The KP Chronicles

Since it’s not entirely safe to wander around Kenya on your own, and we don’t exactly have many friends here yet, the past few days have been slightly boring. We spend the mornings getting work done – analyzing data, preparing information sessions for the parents and students, the afternoons at the schools collecting data and then by 3 o’clock we are home at the hospital. By the time we get home in the afternoon, we are sluggish and tired have very little motivation to do anything. Then by the time we’ve eaten and cleaned up from supper and are motivated to do fun things, it’s after dark and we aren’t allowed out of the compound. Last night, after finishing my fourth book in 2 and a half weeks, Christina and I decided that we had had just about enough of being bored. Who goes to Kenya to be bored? Like really. So this morning we went for a walk and then after going to the school we went to the Kiirua junction to visit Irene. Irene has a little shop at the junction where she gives manicures and pedicures for 100 Kenyan shillings. This is about 1.50 Canadian. We made appointments with Irene for Friday after we get back from the orphanage and she told us she’d take us to the market soon. She also directed us to the best Mandazi spot in town, which is a little hotel across the street from the hospital. Mandazis are pretty much just fried dough so it’s very very yummy.

Silas, our personal chef, made us a delicious Kenyan meal tonight of chapattis, sukuma wiki (kale) and baked beans. I can’t complain about the living arrangements. We have a women named Gladys who has our laundry clean and folded on our beds for us every afternoon when we get home from the schools, and a chef who has dinner on the table for us every night at 6pm and even does all the dishes he used for cooking. It’s going to be hard to get used to doing my own laundry and cooking again once I get home! I do sometimes miss cooking for myself, but not enough to fire the chef. We even have enough left overs from every dinner that we have lunch for the next day too. The problem is, the chef told us today that his goal is to send us home bigger than when we came with all of his food. This goal, combined with the fact that there are no mirrors bigger than a foot square, no scales and the only clothes I bought are stretchy might be a recipe for disaster. But for now I’m just going to love life and enjoy Kenyan food.

In other good news, turns out you can get Tusker in Canada? My brother told me it was on sale because of the world cup so I'm super pumped to track it down once I get back home. I doubt that I will find it in PEI but hopefully it'll turn up in Ontario somewhere.