The Pictures You Have Been Waiting For

Sweet Beryl AKA Bery who delights in blowing in my hair.







Lilian who is the perfect student: always listening to teacha'









Paul who will put anything in his mouth,including the wooden letters used for a teaching tool












Our 'sitting room' in our house on the Salvation Army campus










Our kitchen where we make 'magic' on a nightly basis, complete with a new counter and a large pantry en suite

The corner back bedroom is my digs, with nice view of back garden


Another day at Kakamega Township Primary School with Paul, Lilian, and Bery!

Around Town

Just to keep you in the loop of Kakamega and my life here, I want to share with you some of my most and least profound observations about life and the people here. I hope that you will get more of an insight into how things are....

OSHA does not live anywhere near here! As I rode my first picky-picky ( a motorcycle ), I thought I should invest in a helmet for future rides. Then I jumped off the picky-picky and saw that there was a helmet on the gas tank! Guess it is just for looks or possibly a law requiring it, but very few sport them on top of their heads. Also the sidewalks in town are a piece of work; you cannot walk far without the sidewalk simply dropping off. If you do not pay attention, you could take a flying header! But alas in front of the Provisional Government Offices, there is a flat sidewalk with a curb...it runs about 1 block. I have not yet seen a ramp, except at the Salvation Army headquarters which is 6 months old.

There is a certain redundancy to my way of thinking to putting in lots of speed bumps in the main highway that is so full of potholes.

Business-wise, there is no future for an orthodontist in Kakamega. The people have the most beautiful teeth you have ever seen. There are a few gap-toothed people, but teeth seem to be big, straight, and look whiter than white. Possibly the teeth enhance their eye color, which the kids refer to as Black and White. But the biggest business in town is the hair salon, the kinyozi. There is one about every 50 feet and they do a brisk business. The ladies spend lots of time and energy having fake hair woven in, braided in, or simply plopped on top of one's head. There is no fooling anyone that the hair is fake, but they love to update their coif often. It is in stark contrast to the girls who attend primary school, who come to school with perfectly plain shaved heads. After calling too many girls, boys, I now make no distinction anymore...I am learning to be sure to look for a dress or trousers.

If you want to get into a growth business, you might try shock absorbers. I rode my first couple of matatus (vans of various sizes jammed with people, with one guy who hangs out the sliding door drumming up business) and felt every pothole that stretches between town and home, about 1 mile. The vans are in various states of disrepair; Shanon ripped her pants on a jagged seat edge as she got out of the back seat. The only problem with the shock absorber business is that no one has any money, thus the problem in the first place.....

My most profoundly stupid observation regards recycling. It pains me to throw away the plastic water bottles, though we use many of them over and over for our boiled rain water. But the garbage heap is littered with the bottles and there are no recycle bins. Having observed this, Shanon just looked at me and noted that we have yet to see a dustbin (wastebasket) at a school of 900 kids. Yes trash is not an issue here, and each day I bring home whatever trash turns up in the classroom; it is the least I can do.

Have seen my third person smoking a cigarette.

You will be certainly interested to know that I was in town and observed a rumble at City Hall last week. A night fire in the Kakamega Municipal Market did lots of damage to the very basic market where almost anything is sold. The people hold the city responsible for some bad wiring that may/may not have caused the fire. I briefly thought I better look for a UN truck to evacuate me, but alas the market was open and seems to be still on its feet.

Keeping Up in Kakamega

It had all the trappings of a political event: band, free food, speeches, local dancers, tents, native music, and of course crass commercialism. The coming of the Prime Minister was, in truth, a big kickoff for a local bank. Though the news led me to believe the Prime Minister wanted to work his voter base, he sent a deputy! So a bunch of people marched through Kakamega, more than once, and entered the stadium where everyone was served lunch (it is a modest stadium). There was plenty of cheap talk but it was really a low blow when our fair city filled all the potholes. You might jump to the conclusion that filling potholes was a public works improvement, but it you fill a pothole with dirt, tremendous amounts of dust rise in our now warm and dry metropolis.....so as time passes, the dust just keeps rising, and the rhetoric has long since blown away.

