When it rains it pours

I’m in Nairobi now with some time to kill before our In Service Training (IST) begins tonight. I took a night bus (meaning very little sleep last night) because I’ve got meetings scheduled later today with the FAO and with Benson, my wheelchair contact, before IST begins. Anyway, here’s a quick recap of the last week, there’s been plenty of frustrations.

Work is pretty much the same. I’ve been working with Rhoda on setting up a sweet potato value addition training class, and it looks like we’ll be conducting training from May 1st through 6th in three different districts. There’s lot of preparation involved for this and I left it to Habakkuk to help me get everything squared away while I’m gone. I’m really hoping things will work out because Rhoda is extremely difficult to get ahold of and I don’t want to miss this opportunity. Rhoda is the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI) expert on Sweet Potato processing and once she has trained our farmers to her standards she will also be a very good connection for finding markets to sell through.

I also had a chance to send out an email to the primary benefactor for Sally Orphanage, a guy named David from Belgium. He replied with a lengthy discussion of how Molly, the caretaker at the orphanage, is a liar and cannot be trusted. He says that his contact in Nairobi is very trustworthy and that it is Molly that is the problem. David tells me he is going to pull funding from this orphanage because he’s tired of Molly, and so the effort I put into assisting really didn’t amount to much, except possibly helping to shut down an orphanage, which is not something to feel particularly good about. I’m sure there’s a grey area between Molly’s story and David’s, but what bothers me is the kids that will be unable to finished school, or may even be back out on the streets, because of bickering between people and issues they have no control over.

So with the Sally Orphanage disaster on my mind, I attended an Easter party on Saturday for my own Orphan’s project, the Wake up Women’s group in Kakamega. I had a chance to talk with Agnetta, the caretaker for Brenda who has AIDS, and it appears Brenda will begin ARV’s to treat the virus this week. I also listened to the caretakers discuss how badly their organisation needs an orphanage, as the kids are currently disbursed and living with distant relatives or neighbors. I suggested they start with some income generating activities, such as a poultry project, that can be used for nutrition and income before thinking as far ahead as the expenses and time involved to start an orphan’s home. However, this group is determined to get one. I had to listen to every women in the group pray that God will work through me to assist them in getting an Orphan’s home, and then even the kids started saying the same thing. It really made me feel uncomfortable because I don’t see how, with everything else I’m supposed to be doing, I will be able to set up an orphan’s home in Kakamega for these kids. While in IST this week we should be covering various possibilities for grants and funding so we’ll see what happens.

So on to the wheelchair project. I found a private donor through Peace Corps friends to cover the $5500 clearance/storage costs to get the container of 550 wheelchairs released and sent to Nairobi. I was even sent a text message confirming it was taken care of. Then, after telling so many disabled people wheelchairs were coming, I get another text message. It turns out customs wants an additional $2500, which seems to just be a random number they are throwing out to see how much they can milk us. It’s frustrating to me how much the Port of Mombasa is going out of their way to prevent this from happening. I told Benson there was no way I would throw an addition $2500 in or help him find somebody who would. The cost is to the point now that it’s almost better to start over than to try and clear these. I met with Benson over Easter and he agreed to make his way to Mombasa, which he did yesterday, to try to straighten everything out. I’ll be meeting him in his office today to see where things stand.

So on top of all this I’ve had a nasty vomiting/dysentery/fever thing and I had to be hospitalized and rehydrated Sunday night. They haven’t been able to identify what’s causing it but I think I’m slowly starting to recover. When it rains it pours but I’m confident things will start looking up again soon.

Even More Pics

Here's another set of pics to add to the ones I just posted. Might as well do this while the web is actually fast (comparatively) for a change:

Here is a matatu Stage in Kampala, Uganda. I have no idea how it's possible to find your way through here or maneuver a matatu out of the pile

This is the Nile River in Uganda. I wish I could have gotten some pics while rafting but very few cameras could have survived the trip.

