yeah, i have a cellular phone. the number is 0729571953. i believe that you dial 011 254 729571953 to get to me. I am a texting machine (did you ever think you would hear those words come from my mouth?!?!?) anyhow, if you call me and it doesnt go through, send me a text because it probably means that my phone is off(conserving battery), and i wont get the mssg that you called, but i will get the txt mssg when i turn the phone back on.
so this is going to be the fastest email ever as i only have a short break between kiswahili lessons. Language is rocking, my group is rather advanced so it is keeping me insanely busy and very challenged, but the thought of being fluent in kiswahili is just incredibly amazing( i have a mini bottle of red wine that i saved from the airplane(free alch on international flights) that i am going to drink the day i have a full in depth conversation in kiswahili about something that truly matters in this country(not my name and where i come from and what i am doing here HAHA!)!)
Ok, this is going to be a bit cut and dry, overall things are going great! i have a very nice family here, we have a rather large house(compared to my time in Malawi) no electricity and no running water. Our toilet is called a Choo (teehee hee), and if i have ever seen a 'thrown', this is it. it is this cement masterpiece that demands some of my yoga skills every time i hop on top. the dimensions are about 2 ft tall by 1ft wide and 2 ft back with a slit of maybe 3 inches running down the center - the pit beneath runs about 20 ft deep and just gets covered when full. if lit well, it could be a sculpted piece of art- you just have to breathe through your noes.
so kenya, and in particular the area i am in is rather wealthy, i say this in comparison to malawi and by using indicators such as cement homes, corrugated metal roofs, daily protein intake(while still rather low, it is present daily), the amount of sugar and tea purchased per household, batteries for listening to the radio etc. so my family and most in the area have all of these, we are definitely above the poverty line, but still poor. i live on a rather traditional compound with all of the brothers of my baba(dad) and his mother. so there are about 6 homes of the brothers, their wives and families. I am living with the first born, so my household carries a lot of weight (mainly my mama, being the wife of the first born because my baba is just a drunk(thats a whole other bag of issues for me...)) my family is known and respected throughout the area and everyone knows i belong to them, and when i say belong, i mean it, sometimes i am treated like a child and it blows the big one. anyhow, what i was trying to say, is that i really becoming a part of the community, in part due to my attempts at communicating in kiswahili with everyone i pass on my hour walk home, and in part due to my family spending 2 weekends taking me around and introducing me to this uncle, that grandpa- literally, i am related to everyone in my area in some fashion, its awesome and exhausting.
Kitui is, i would say in the midlands, i dont really know, but it is hilly and lush and absolutely beautiful. i live about an hours walk out of town, so i absolutely love love my walk home everyday. because of our location, we have an astonishing array of fresh tropical fruits. One day as i bit into a salad of cut up papaya mixed with fresh juice of a passion fruit, a little lemon and some sugar, i thought to myself, i have died and gone to produce heaven! REALLY! I have avocados on just about everything, they cost about 5 cents here AHAHAHAH!! my family here flipped when i told them how much we pay in the states. come mango season, people just sit under trees and eat mangoes like you have never had before in your life-all day long- people dont cook. there are hundreds of these trees all around town, and it doesn't matter if it is yours or not, because there are too many mangoes-is that possible?!?!?! apart from that, the food is absolutely wonderful, a wide array, from ugali(nsima (made from maize meal -kinda like polenta but much much finer and moist) meat stew, peas gallor, kale, greens, chapati, chips, EVERYTHING IS FRIED (another indication of wealth as oil is not cheap) Kenyans are incredibly proud of how they welcome and treat their guests, so it is important that guests 'increase' during their stay(gain weight). we are almost forced to take second and third helpings. Luckily it is fabulous, but i am fighting the weight gain and the eating-until-sick-all-in-the-name-of-politeness game with all my might and have developed a number of great strategies.(i also walk anywhere from 12-25km a day, so that helps a lot.)
ok, anticlimactic ending, i gotta go nitahitaji kujifunza kiswahili(i need to study kiswahili)
KWAHERI!! i cannot wait to get to the internet and really give you some color and a true taste of kenya, consider this a primer. kenya is wonderful!!
--
Rachel Santos
Peace Corps Trainee
P.O. Box 30518
Nairobi Kenya
"If maturity means becoming a cynic, if you have to kill that part of yourself that is naive and romantic and idealistic- the part of yourself you treasure most - to claim maturity, is it not better to die young but with your humanity in tact? If everyone resigns themselves to cynicsm isn't that exactly how vulnerable millions end up dead?"
~ Ken Cain
--
Rachel Santos
Peace Corps Trainee
P.O. Box 30518
Nairobi Kenya
"If maturity means becoming a cynic, if you have to kill that part of yourself that is naive and romantic and idealistic- the part of yourself you treasure most - to claim maturity, is it not better to die young but with your humanity in tact? If everyone resigns themselves to cynicsm isn't that exactly how vulnerable millions end up dead?"
~ Ken Cain
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