kenya

wow. kenya is unexpected. erika and i are in mbita, a small fishing village off the coast of lake victoria. getting here took 2 days from nairobi--8 hours on a bus to kisumu plus a drive and ferry ride. in kisumu, we stayed at ken's brother's house (ken is our host. he's running a center in mbita to try to incorporate technology into the rural people's lives). some thieves broke into the kitchen during the night and stole the food and oil. luckily, the kitchen was padlocked from the inside, so they couldn't access any other parts of the house. then, on the carride (ken's old peugeot), the braking fluid started leaking, so we did a good portion of the journey with sketchy brakes and an unreliable clutch. only 1 exciting bit where we had to dodge some cows on the road.

mbita doesn't have running water or electricity. we are in the heart of a famine (political instability dislocated a good portion of the farmers, followed by a year of drought), but i have a hard time gaging how hard things actually are. the supermarkets carry lots of cadbury chocolates, and the people on the bus with us bought snacks from the vendors that would hop on and off. however, our meals are monotonous if not exactly meager. yesterday, food consisted of white bread and milk tea for breakfast, some watermelon that we bought at the supermarket in kisumu, butter sandwiches, plain rice (cooked in some kind of oil), and tea for dinner. that's the second day in a row that we've skipped lunch. and i haven't bathed since london. i don't mind so much, but i'm only here for a couple of weeks. as a lifestyle, it's a bit rough.

this morning, ken took us down to the lake to see some of the farms we'll be working on. they mostly plant kale, bananas, onions, taro and paupau (which we later learned is papaya). there are wild cotton and beans growing along the fence. i didn't know cotton could grow wild. we watched the fishermen pull in their net. we bought 2 telapia and a catfish for 300 shillings (~80 shilling per 1 USD), and that's including 50 shillings worth of foreigner tax. the catfish almost escaped while the fisherman was washing it for us. he had to plunge in after it and wrestle it back to shore. also, some cheerful yellow birds with funnel shaped nests hanging from the trees. the donkeys are very orthodox. they look just as you'd expect them to.