I have puppies now! The mama dog in my compound gave birth to a litter of six. Unfortunately only these three made it but the remaining ones are doing fine. The one on the right is my favorite and the other two will be given to other PCV's

Sweet Potato Graduation 2006: A big festival for farmers who have been educated on planting techniques. I wish I could just sit in the back at some of these things but I'm always put up front and given special treatment. Fun for awhile but annoying on a regular basis. Here we are being given the usual garland necklace as part of the festivities.

This is Habakkuk, the chairman of the FFS Network and a close friend of mine. The three kids on the left are his, while the three on the right are his siblings' children

This is Homa Bay, a beautifully scenic village on Lake Victoria.


While visiting some Peace Corps friends in Rongo, a village in the Nyanza Province of Western Kenya, this bird landed on the fence outside. It'’s called an African Flycatcher. A flock of them live in the mango tree in the backyard, and they do a great job keeping the bugs away. This is the dominant male of the flock.


This is Mickey Freeman. His name sounds American, and that's because he is named after the Peace Corps volunteer who worked in my position before me. He's the son of Habakkuk. The kid is huge and not even one year old: proof that good farming practices and nutrition pay off.

Pictures!! -- Finally

Well it’s been an interesting week and there’s plenty to write but I’ll start with some pics for a change. The electricity finally came back after taking a one month holiday, and with it my ability to upload the pics off my digital camer; the things I took for granted.

Starting with my visit to the Brittany James Chirdren's House:

Here’s Steve James, the founder of BJCF, with one of the Orphan girls in his lap

This is a pic of the welcoming celebration we received

from the Children when we arrived at the orphanage

On one of the visits into the surrounding community we stopped at a Church that is receiving funding from BJCF. An all too familiar sight, whenever large groups of wazungu congregate in a Kenyan village building the windows fill with curious children.

The orphanage is always bustling with activity. Here the roof is being added to the new girl’s dormitory (it was finished on the same week this picture was taken) and in the background women are drawing water from the well and carry clothes to be washed.

Can you find me in this picture?

Now onto my own Orphan's group back in Kakamega, The Wake Up Women's Group. This is a secondary project of mine I'll go into more detail on in my next blog post:

This is the Wake Up Women's Group members and children posing for a picture

Here we are serving the Children lunch for an Easter Holiday party. Everyone else is apparently fine, but this very lunch put me in the hospital with a nasty stomach bug that I'm still fighting

This is Brenda, the HIV positive little girl I'm working with. She has an infection on the left side of her face that has caused it to swell (an opportunistic disease caused from her weakened immune system), and as soon as the medicine she has been given for this clears the infection the doctor will put Brenda on ARV's (antiretroviral drugs), which may even be able to bring her health back to that of a normal ten year old kid.

Migori, Rongo, Sweet Potatoes, etc.

There's nothing as exciting as my last few updates to report on but things are coming along well here and I'm trying to stay productive. The day after returning from my Nairobi/Kitui adventure I was contacted by two Dutch friends, Ilsa and Yvonne. The Dutchies are working with street children and they were volunteering in Kitui when I was in training. When they called me they were driving back from Uganda and needed a place to stay for the night. I had about two hours notice before they got to my house at 10pm. They were with two Catholic priest friends they work with in Kitui, and the priests needed to be in Eldoret the following morning. I threw together a place for them to sleep and had just a few hours to catch up with them before they left the following morning. The next day I went to Mbale, a nearby town, to get information on Moringa, which is a tree with tons of nutrition benefits that grows very well here. While there I purchased a kilo of Moringa seeds, enough for a forest of the stuff. I then worked with farmers to get six large bags of Orange Fleshed Sweet Potato vines together. My plan was to bring the Moringa and Sweet Potato down to Migori with Habakkuk, the network chairman, and educate the farmers in the area on how to grow these crops. The meeting with the farmers was organised by friends I made at the Brittany James Chirdren's Fund and we were invited to stay at the orphanage while in Migori. The following weekend was fairly low key and I had a chance to relax. There was a 100km Boda Boda race that I wanted to be in but I had a sore throat I couldn't kick, so I'll try to enter the next one.

