Kitui - First Week (+ a few days)

Even though I wrote a very long post last week that did not publish things are going great so far. My host family takes very good care of me, and I feel really spoiled. Traditional gender roles are very prevalent here and since the father passed away several years ago I am the only guy in the household. My family cooks my meals, serves my food, does my laundry, cleans my room, and even polishes my shoes. All I need is someone fanning me with a palm frond and I'll be set.

Actually, the four star treatment is a bit of a hindrance. I need to learn how to do many of these things myself for when I am posted at my site, so I have been insisting that I take part in some of the household activities. As a result this weekend I got to "help" cook the food, which consisted of mboga (Vegi fat, onions, tomatoes, cabbage, and a spice called Rayco...very good!) and ugali, which is one of the six main starch staples. Every meal has a main course of either ugali, which is like a grit bread, rice, large slices of bread covered in butter, chapatis (an Indian bread that is popular here), cassava, which is a large starchy root, or potatoes, and more often then not it is a combinations of these things, which Kenyans pile plate after plate of three meals a day. I feel very well fed, but sometimes I just can't handle any more carbs and starch. Whenever I go to another volunteer's house I am offered food and sometimes I am practically force fed by enthusiastic Mamas, so the food issue is not a problem here, except that it is excessive at times.

My family consists of Mama Veronica, who does not speak English but is very friendly and helpful with my Swahili, two of my sisters Jackie and Meta, who are 22 and 18 respecively, Jackie's two year old boy Junior, who is the cutest kid ever, and several children belonging to other brothers and sisters that are no longer living at home. Also, Mama seems to take in many of the neighborhood children so at any given time there are at least five kids in the house. One of them, also named Veronica, is seven. She escorts me to the Choo (latrine) every night and brings me her text books and points at pictures and tells me the Swahili name for things. She is really cute and actually very helpful, so I gave her the coloring books and markers that I brought from home and she acted like it was the best gift she had ever recieved. Jackie is the closest to my age and the best at English. She is the translator between me and mama and helps me with my Swahili all the time. My family is very friendly but Kenyan culture is so community based and social that sometimes I find it hard to get any time to myself to read, reflect, or study. I've managed to avoid getting sick so far and I'm faring better than some of the volunteers, but I know it's just a matter of time. The training is coming along well so far and my Swahili improves a little more every day. I can't wait to be fluent and hope it happens before I leave. That's about all, I really hope this will post this time.


Oh, I milked a cow and learned how to make bricks this weekend, and also got to try the local homemade beer, which tastes a bit like cider vinegar but is ok once you get used to the taste. That's all for now, hopefully I'll be posted somewhere I can update more regularly and reliably. Write me letters!

Day two in Nairobi

Well I still have Internet so I can post an update again. We started today with a health overview and were given PC first aid kits that have just about everything you could want for a minor injury or illness. I was also stuck two more times - this time for typhoid and meningitis - but I still have plenty more injections to go over the next three months. Today I also ate more than I should have; that's why I'm skipping out on dinner right now. It's been all you can eat Kenyan for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, plus two mandatory 30 minute coffee breaks in between. I'm sure they are trying to ease us in gradually and the food supply will diminish once we go to our training site tomorrow. We also went through some basic Swahili lessons today. We've met some current volunteers and it's pretty incredible how much Swahili the volunteers know who have been at there sites for a year. I have an interview with the Peace Corps business Development Manager tomorrow so I should have a better idea of what exactly I'll be doing shortly. From talking to volunteers in the program business development is extremely varied from person to person and site to site.

After training we went out of our gated and locked hotel compound and walked up the street for a beer. The part of Nairobi we are in, which is apparently once of the nicer areas, is very dirty, crowded, and poor. It's quite a culture shock already and I know this is just the beginning. So that's all today. Perhaps I'll be able to shoot something out from the training center we are leaving for tomorrow, but if not I'll do what I can to update everyone soon.

Oh, here's a few pics if I can get them to upload:

Never mind, it's been twenty minutes. Maybe sometime I wont be on a hub sharing a dialup connection.

Miss everyone and will write more soon.

Made it to Nairobi!

