Matatus, Ice Cream, and Green Fields

This past weekend I went to visit one of my friends, Danielle, at her site and it was probably my best weekend so far. Danielle lives in a town called Litein which is about 5 hours away. So to make the trip worth it, I left on Friday morning (I worked it out so I would not miss any of the classes I teach on Friday). I piled into a matatu (14 passenger van which they normally stuff at least 20 people into) at 7:40 in the morning and arrived in Litein at 1:30 after transferring matatus in 3 different towns. It was my first time traveling by myself here but everything went great! The drive there was beautiful. Pictures just do not do justice to the beauty. Litein is the tea country so there are a bunch of bright green fields with rolling hills.  Never pictured that to be Africa. Kinda reminds me of Scotland in a way… weird.


Once I arrived we went back to Danielle’s house on the school compound and there were 3 other teachers that she works with cooking lunch for us! They were so sweet. I was told they even cleaned her house since I was coming! They made chapati (Kenyan style tortillas) a salad type thing (that had tomatoes in it and yet I thought it was good!) and chicken. Even though I decided to be vegetarian, I ate the chicken…. couldn’t turn it down. It was delicious! They laughs were never ending as we were all sitting there eating lunch together.  I went to class with Danielle (Kenyan sign language class 8) and met some of the students. When we walked up all of the students just swarmed us and wanted to meet me. It was so cute! They all started to tell me their names and asking my name and where I was from. She works at a primary school so there are kids from whats equivalent to kindergarten through 8th grade. Apparently she was talking about me all week to the students, so the students were very excited for my arrival.

Danielle showed me around town, during which it seems the crazy people found and flocked us. Its amazing how much attention 2 mzungus can get in a kenyan town. Then for the rest of the Friday night we just hung out in her house talking about life at our sites, the culture, friends and our home back in the US. We stayed up until 11 pm! Which is pretty late for me, hah. Saturday morning we woke up and ate a delicious pineapple for breakfast. Fruit, especially mangoes and pineapple are really cheap at her site. (pineapple costs about 34 american cents!) We decided to head to Kericho (which is about 45 min from her town) for the day. There is a big supermarket there comparable to krogers. We bought ice cream there! So we walked to a park in the town and enjoyed our ice cream sitting on the grass underneath a tree. We had lunch then at a hoteli. I’m pretty boring and just ate chips (fries). Arriving back to Litein from Kericho, it was raining. Kenyans seem to have a fear of rain... and do not go out in it. So being crazy mzungu, we decided to run back to the school even though it was pouring down rain. As we were running back, a car drove by and of course drove right through the huge puddle of muddy water right as we were passing it.  My entire left side of my body, including my mouth, got covered in the muddy water, haha.

Once we got back to the house, we changed into dry clothing and curled up under our sleeping bags and watched some much needed chick flicks. That evening we went up to the dining hall to hang out with the students for a bit before they went to bed. It was sooooo much fun! The students ended up showing me some dances. One of them was a Scottish dance, and the deaf students probably have better rhythm than I do. After they showed us the dances, the students wanted danielle and me to show them some american dances. So we did the chicken dance, macarana, and the electric slide. They picked it all up really fast.

So after the dances were finished, instead of going to bed like they were supposed to, they decided to seperate and swarm Danielle and myself.  We both had about 20 kids surrounding us.  Asking my questions about america and mumias, and also random questions about what food I eat.  They are so amazed by arm hair and will just rub my arm. One of the kids pinched the side of my hand, and since it was soft, said that I don’t work very hard, haha.  They then continued to compare both Danielle and myself saying that I was whiter than danielle, Danielle is stronger than me, and i have hairer arms than her.  As they are around they all end up at one point holding my hand and feeling my arm. My watch ended up lighting up since the button got pushed, and one little boy was just so amazed by it. He looked up at me wide eyed, and mouth gaping open. Oh it was so priceless. Also the students noticed my bracelets that I was wearing. One said that they looked like they were Masaai made and a different student said they looked like witchcraft, haha. I thought you would enjoy that Natti : )

It was wonderful going to see danielle at her site, but it also made me realize (even though I already knew it) what I’m missing at my site. I’ve been struggling a lot lately with building relationships with the other teachers and even the students somewhat. I’m sure part of it has to do with the fact that I am shy when I first meet people, but I think that they have been kinda standoffish also. It has been a huge mental burden on me, making a number of my days a challenge. Toss into that the fact that I have to teach chemistry in Kenyan sign language (that I just learned) when the national syllabus requires a bunch of experiments to be done that quite often are not possible to do at the school. Everyday has been a struggle for me, but I’m making it. It seems that a couple of the teachers are starting to warm up to me, and I just hope that it continues. I know I just need to give it time for things to develop.