Week One - Kakamega

So I’m sitting in my office learning a valuable lesson about the African sense of time. I was told to be here at 10, but now it’s almost 11 and nobody has shown up yet. Yesterday I was told to be here at 2 and we did not get started until after 3. I need to remember to always bring a book with me so I don’t feel like I’m wasting time so often. Maybe I should just start arriving at least a half hour late, but with my luck that would be the one time everyone would be on time and waiting for me, so perhaps it’s a lose-lose situation. Regardless, it’s a beautiful sunny day and a sweet smelling breeze is drifting through the open windows, plus I love the little village my office is in so being here alone and waiting isn’t so bad.

So I’ve decided that, concerning resources at least, I’m really lucky as far as PCV’s go. I’m typing on a slick Dell computer donated through the UN and sitting in a nice office that was provided via funding through the FAO project. However, it’s my first weekend in Kakamega and they already have me working both Saturday and Sunday. Hopefully this won’t be an every weekend occurrence. Considering that the Peace Corps Directors recommend spending the first three months not doing much of anything besides adapting and getting to know people I’ve really been thrown into things. My situation may be an exception since I’m replacing a previous volunteer. The current issue I’m working is that most of the grant money has already been spent through various projects, and we need to reapply for additional funds, with the intention of creating a self-sufficient project by the time I leave. The only problem is that the UN needs to see financial information concerning how the money has been spent, and all that information is stored in QuickBooks on this computer, which is a software suite I’ve never used and was hoping to have more than a day to figure out. At least I have managed to throw a balance sheet and expense report together that I hope will be sufficient, and hopefully today we will finish everything off.

So the last few days have not been bad. My first day of work on Friday consisted of going to a “farmer field day”, which is a training day where farmers learn from other farmers about various crops and successful farming techniques. There were easily a hundred people there, and although farming tutorials were interesting, the field day was basically a big party with lots of dancing, singing, and celebration. There were drums, guitars, and instruments made out car parts and old soda bottles, and a dancer dressed in traditional clothing who was absolutely crazy. He climbed a tree, hung from a branch near the top, and fell to the ground while singing and dancing the whole time. I have a few pictures that I hope to post from the event. There were lots of speeches, presentations, foods, and refreshments and apparently every farmer field day is similar so I have a lot to look forward to.

On Saturday in between work I caught up with several of the other volunteers in town and managed to grab some lunch and see one of the houses another volunteer is staying at. A few volunteers still don’t have their housing situation worked out, and I ended up with six people staying at my house. The consensus is my house is the nicest so perhaps the Christmas party will be there, but I’m waiting to see if the owner of the house, who occasionally stays in one of the locked rooms, will be in town over the holidays.

While all the volunteers were at my house I was out with several Canadians I had met who had invited me to join them for dinner at their place. The Canadians are volunteers as well through a program called Acces, and they either have a lot of funding or lots of money because their housing is ridiculously nice. I returned to my house via taxi at about ten to catch up with the PCV’s crashing at my place and overall it was really had a fun night, despite my day which, with no much going on, was a little overwhelming. I forgot to mention I had been limping the whole day because I stepped on a grate that fell through earlier in the day and banged up by leg and skinned my hands pretty good.

So Kakamega isn’t a bad place, and I have a lot going on the next week to keep me busy. Tomorrow is a holiday and I’ll be cooking with a the PCV’s and Melvin, one of the Kenyans I have met. On Tuesday I have to go to medical in Kisumu to kill off the amoebas in my stomach, and then the rest of the week I will be traveling to various farmer field schools with my boss. I’ll keep everyone informed the next time something interesting happens.