bye bye africa

for those of you keeping track, you'll know that i'm coming home next week. I left Nairobi on Wednesday night and am now in London visiting my friends Reesa and Ben for the week. Also for those of you keeping track and actually checking to see if I've posted anything you can tell I'm not too inspired to sit in front of a computer sending updates. The past few weeks have been good, wierd, long and short all at the same time and now it all feels a bit like a dream.

London is tons of fun, lots to do and see. I went on the Jack the Ripper London walk this evening and we're headed out to Bath tomorrow morning.

See you all soon!

the end of my holidays

My day in Kenya are numbered, I guess they always have been but now it's starting to feel a little ominous. I got back yesterday from almost a week and a half of holidays, only a little bit of work somewhere in there and now i've only got a week and a half left till I get on a plane to London! I know it's not really home, but right now it feels like leaving Kenya means going home.

So to recap my holidays, the 12th I went on a 3 day safari to the Masai mara, probably the most famous game park in Kenya. I was trying to do it as cheap as possible so we were roughing it a bit, staying in tents with wooden beds and really thin mattresses. Our safari vehicle was a Nissan minibus with a pop-up roof. Most safaris are in vehicles like that so it didn't bother me, you have to have a lot of money to spend to get a nice safari jeep, but the roads into the park and even inside are a little rough so it made for some adventure including helping push the one driving in front of us out of the ditch after it went off the road. The group I was supposed to join missed their train from Mombasa so they put me with a young couple originally from Pretoria, South Africa but living in the UK right now. They were fun, but sick which put a damper on things. I ended up spending the next days all day drive on my own. On saturday I joined yet another group to get back to Nairobi after our morning game drive because the couple was staying longer than me. My new group was a bit of an interesting group, a retired lady from Slovenia who'd been volunteering in Uganda, a couple from Moscow, an American and an Italian. The whole trip was loads of fun, the park is beautiful and there were lots of animals. (Janelle, I had a moment of silence for you when we came across a mama cheetah and her two cubs)

After washing clothes for at least two hours on saturday night after getting home, Sunday I did a little work so I could send some things to Bridget before she left for South Africa for the week, packed my bags again and watched some football...soccer for you North Americans. By monday afternoon I was landing on Manda Island and taking the ferry across to Lamu town just off the north coast of Kenya. It's part of an archipelago that used to be a collection of city states and are a mixture of Arab and Swahili culture. The town is small but a maze of narrow streets while surprises...and a donkey... around every corner. That an there are lots of little shops to look at. And of course there's the miles of beach to relax and swim at...which is a necessity because the place is like a constant sauna. Whether it was cloudy, raining, or sunny the humidity and heat was constant. Every room you stay in has a fan which make sleeping a little more of a reality except when the power is out...which is often. The 'power station' for the town billows black smoke and looks like it could explode at any moment. Our theory was that the power outages happened when the guys watching over the place for got to switch the barrels of oil when one got empty. I went on my own but met lots of cool people. Between exploring the town, getting out to the beach and a dhow (boat) trip it was a great week and I didn't want to leave on Friday.

Now that I'm back in Nairobi it's back to work for a week and half...time is literally flying by. Some one here told me time doesn't go, it comes and right now its coming faster than ever!

Easter pictures

Here are the pictures I was talking about. As you can see in addition to celebrating easter Annie's birthday is on the 12th but she's going to be at a refugee camp in Tanzania so we had an early party.

Happy Easter!

If you're looking for some crazy cross cultural Easter experience I've got no stories for you. Easter was/is pretty low key here. I went to church on Friday with Taryn, Annie, Chris, Mark and Brad. Had Java for lunch with some good apple pie and ice cream...not as good as grandma's but it did the trick. Nothing of importance happened yesterday but I got to sleep in! The night before we did go bowling and out to eat afterwards. I counted the first game as warm up, 10 pin should be easier right? After a pitiful 64 I scored 126 on the second game and felt much better about myself. Today after church we had our own version of Easter dinner with a bunch of friends potluck style. No mashed potatoes, hard for me I know, but we did have some great homemade burgers, potato salad and some brownies for dessert.