But not to be overlooked locally is the opening of Nakumatt, the Box Store. The promise has been fulfilled (or maybe I am spending too much time listening to the evanYELLicals)! But it was what might be considered a "soft" opening. The doors were open on Thursday March 11, but the shelves were not all stocked. So on my shopping Saturday, I decided to "do" Nakumatt. The mornings are truly the best time of the day as there is a fresh cool breeze and the walking is good. So off I went on the Best Road (paved) and arrived to a very quiet Box Store. I walked every aisle: there was some pricing in evidence but many mystery prices. I found a table to use in the kitchen as we have very little counter space. My first order of business was to negotiate a delivery price. At 200 shillings (just about $2.50....eat your heart out, New Yorkers) I loaded up on food and house stuff and found my way home in the Nakumatt truck. I certainly will return when the shelves are stocked as there appears to be lots of good stuff there. I will not forsake my Yako. The man in charge at Yako gave me free delivery in his own truck when we first moved into the house. Rumor has it Yako has dropped its prices, too, in order to compete with The Box. Loyalty is cheap here...my business is up for grabs......

The Prime Minister is Coming The Prime Minister is Coming!

It is hard to believe that I even know about Prime Minister Raila Odinga coming to Kakamega. But it is news around here for lots of reasons, and not because the elections are imminent: they are in 2012. As background there was tremendous violence and upheaval nation-wide after the election of 2007. It destroyed the tourist trade which is still in 2010 fighting its way back. Tourism is key in Kenya and they are desperate for tourism to return. Following the upheaval, there was a power-sharing agreement reached between the 2 men who claimed victory, and they currently serve as President and Prime Minister. The general consensus is they are doing a lousy job, but alas peace has broken out here and that is very important. The Prime Minister has a voter base in western Kenya so he is stopping by. A 2nd grade girl from Kakamega Township Primary will present flowers to the PM...that is quite a WOW for our little school. The really big news: the Kakamega Salvation Army Corps Band will play in the stadium! Since Shanon is in the band, she will be asked to march musically from Family Bank downtown to the stadium at the north end of Kakamega. We have not ventured to an event at the stadium, so no telling just what that entails, but wanted to fill you in on the local news as it breaks. I will follow up with the reviews of the PM's visit, as the locals see it.....

...and it just keeps raining....

If anyone had told me that it could rain this much or be this cool in equatorial Kenya, I would not have believed! But it has been 10 days of rain that happens on and off day and night, and we are not in the rainy season yet. The temperatures have turned cool, like winter in Los Angeles, probably in the 60s. So the obvious pitfalls mount. I have light-weight jackets and sweaters. The 3 skirts I brought for school are fine; hope nobody is tiring of them besides me....Saturday is a wonderful leisure day and last Saturday I found myself at the tailor getting a skirt made! The fabrics are very pretty so I found a fairly subdued cloth for a flared shirt--thinking a wild pattern on the one mzungu (white person/foreigner) in town might be over the top. So for $12, I should be decked out by Nicholas of Kenya in my new fully-lined skirt for next week.

My shoes are another whole issue: between the dust and the mud, they are taking a beating. I have decided to not destroy every shoe that I brought, so my 2 pair of school shoes are about to crash and burn. But now that the rains have come, my gum boots are the answer. They were $8 at Bata, the shoe store on every corner in Kakamega, and I love them....I got a yell the other day asking me why I was wearing gum boots and it wasn't raining......but here there is no telling when it might rain, so I am happy to just wear them all the time!

The slicker and umbrella are part of the daily baggage in my backpack, but even with the erratic rain, I haven't gotten dumped on yet... I obviously need to carry the gear to keep the monsoons at bay.....

The real upside to the rainy season is the drama. The sky is leaden, and it gets incredibly dark as the rain passes over. It pounds the roof and is truly noisy. The claps of thunder and the flashes of lightening make me stop what I am doing, to look and listen. Often the electricity gets knocked out as well. We run for our flashlights and reading light! But I suspect there is also some electricity rationing going on. Many afternoons there simply is no electricity, but by dinnertime , it magically is back on. Our stove has 3 gas burners so we don't miss too many meals. The only trick I anticipate is not running out of gas.......