Sunday, August 22, 2010

A Weekend in Kakamega

Hello!
We decided to just combine the whole weekend into one blog entry since the internet is being so finicky. We did A LOT over the past three days. So here it goes:
I’ll start from the very beginning. On Friday morning we went over to the Okuya’s house to learn how to cook mandazi. Mandazi is a donut-like food, except without all the unhealthy stuff. Lucy is in charge of the kitchen. At first she was very tentative to let us get involved. Callie got to sit next to the fire and I was kept at an even safer distance; in the kitchen with Valerie and Olivia. Eventually Lucy had to leave her post to go get dressed. Callie and I were left in charge! Lucy may have regretted this decision later. Callie and I grew bored with the traditional circular shaped mandazis and began created Mandazi stars, hearts, and people. I made a bracelet and we made mandazi letters to represent all of our names. I’m pretty sure that these shapes tasted better than circles.
In the afternoon we went to a really beautiful resort called Rondo. We started off on what we thought was going to be a nice relaxing nature hike. We saw some monkeys and pretty birds. We started to notice the path getting steadily steeper. We were all panting when we came to a resting place. It was here that our guide informed us that the real climb had not yet started. The eight of us climbed under the hot sun until we could see for miles around. We paused on our way up to venture into a cave that had been created by miners a long time ago. It was narrow and we were terrified to discover that it was filled with bats. Some of us (cough cough mom) were not very happy to see them. The hike took about 3 ½ hours. It was hard, but the view was worth it.
The next day was a Saturday. Since the Okuyas are Seventh Day Adventists, Saturday is when they go to church. We were a little late, but it didn’t really matter because the classes could not really start without Joseph and Lucy. Lucy led her Pathfinder group (kind of like boy scouts but with the main focus on religion) in English so we could understand. Most of the church service, however, was in Swahili. I didn’t really know what they were talking about, but the choir was beautiful and Joseph made the congregation laugh a lot. The sermon was in both Swahili and English. Joseph translated for the preacher for which we were very grateful.
After church we went home and had another meal of hotdogs. Joseph loves dogs and thinks that Americans eat them all the time, so we’ve now had them twice in the last three days. Lunch was followed with a walk to town. Callie and I went with Lucy and Olivia and Mom went with Michael (we didn’t really want to go with them because Mom is always surrounded by people who want her to take their picture). After walking for a bit we took a matatu (a crowded van) to Olivia’s house. We hung out there for awhile chatting and learning about the differences in our cultures. Her family members were all really nice. When it was time to go we got on a matatu back to town and then took boda bodas (bicycles with seats on the back) back to the resort. I discovered that I really like riding on them.
Today was a pretty relaxed day. The girls came over at around 10 and we walked into town to try and find internet minutes. After we finally found them, we came back to Sheywe and got ready to go swimming. Lucy, Olivia, Valerie, and Nancy (a new addition to our group) did not know how to swim so Callie and I tried to teach them as best as we could. We must have been semi-good at it because by the end of our pool time both Lucy and Olivia could get around pretty well on the inner tubes. Lucy could even go a few feet all by herself. We came back and had a nice lunner (lunch/dinner) at Sheywe, dropped the girls off at their houses, and are now in our room preparing to go to Eldoret tomorrow morning.
We’ll try not to wait so long to blog next time. It’s hard to cram everything into one entry!

2 comments:

  1. haha... i can see you making all those fun shapes! i sure hope they appreciate you! :)

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  2. Very cool.. Have fun and be safe.

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