After the weekend I spent the next few days at the office, and a network meeting was scheduled. One thing I'm starting to notice is that there are so many people in my farmers group who talk about getting things done, yet it seems that so little is actually accomplished. For instance, there are village commodity boards that the Network wants to use to update villages throughout Kakamega district on agricultural prices, so farmers selling their crops do not get ripped off. The boards have been sitting in the office ready to be deployed in the field since the volunteer before me worked with the farmers to get them finished, and they are still there now, despite repeated promises to get them deployed. It can be frustrating how slow the pace moves here and how unconcerned people are about it. I sometimes worry that out of the 10 committee members leading the network, Habakkuk is the only one really going out of his was to help out the farmers, while some of the others appear to be in it for there own self interest. I have been speaking to Habakkuk about this and we are working together to motivate and get other network officials involved more. I'm afraid that otherwise people will continue to sit back and take the grant money until all of it is gone, and the long term sustainability intended for this project will fail, something that happens all to often here.

So Habakkuk worked with me to get all the inputs together for our training in Migori, and I spent Wednesday night at his house so we could catch an "Express" matatu that was leaving at five in the morning for Migori. I learn time and time again that there is no such thing as an express matatu. It stopped in as many places as a regular matatu and we even had to switch matatus at the chaotic stage in Kisii, which involved unloading all the bags of vines from the roof and reloading them. We finally arrived in Migori seven hours later, and since we had such an early start we were still able to work with the farmers that day.

When I arrived at the orphanage I was surprised to see two surgeons from my home town who had come for a week to check up on the children and visit nearby clinics and hospitals. We joined them for lunch and following my meeting with them we left for a training session for farmers that had been organized by Pastor Fred, the manager of the orphanage.

There were over 100 farmers in attendance to learn about the crops we brought, and luckily we brought plenty of bags of vines, so we were able to distribute enough for each farmer to start a rapid growth vine nursery, where they will be able to grow enough vines to fill their gardens with Sweet Potatoes if they want to. I also had several thousand moringa seeds, and each farmer got a handful. I spoke to them on the benefits of the Moringa tree and Habakkuk educated them on the Sweet Potatoes. They were very appreciative and we are planning a return trip later this year to assist the farmers in finding markets and processing the harvested crops.

I also had Pastor Fred organise a meeting with the disabled in the community, and six people showed up in need of a wheelchair. I got their names, pictures, and sizes (the requirements of the donors) and will let Benson know of the need in Migori. Hopefully I will be able to get at least six of the donated wheelchairs to the Migori area, while at the same time I'm also working in Kakamega on the same thing.

After working all day with the farmers and disabled folks we ate dinner and I stayed up late talking with the surgeons from Huntsville. The next morning I went to Rongo, a nearby town where I had heard a grant had been approved for Sweet Potato processing and marketing. Before making it to Rongo I stopped at the Sally Orphanage, where I went on my last visit in the area to learn that some of there funding going towards assisting the children is allegedly being stolen by a women acting as a collaborator in Nairobi. I once again spoke to Molly, the primary caretaker at the orphanage, about this and she was nearly in tears. Children are unable to take their final exams because the money they were promised for school fees was not being delivered, and she showed me receipts and paperwork to back up her case. I got as much information together as I could and plan to write a detailed letter to the donor in Belgium regarding this. I'm not sure I'll be able to get anywhere with him, because Molly showed me a rather nasty letter the donor wrote to her when she told him about the problem. Unfortunately the collaborator in Nairobi happens to be the donor's Kenyan girlfriend, so I'm going to have to be careful with what I do here, but Molly's case is compelling and if she is being honest with me the woman in Nairobi is a rotten person.

I left from the Sally Orphanage for Rongo, and learned that an organization there has received over 10 millions shillings in Grant money towards the production, processing, and distribution of Sweet Potato products. I visited several farmer sights and had a chance to see where and how the potatoes are growing, where the mills are located, and even a bakery where bread is being baked and sold. I was very impressed with their project, and interior Nyanza province near Homa Bay is an absolutely beautiful area. The biggest issue I saw was that the mills and the bakery are in the middle of nowhere. The grant money is currently being used towards packaging and barcodes so the bread can be sold in larger markets, and the transportation logistics of actually getting the bread to these markets looks like it will be a huge problem. I'm hoping that I can also apply for grant money to start a similar initiative in a better location with farmers in my network. I have several potential donors (Farm Africa, Africa Now) that I am going to schedule meetings with over the next few months.

That evening I stayed with some volunteers, a couple living in Rongo, before heading out the next day. One great thing about the Peace Corps is that it provides a network of people all over the country to stay with when needed. The next morning I went to Kisumu to relax with some friends for the day, and I also bought several gifts for friends and family from the craft market. I managed to carry everything home in one piece and as I was leaving the Matatu to take a boda boda to my village, the matatu Tout took my bag from me and threw it on the ground, breaking about half of the things I had purchased! I was pretty pissed but he drove off before I could say anything, and what can you do? At least some of my stuff is still intact.

So that about sums up the latest. There was a Sweet Potato Graduation ceremony yesterday where all the farming trained on growing were given certificates of completion. As usual there was singing, dancing, and plenty of long speeches from everybody. Things finished up around 5 o'clock, which is pretty typical for an itinerary ending at 2.

Now I need to get going, lots going on but I'll write more soon. Going on three weeks without electricity at the house but if I ever get it back I'll post some pics from all my latest adventures.

45th Anniversary Peace Corps Party, Kitui, Wheelchairs, etc.

I'll try to keep things shorter this time, since there's a Returned Peace Corps Newsletter in Alabama requesting an update. For some reason the newsletter doesn’t require the 20 something pages of longwinded off-subject tangents I've gotten so accustomed to writing. So, with brevity in mind, here's the latest and greatest with life in Kenya:

This last week has been a lot of fun, and finally my whirlwind adventure tour will slow down for a few weeks. Things will pick back up for In-Service Training (IST) and Mt. Kenya at the end of the month, and maybe my family in May, but for awhile I'll be onsite, or at least in the western half of the country.

My friend Sarah, the last of the volunteers from the Canadian group, was leaving over the weekend, so Wednesday night we went out for dinner and said our farewells. Then, on Thursday I took a bus to Nairobi for a Peace Corps 45th anniversary party. The party was scheduled for Saturday but since I was in Nairobi anyway I wanted to catch up with Benson, the chairman of the Kenya Programme for Disabled Persons (KPDP) and my potential contact for free wheelchairs. I checked into the Upper Hill campsite in Nairobi on Thursday night, which I highly recommend to anyone on a budget. Most of the Peace Corps volunteers in town for the party were staying there, and to my surprise so many had already arrived on Thursday that there were no rooms left. No problem, for 300 shillings they gave me a place to sleep in the hot mosquito filled attic and I was able to tough out a night there until a tent became available to me the next day.

The next morning I left for a visit to the Peace Corps office and to see Benson. As I mentioned earlier, there is a container of 550 wheelchairs from an organisation called Free Wheelchair Mission waiting to be picked up at the port of Mombasa. The donor of the wheelchairs included shipping all the way to the port. Since this is a donation, the clearing and customs fees were not anticipated. However, Kenyan customs decided to require a $4000 clearance fee on the container. Benson did not have this amount on hand and requested additional funding from the Wheelchair Mission to cover this. After some time the organisation provided Benson with the money, but meanwhile the port of Mombassa was charging storage costs for the container at 10,000 shillings ($130) a day. As a result, the total required to get these wheelchairs cleared is now nearing $10,000 and continues to grow. With the rate things were going, it was looking unlikely that the wheelchairs would ever be able to be acquired. What will inevitably happen then is that the container will be seized and the goods sold, thus preventing the people who cannot afford a wheelchair from being able to receive one. I sent out emails to the current PCV's informing them of the situation, and I was connected with a friend of a PCV named Peter who wanted to help. He told me he may have connections willing to cover the storage fees and clear the wheelchairs, and I told him that if he wanted to help we needed to meet with Benson ASAP as the amount required is continuing to grow higher every day.

I arrived at the meeting with Benson and Peter after going by the Nairobi Peace Corps headquarters on Friday morning. Once again I found that the only guy that has access to mail I have may be receiving in Nairobi was not around. (I received most of my Christmas cards, some dated November, in early March. Thanks everyone, and please use my Kakamega address from now on).

So with my Peace Corps HQ visit out of the way I had a chance to sit down with Benson and Peter and discuss the issues at hand. Peter is a Kikuyu from Central Province and he seems to be involved in just about everything. The stereotype of Kikuyu work ethic seems to ring true in many cases. Beyond working on a honey-as-cash-crop development project with local women, a career as a tour guide, and coaching a very talented girl’s soccer team, Peter is also in charge of the Boy Scout program in Kenya, which is very popular here. Beyond all of this Peter somehow found time to learn about the Wheelchair issue and make his way to Nairobi to chat with Benson.
Benson explained the situation to Peter and showed us the latest documentation from the port of Mombassa with the current balance needed to clear shipping costs. Peter was very knowledgeable of the ways of the Port of Mombasa and had a similar story. As the leader of the Boy Scouts he received a container of camping gear, hiking shoes, etc. from the states. Once again shipping was only covered to the port, and by the time the money was available to cover the customs and clearing costs the storage fees became too much and the container was abandoned. Its contents were then seized and sold by the people who are probably doing very well with Kenya’s policy towards donated goods.

Anyway, before Benson became paralyzed, he was a relatively important person in the Kenyan government. Benson has tried every political connection he knows to get the wheelchairs cleared, including several Members of Parliament (MP’s). He has had little success.

After discussing these issues at some length with Peter he replied that he knew a few people who may be willing to assist, and he also suggested a fundraiser from people needing the wheelchairs to cover the costs. However, Benson was completely against the fundraising idea. First, there simply isn’t enough time. Secondly, Benson wants these chairs to go to the poorest of the poor and does not want any money out of them. Benson informed Peter that a fund-raising approach had been attempted several times in the past and every single time the money ended up missing or not fully accounted for. In fact, Benson was so tired of this that he finally decided to channel a fundraiser through a Catholic Diocese, only to later discover that the Bishop in charge of collecting the funds was keeping a large sum of the money for himself!

So with the “fundraising-from-the-disabled” idea unacceptable to Benson, the other option was a donation, and because of the bureaucracy and accountability required from NGO’s, a grant application approach would take just too long. However, Benson informed us that additional grant money is coming into the organization in a few months, and any money given towards the storage costs could be refunded. He even presented the paperwork from the organization to prove it. I am still a little skeptical but I have come to really respect Benson and I believe he’s an honest guy.

(Authors note: I learned a hard lesson through this experience. I found money for Benson's project and it was stolen at the expense of 550 potential disabled Kenyans)

So I left the meeting unsure of what to do and hoping for a lead from Peter. With much on my mind, I met with the volunteers from my group back at the campsite to go out for dinner.

Dinner was definitely an experience to be remembered. Nearly all the volunteers from my group were in Nairobi and we left together to eat at a restaurant in Nairobi called Carnivore. I had been told this restaurant served game meat such as Elephant and Zebra, and I was looking forward to giving it a try. I later learned that game meat is no longer legal to serve, so I was a little disappointed, but I still had a chance to try some pretty strange dishes. The meals are basically all-you-can-eat meat, and the vegetarians in our group who were with us just to be social were pretty disgusted as huge slabs of meet are carried on skewers and pieces are shaved off onto the plate. First came the chicken, turkey, beef, pork, and lamb (boring). I was really hungry, but since it was all-you-can-eat I refused to let them fill me up on things I could eat elsewhere, and I turned down each of these courses. Then things got interesting. I had a chance to eat ostrich (tasty, a bit like beef with a gamey flavor) crocodile (maybe sort of like chicken?) and camel (chewy, with a really odd aftertaste. I’d imagine horse tastes similar. Not recommended). We stuffed ourselves with meat until past midnight and I could literally feel my arteries starting to harden. Overall, the food and atmosphere at Carnivore was a lot of fun and definitely worth a try once.

