! Oh, 14 hour bus rides. WHAT JOY YOU ARE. It was awesome to get a new stamp in my baby passport, though! (Less awesome that as soon as we crossed the border, it cost 10x as much to call the US than it does in Kenya. That was a burden. But we finally got to our hostel at about 2AM in Kampala, after riding around in a cab for 45 minutes because our driver had no idea where we were going. Immediately went to sleep and got up at 6 to be ready for our 645AM pick up time to go rafting. Another fun matatu ride this time, I slept most of the ride (oh, carcolepsy...). We got there, met our new rafting friends, had some breakfast, and we were on our way to the Nile, eek!

From Kenya Part 2

It was quite a terrifying/exhilarating day. We flipped a few times, which was absolutely horrible. The third flip, we actually made it through the rough rapid and thought we were good to go, and then this wave came out of nowhere and just slaughtered us. You can see our excitement in the photo...oh how fleeting it was. haha. My favorite moment of the day was lunch when we sat back, ate pineapple on the nile, and went swimming. SO MUCH FUN.

From Kenya Part 2

From Kenya Part 2

After our exhausting day, we headed back to our Jinja hostel (which was totally awesome and included in our rafting price, along with meals!) to compare brutal sunburns and take cold showers. Then it was time to try some of Uganda's famous "Nile Special" beer, which was good, but doesn't hold a flame to Kenya's Tusker. I spent the next few hours into the night chatting with our new British friends who were doing development/education work in Kampala and around Uganda. It was an awesome night, discussing politics, education, how everyone in the UK stayed up to watch our 2008 election results (WHO KNEW?!) because it had such important repercussions for the world, Kenya, Uganda, and tons and tons of other things. It just made me so grateful to be abroad in general, to be having these experiences which I otherwise would never have had. It was a little strange to be around so many white people though. There were some serious hotties (hello: accents, spend their days rafting the nile, wearing plaid) but Courtney told me I had on my Kenya goggles-which I think it BS-but I chose not to pursue anyway.
The next day we headed back to Kampala, spent about 20 minutes there before having things stolen and then just took a cab back to our hostel to take a 4 hour nap and get some food. Another 14 hour bus ride followed on Monday, as did some unexpected costs at the border which made us really frustrated. But we made it back in one piece and with almost all of our stuff, after enduring a bus ride where a 5 year old hit me constantly until I forced his mother to take him back.
We had mixed emotions getting back to Nairobi. On one hand, it was nice to be home. On the other, we want to be for real HOME and are kind of done with Nairobi. But all in all, as cool as rafting was, it is nice to be back in Kenya and to have the comfort of living here and not being a mzungu (white person) tourist, which was rough. Have a ton of homework this week and then finals next week and then a week on the coast in Mombasa! And then, hopefully, I end my trip with a safari in Amboseli, need to do some research for realsies though. I'm happy I went on this weekend trip, though, cause how many people can say they rafted the freaking NILE?! :)

From Kenya Part 2

Thanks For The Memories

I'm having a rough time with this thanksgiving business. Honestly, the idea of missing thanksgiving didn't really even occur to me as a big deal when I was deciding to study abroad. I was way more worried about missing halloween, my third favorite holiday. But it turned out that I didn't miss a whole lot for halloween and I was also having the best week of my life, so it didn't really faze me.
Thanksgiving, though. Man. Hit me like a truck yesterday. I swear, EVERYONE on facebook had a status up about going home /being home/ being with family/etc. and I was just like, shit, I want to be home with my family too. I guess I just never valued thanksgiving enough. It's hectic and sometimes awkward, but it's also family time, and I miss that unbearably. I want to be there and be kung-fu fighting with Julia, and lecturing Nichole about college choices, and telling Lance to stop giving me attitude. Don't get me wrong, I also really am going to miss the actual FOOD, but I'm gonna miss this family time too. My family has been having a pretty rough couple of months and missing this time is upsetting to me. Then, of course, I get more bad, worrying news from my Momma this morning and it just pushed me over the edge of the homesickness cliff.
I have this amazing weekend planned in Uganda- spending time wandering around Kampala, rafting the Nile in Jinja, embarrassing David with inappropriate comments. But all I want to do is get on a plane and come home. I'd come back, of course. But I just feel like I should be there and it's freaking me out. I know I only have a month left, but it's not about the time. It's about this specific day. Who knew I would never fully appreciate thanksgiving until I couldn't be there. It's kind of a sucky feeling.
I hope everyone has a really good time though, and I will be home SO SOON. And I love you all, more than you know! And I'm so thankful for you, too.

Never Grow Up

I haven't been writing much lately because I haven't been doing much. I've been super overwhelmed with school work and it's getting pretty frustrating. This past weekend was one of my last free weekends and I had to stay home to work on school work. Not fun. I thought this was supposed to be a slacker semester- that's half the point of study abroad. You go to another country, don't do a ton of school work, and get totally immersed in a new culture and new experiences and everything. Learning about the new culture is half of your studying. And I'm sitting in my apartment typing away at a grant proposal. It makes me slightly resentful of all of my friends in Europe who are doing all of this amazing traveling and crazy stuff. I know my program is different and that's why I chose it, I just wish I had more time to explore Kenya and hang out with my Kenyan friends.
We did throw a party this weekend, which was really fun. Teaching a bunch of Kenyans what fraternities are and how to play beer pong was pretty entertaining.