I hope you all had some good quality family time or relaxing time in whatever combination you were hoping for. Good luck to all you poor people writing exams, I can't say I envy you in the least!

I have some pics but they're still on my camera so stay tuned!

Rwanda Round Two

I'm back again from Rwanda. We went for a consultation of Quaker Peace Network, basically a conference for quaker organizations working in Africa. It was a lot of fun other than the exhaution from being the one taking notes during all the sessions, i've now got 98 pages of text to sort through!

The best part other than the interesting people I met was the place the conference was at. It was in Kibuye, Rwanda (for those of you in the family with the big world atlas you can find it on the map) which is on Lake Kivu. It is absolutely beautiful there and you can see the volcano in Goma in the distance. Jessica, one of the people at the conference from the Quaker UN office in New York named it Mordor because at night it glows red.

At 140km/hour who needs shoes?

So I'm back again from Western Kenya. I have to say first that traveling by bus is exhausting. After 7 hours getting to Kisumu I got into a matatu to go to the ARO center, about an hour's drive. The person that met me at the bus station helped me find the right one and told the conductor where I wanted to go...he even wrote the stop on his hand. Obviously that wasn't enough because they drove right past and I had to bang on the roof to get his attention so he'd get the driver to stop and let me off. We hadn't gone to far and he joked that he was just making sure I got my exercise. It would've been totally fine except that in getting out of the back seat of the matatu, my sandal broke! I guess Old Navy sells them at $4 for a reason. So there I am, walking down the highway with one sandal on, my back pack and bag...I got a few funny looks, the ladies selling vegetables at the turn off to the center had a good laugh. One of the guys from the center met me just down the road though and put my bags on his bike while we walked back so it wasn't too much trouble. I ended up borrowing a pair of sandals until the friday evening when one of the ladies presented my fixed sandals.

Otherwise it was a fairly uneventful trip. On Thursday I was with a group from the Food & Agriculture Organization of the UN that was visiting some project sites and then hung out at the center for some meetings on Friday. On Saturday I decided that 140km/hour is never safe. We made the drive from ARO to Kisumu in record time...which only meant I had to wait longer at the bus station. There are speed limits here but they don't apply to private vehicles...they should!

Cinnamon scrambled eggs?

After the excitement of my two weeks of travelling there hasn't been to much to write home about. Our auditors came at the beginning of last week to start our year end audit of last year so the time between my travelling and then has been mostly running around trying to get ready for them to come, and then fixing the things they want us to fix. Now that that is over I've started working on stories for our newletter which I need to finish before I leave. I know that seems like a long ways away but tomorrow I'm travelling until Saturday, I'm home for 3 days and then away for a week and then its April already! I'm planning on taking some time of to travel for a week or so to the coast so that doesn't leave much time.

Otherwise I've just been spending time with friends, and watching football (soccer). Its a big deal in our house. Elizabeth's daughters support different teams, Chelsea and Man U, so there are a few heated debates. Saturdays and Sundays have been my breakfast making days. I made crepes one Saturday which tasted sooooo good, almost as good as at home. A week or so ago I made french toast for breakfast since I had come into the kitchen just as the puddle of oil was about to be poured into the frying pan and said I'd make my own breakfast. None of them wanted to try any, thinking it looked a little strange. I know think I know part of why they thought it was a little strange. I had mixed cinnamon in with the eggs before dipping the bread in, normal for making french toast. Then this Saturday I walked into the kitchen to find Elizabeth mixing cinnamon into my eggs only instead of then dipping bread into it to make french toast she proceed as usual to fry the eggs in a puddle of oil!!! I kept myself from laughing but I had been thinking that my eggs had been tasting a little different all week and now I knew the reason why! So the egg saga continues.