The next day was the 45th Peace Corps anniversary party at the International School in Nairobi. All past and present PCV's living in Kenya were invited to attend, and there were easily two hundred people there. It was really interesting to be able to talk to the previous volunteers, and it was surprising how many “returned” volunteers are still living in Kenya. A few were married to Kenyans as well, and several ex-PCV’s had been stationed elsewhere but ended up in Kenya as a career. I even spoke to a couple that volunteered in the Congo in the early seventies; what a different world that was compared to my conditions in Kenya today!

The International School is where all the ambassadors and embassy kids attend and I have never been to a nicer school compound in my life. It was such a stark contrast from any schools I had been to in Kenya. The soccer field was immaculate, the grounds were beautiful and well-kept, and I spent nearly the entire day in the crystal-clear Olympic sized swimming pool. I even learned how to back flip off the board.

The funny thing was that Marines stationed in Kenya were serving food and drinks to the volunteers...for quite a profit. The Tuskers were 100 shillings (35 more than the normal price) and hamburgers were 100 shillings. Where were the profits going? Back to International School. My friend Tony made a joke out of how we were all able to assist, a few shillings at a time, with the deplorable conditions at the school.

At that party I also spoke with the volunteer who assisted me in finding Peter. She was interested in knowing if any progress was made and I told her everything we discussed. From a career as a lawyer, the volunteer has quite a bit of money saved. After listening to my story she felt that if Peter was unable to assist, a private donation was the only way to quickly take care of this problem before the amount for storage fees becomes unattainable. She then offered to cover the clearing costs, if needed, with her own money. I wanted her to discuss things with Benson before committing, and I agreed to meet with her and Benson on Monday.

That night the Peace Corps had rented out Upper Hill Campsite for “Peace Corps Prom”. There was a DJ and a Peace Corps prom king and queen were nominated from the group about to return in June. Some of the girls were really excited about the whole thing and one in particular was pretty upset that she wasn’t Prom Queen. I thought the whole idea was stupid, but I kept my opinion to myself. Nevertheless, I did enjoy meeting so many of the volunteers from other groups that I wouldn’t have known otherwise, and all in all it was a great day.

That night I also met an Irish volunteer setting up Radio Equipment in Somalia. He told me he had been with working with a large group volunteers in Mogadishu, and many of them had been killed in an attack. As a result he was spending his remaining time in Nairobi until returning to Ireland. I’ve tried to find more information regarding the attack online, but I couldn’t find anything, but perhaps that this type of incident is so routine it isn’t even newsworthy in Somalia anymore.

Since I had a meeting scheduled in Nairobi the following day, I left for Kitui to visit my host family on Sunday. I had told my host family I was planning to visit them in one week, and when I arrived in Kitui I realized my Swahili still needs a lot of work. What I accidentally told my host mama was that I was coming to see them for one week, not in one week. As a result, Mama had purchased a new set of bed sheets for me, cleaned up my room, and even planned a goat-eating party for the following Saturday. I felt pretty bad to tell her that I was only there for the night, but I did have to return to Nairobi and get back to work in Kakamega. Even worse, I was able to see her even less than I intended. I went to Kitui with Adrienne, one of my Peace Corps friends, because she wanted to visit her host family too. She planned to surprise her family by being in town, but arrived to find that her mama was out of town. Adrienne’s host father was there, however, and he agreed to drive us in his matatu to the nearby village where her mama staying. He assured us it was only a few kilometers away, and so I went along for the ride. I went with Jackie, my host family sister, and planned to be back in time for dinner.