What a surprise! I was told it would be two weeks before I could contact anyone but here I am at a cybercafe on the first night. First off, I made it into Nairobi in one piece and things are exciting to say the least. Here’s a recap of my last two days. Wednesday I woke up to several injections required for entrance into Kenya, including Measles, Mumps, Rubella, and Polio even though I had those as a kid. Kenya requires a booster shot of these to allow entrance into the country, so I had to get stuck again. I also got a yellow fever vaccination and am now on Malaria medication. We lost a few volunteers on the way during the medical process. One of them was originally born in a foreign country and was unsure if she had had the initial Polio vaccinations as a kid. Since the first dose of polio is a three stage process that takes eight months she was “medically separated” and sent home. She was a great addition to our group and everyone was sad to see that happen. Another guy found out the day before he left that his girlfriend was pregnant. He had been dating her for a year and was friends with her long before that, so with an attitude that things happen for a reason he said farewell and is not joining us either. Finally, someone ran into complications with poison ivy and had to go through some hurdles to join us, but she was given the OK just in time to come along. After an interesting morning we took a five hour bus ride to the airport and then enjoyed a twenty hour plane ride to Kenya. The layover in London was short, but I had a chance to try Prawn Cocktail Flavoured potato crisps and Twirls at Sarah’s suggestion. I tried to change my sleep schedule to adjust to the new time zone but the American airline seats where I should have slept (JFK to Heathrow) were not nearly as comfortable as the British Airways seats when I needed to stay awake (Heathrow to Nairobi). So my body is out of whack but I know I’ll be fine in a few days with the jetlag. Flying over Africa was amazing. Small villages in a vast landscape of rolling hills and then as we went further the barren nothingness of the Sahara spread out for hours. As darkness came it was startling how black it was below the plane. No lights at all until we came into Nairobi, and even here it is splotchy. We landed and were greeted by host county Peace Corps employees, including the country director. The airport was very British with classical music playing and white people everywhere, so initially it did not feel like Africa. We were then expedited through customs and taken to a hotel we are staying at in Nairobi for the first few days. We have training and medical stuff here and then we are going to the village to meet our host families. I had a chance to speak Swahili with Sam, once of our trainers, on the way here. Sam was impressed with how much I picked up and I am too. I’m really looking forward to the time when I can speak it fluently. I also talked to a Peace Corps business development volunteer who is with us. He actually has a cell phone and have a nice mountain bike, so I’m excited but trying not to get my hopes up if things don’t fare so well for me. When we got to the hotel we were given a Kenyan buffet style meal with noodles, goat meat in a sauce, and some kind of blackened mystery fish with lots of bones. It was edible but nothing to write home about, even though I just did. That’s all for now, I need to try to sleep. Hopefully I can write tomorrow, but if not you’ll hear more from me soon.

Staging - Day Two

Today both clarified and confused things further. We discussed PC policies and legal stuff and did various skits and activities for further ground breaking and overviews. Our skit was by far the best with "learn and adapt" set to Sir Mixalot, but you would need to have been there to appreciate it. Things got interesting when we finally got the scoop on the next three months. Tomorrow we’ll be getting the first in a series of many, many vaccinations, and then we’re bussed off to the airport, then on to Kenya and on to our training post. I’ve been told the Internet access I’ll have over the next few months is "slow, frustrating, and unreliable" so posts may be few and far between for awhile. I’ve also been told I won’t have access to a phone for the first two weeks in country, so initially be assured that no news is good news. I certainly hope this will change over time but I can make no guarantees. My host family is expecting me so that promises to be exciting, especially since there’s little hope they will speak English. I foresee a lot of miscommunication and body language until I understand things a little better! So I’m nervous, scared, and sad to leave everyone behind, but really excited and ready to see what things will be like at the same time. It’s hard to believe that after all the years of wanting to do this it’s actually happening. It looks like I will have a great support structure through the volunteers and staff, so I’m not as worried about my well being as being able to retain everything I’ll learn during training and in turn use that to actually be helpful in Africa….oh, and having all my stuff stolen would suck too.

Anyway, that’s it for now. It may be two weeks before I can post again so hope for the best….and expect things to get interesting from here on out!

Staging - Day One

What a crazy day! So much preparation and anticipation and now things are finally getting started. My flight left at 7:10 this morning and I got to the staging event in Philadelphia with my bags (exactly the maximum allowed weight allowance worth) around two. I started the day off right by taking the wrong bag off the carousel at the airport, pretty much par for the course for me. Turns out someone from Greece has an identical giant red bag to what I have and I chased them down just in time to swap luggage. I’m now at a Sheraton and over the next two days there will be an overview of what to expect and then it’s off to Nairobi. Today we’ve been through training regarding ways to cope with anxieties, as well as some basic safety guidelines. Basically it was just an ice breaker day and I met the 30 or so other volunteers that are going with me to Kenya. Things look to be more in depth tomorrow and Wednesday before heading off to Africa. The volunteers are a mix of education and IT/business development and the crowd is really diverse. I’m surprised by how many volunteers have previous work experience or graduate degrees. It turns out the guy I’m sharing a room with has a doctorate in Neuroscience, and there’s several other people in the group with PhD's as well! The group is an interesting mix of people my age and people in their forties through sixties. Looks like the phase of your life to go is before you have kids and after they are out of the house. I’m still unsure of what exactly it is I will be doing, but I hope to know more soon. It looks like it may be two months into the training before they have an exact answer for me. In the meantime I’m hoping to get a cell phone and have Internet access in Kenya. We’ll see if that works out!

Testing out the new Blog

This is a test, this is only in a test. Should this be a real blog post I would be in Kenya discussing life in the Peace Corps. I'm just 11 short days away from my staging event in Philadelphia. After three days in Philly I'm off for two years and two months service as a Business Development Volunteer. Assuming I have occasional access to the Internet this is the Blog I plan to use to keep everyone up to date on the latest and greatest. This seems to be a best approach since anyone interested can check out what I'm doing and I don't need to send e-mails out to a huge mailing list.

So that's all for now, I need to make sure this Blog post works. Stay tuned for more shortly.

Here's a pic, let's see if I can post these: