Oyugus Weekend

The Western and Nyanza Peace Corps volunteers from our group decided to meet up in Oyugus for a party this weekend, and it turned out to be a lot of fun in a lazy sort of way. These Peace Corps parties seem to draw a lot of attention, because the small rural Kenyan villages that most volunteers stay in suddenly become overrun with wazungu (white people), and the front yards become tent cities where most of the PCV's end up sleeping. At least it was at someone else's house this time.

I came into town on Friday night and we went to a nearby bar to listen to the same Kenyan song blaring over and over again on the overhead loudspeakers. We drank a few Tuskers and then I fell asleep back at the house watching a movie on a television borrowed from the village chief. The next day was supposed to be action packed. First we planned to camp by Lake Victoria, and when it became to late to do that we decided to stay at a hotel in Kisii. Unfortunately there wasn't a lot of motivation from folks this weekend and most of the volunteers didn't even leave the house on Saturday except for a quick Tusker run. A lot of my friends were pretty emotionally exhausted this week, since teaching has just started for the majority of them and many are also coming to terms with all the unexpected surprises at their sites. For instance, one volunteer's living room has been turned into grain storage for a nearby nutrition center. The 100kg bags are full of bugs and there's no room for her to put any of her stuff. Another volunteer came back to his house to see that the owner had returned from Nairobi, broke open the door, gathered up all the volunteer's things, and tossed them out of the house because the owner decided he wanted to move back in. Yet another volunteer has had flashlights shining into her windows in the middle of the night, and one time she opened the blinds at night to see someone on the other side of the window staring at her. One of the deaf educators was trained in KSL (Kenyan sign language) only to go to a school for the deaf where the students only understand ASL (American sign language), and since he hasn't studied that he has no way to talk to his class. The moral of the story is that I feel pretty lucky that so far (knock on wood) that I haven't had many problems beyond my control.

Anyway, laziness prevailed and there was no camping or going to Kisii this weekend. Instead we watched four movies in a row. I stuck around for about three of them and honestly it felt great to just lay there and stare at a box for awhile. It's amazing how interesting a movie is when you actually see a television about once every other month. One of them, Crash, was exceptionally good. I finished the day feeling completely worthless but refreshed.

So that's about all the news for now. I bought some pretty cool stuff in Kisumu today that might make it's way back to the states for a few lucky people, and other than that there's not much new. I'll write again when something interesting comes up.