It turned out that a few kilometers of driving meant two hours (one-way) on a bumpy, slow going dirt road. After the first hour I started asking if we were about to arrive, and kept getting the same answer: “We are almost there”. It was past 8:00 when we reached our destination, and we were baffled by why Adrienne’s host father would want to waste so much petrol to drive us for what was a ten minute visit with Adrienne’s host mom. As I later discovered, there had been a marital dispute and Adrienne’s host dad was hoping that by dragging us along to the middle of nowhere he could use us to get his wife to come back with him. It didn’t work and I returned in a pretty bitter mood at about 11:00 to find that my own host mom had been waiting up for me with a cold dinner. Jackie explained everything as best she could and Mama Veronica was more upset with Adrienne’s host father than me, but it was disappointing to take a three hour drive to Kitui only to see my family for a few hours.

The next day I woke up early to get in a Matatu yet again and return for a morning meeting in Nairobi with Benson. By this time I was pretty fed up with riding in matatus but I did my best to sleep a bit. We arrived in Nairobi to meet the volunteer who wanted to assist just in time for the meeting. Benson and my volunteer friend hit it off really well and after looking over the paperwork and asking him some questions she agreed to loan him the money for the clearing costs. This works out great, because Benson is very excited about using Peace Corps to distribute the 550 wheelchairs he will be receiving. Benson has had problems in the past with giving free wheelchairs to distributors who end up selling them for profit, and he feels confident that he can trust the Peace Corps to truly give them out for free. In fact, I have a distribution meeting scheduled with Benson in mid April and he is saying that when I leave Peace Corps he wants to hire me on to potentially take his place as Chairman for KPDP. I’m doubtful that two years down the road I’ll want to be living and working in Nairobi, but I took it as a compliment regardless.

(Author's note: Anybody looking into donor work in Kenya needs to be very very careful before making the same mistake I did here. Beware of people like Benson Anjere and insist on total transparency and accountability)

So I’m almost finished, but so much for brevity…sorry Scott, I’m bound to have a less busy week coming up that might work better.

After the meeting I had planned to take a Matatu to Eldoret, spend the night there, and then leave early in the morning for Kakamega. This is because it was already noon and I would be driving long into the night to reach Kakamega on the same day. Benson overheard me talking about this, and said that since he lives in Western province and was planning a trip to his house that day. He offered to give me a ride and drop me off in Kakamega. I thought it would be a nice change to actually ride in a real car instead of a Matatu and took him up on it. The result was the longest, slowest ride ever. Since Benson is disabled his driver needed to go very slow, especially on the rough pothole covered parts of the road (basically about half the length of the trip). Our average speed must have been 25kph and when we finally got to Kisumu, still an hour from my house, it was past 9:00. Benson and his assistants (we were four deep in the back of the car) were very tired and he suggested spending the night at his house, which was supposedly only a 20 minute drive from Kakamega that I could take in the morning. I was appreciative of the ride and very tired myself so I took him up on it. We arrived at his house very late and all I wanted to do was sleep, but Benson insisted I stay up and drink Tuskers with him while his assistants cooked dinner. It was well past midnight before I finally made it to bed. The next morning I left at eight by Matatu in order to get to my office in time for a 10:00 meeting. No problem when it’s only a twenty minute ride, right? Well, Benson lives on the Ugandan border and the ride was over two hours, so once again the Kenyan sense of time spent in a matatu was grossly underestimated. I figure that Benson had planned for me to spend the night at his place all along. On a more positive note, meetings don’t start on time here anyway so all in all I made it home in one piece happy to take a breather from travel for awhile.

That’s it for now. This has been a low key weekend of relaxing and the next few months are filling up fast and I plan to enjoy it. I’ll write more soon, and plan to get some pictures up as soon as I have electricity in my house again..going on one week power free as it is, so don't open my fridge.