From Kenya Part 2

And we all know now to stay as far away from Sambuca as humanly possible-anything that tints your teeth when you drink it really shouldn't be ingested. Sitting in my apartment Sunday morning, all I could think about was how much I wanted some McDonalds breakfast. It was a rough morning. If I learned anything from the night, it was that I'm going to die on my 21st birthday. I will have zero tolerance built up and just be such a mess. Looking forward to it, though, TWO MONTHS TO THE DATE.
On a more serious note, yesterday was a rough one on the harassment end. Usually I can kind of get around without standing out too much, so people leave me alone. But for some reason, guys were just total assholes yesterday and it was kind of not fun. I had a pretty funny exchange with a guy on my matatu trying to get to a friend in Kibera, though.
him: "i love you, will you marry me?"
me: "no."
him: "but you are so sexy"
me: "exactly, so why would I marry you"
and then he walked away without bothering me anymore.
I just wish there was a way for me to totally explain how that feels when it happens 15 times in a day and everyone is laughing at you and making comments about you being white and just being really, really rude. I was talking to a friend last night and trying to tell her about my day and my frustrations. And she asked me an interesting question, "Do you like Kenyans?" And I thought about it and thought about it and told her that I have met some really, absolutely wonderful Kenyans (and people in Kenya that aren't Kenyan), and then there are people that are just very hateful for no reason except my skin color. As a whole, I think I like Kenyans who are open and receptive and nice because they become good friends, or even just good encounters on the street. But, like everywhere else in the world, there are mean people here too and they really suck. It will be so nice to come back to America and have concepts like "customer service" again, hahaha (but I'm not joking, there's no customer service here, the customer is always WRONG), and people not trying to rip me off everywhere I go since "mimi si fala" (i am not stupid). Being thought of as a constant tourist can be really insulting, but it's one of those things you gotta shrug off most of the time. I can't imagine how weird it's going to be to have white people around me all the time when I get back; that's going to be serious reverse culture shock.
But back to work now. We're going out of the city this weekend to stay at the base of Mt.Kenya in a beautiful lodge so I'm really happy about that and hopefully will have some good stories and pictures when we get back!


**EDIT: I want to play devil's advocate to myself for a minute. Some days in Nairobi are perfectly fine and some matatu/bus rides are pleasant. I just had one where the man across the aisle from me was wearing a "DC" flat-brimmed hat so I had this huge grin on my face and explained to him that his hat was from my city. Not sure if he totally understood, but he smiled big. Then the man sitting next to me starting asking me where that was and I told him, Washington, D.C. and he asked me how long I had been in Kenya and how I like it here (EVERY person you meet in Nairobi asks this, like they want confirmation that their city/country isn't terrible). I told him I liked it very much, and we left the conversation at that. No pestering, no harassing, just pleasant conversation. I felt that after this post this morning, for that to happen was the world's way of putting me back in a positive mindset about Nairobi men on transportation- just to remind me (and in turn, you guys) that not every day are things as bad as they were yesterday.

Boondocks

So I just got back from a week in rural, western Kenya (Bunyore/Luanda area and specifically the Esibakala village).

From Kenya

I've been postponing this blog post for a few days, because I'm not really sure how to put my experience into words. It was, hands down, one of the best weeks of my life. When I was struggling a few weeks ago with homesickness and everything, my program director told me rural week was a huge turning point for people on the program in the past. That was such an understatement for me. The experience made me remember why I was here and even went so far as to refocus my understanding of development and create this enormous interest in rural development. Who knew that the city girl who couldn't even be in New Hampshire for more than 2 hours because of the trees and lack of cell phone signal would fall in love with the beauty and the people of Western Kenya. I mean, I had to pee in a hole and had no electricity. We are talking SERIOUS roughing-it. And I loved every moment of it. I had a really embarrassingly hard time leaving and cried a lot and was super stressed about coming back to Nairobi.

From Kenya

My favorite thing was the quiet. Just the silence I could have, from outside stressors and even from inside myself. I quieted all of my worries and concerns while there and it was beautiful, and poetic, and cliche and all of that jazz. I wrote so much in my journal and detailed everything I was thinking, feeling, and doing. I can't wait to go back in March or something and read it all.
I guess it didn't help that there were also hordes of wonderful, adorable children that loved me and played with me all of the time. I definitely picked favorites, and this one was mine (also PLEASE check out my picasa for more pictures):

From Kenya

And here is my mama, and two of my little sisters:

From Kenya

I know that I only have less than 2 months here to get everything done that I want and I just need to stay positive and use this week to "enrich my experience" or whatever- use it to refocus myself and make friends here and enjoy myself and just fall in love with a place that I just wanted to leave 2 weeks ago.
And now I'm sitting in the westernized coffee place we frequent, drinking an iced tea and eating a chicken pesto panini while they play David Bowie through the speakers. And it occurs to me that, though I found my happiness in Esibakala, it's still with me and I just need to focus on it all of the time, even when Nairobi can be a rough place to be.