Life in Kenya (Nov 25/03)

Hi everyone!

Typing this at home pretending I have internet access... I think I miss that the most! Bookmark this page if you don't have the chance to read this right now!

Announcements...

I just heard from the dear ole parents, and they're confirmed to have an utterly exhausting yet completely boring Christmas... leaving Halifax on Christmas Eve to arrive in Nairobi on Boxing Day at 6am! Lucky for me, I'll have Tracey to entertain me on Christmas Day - she arrives at 530am that very day! Maybe we'll have antelope, zebra, ostrich, and crocodile for Christmas dinner at Carnivore. I keep coming up with more to add to my list of things I want for Christmas... like twist ties, a lint remover, even a jar of Sobey's bread and butter pickles... on top of all the maple syrup and blueberry jam you can squeeze in! Anthony's also very anxious about getting his fancy new Canadian Tire tool box into the country, and I'm searching for a firewire card. Did I mention smoked salmon?

Since Anthony's now in southern Sudan, and my friend/business partner Howard left for Norway, it's been positively boring around here. Adding to that is waiting for the response on a few proposals I've submitted. I forgot how slooow things are in Africa... but I'm sure the business will start rolling in very soon and I'll be too busy to do anything else... I'm hoping anyway! Keep sending good thoughts my way )

Last week, just before Anthony left, he sent me an urgent message from Loki - "get ready, trying to get you a flight to loki". Hmm, I thought. I idly got some things together, expecting that it's 50-50 whether I could go, and who knows, it might be tomorrow. Nope! 30 minutes to get to the airport! Ack! No credit on my phone, so couldn't even call a taxi, plus Howard was on his way to my place to do some work on the computer. Waited for Howard to get there, threw him my keys, and ran out the door into a matatu. Managed to get a cab at Adams, raced to the airport, and jumped on the plane. A little Cessna that flew so low I received calls on my phone! beautiful flight... the Rift Valley is just incredible, and the Kenyan landscape alternates between green mountain ridges and looking like the moon. I landed on the moon. Man is it hot there! Of course my logistics manager was there to pick me up, and accommodated me in the private Afex B camp. Juliet Victor reporting for duty to Alpha Kilo! It was pasta night, so we complemented our Italian fare with a nice bottle of red wine, sitting outside in the desert night, under the southern stars...

It felt like our anniversary - our romance really took place in hot and dusty Lokichoggio. Which reminds me, I've now known Anthony for longer than a year... I had met him very briefly in Nairobi last September 2002, realized that the guy who made my heart skip a beat was the same one I was to train when I got to Loki on Oct 25, and we went out together for the first time on Nov 2 (less than two months after I arrived in Kenya!) Then 8 months later we were married! The only explanation for me being sent to Kenya is fate....

The next night, we went to Anthony's cousin Simon's place for dinner. We walked down the dirt path, strewn with paper bags (they mean plastic bags) and assorted garbage, past a row of mud town-huts (where yet another 2-year-old screamed at the sight of white me!), and stopped at a small mud house in the middle of the path. Simon's place! We went inside - one room, half of it covered with a single bed, the other half with a couple of stools, a shelf, and a coffee table. It's lit by a charcoal cooker, and sweltering hot. Anthony suggested we move outside, so we picked up the stools and coffee table, and did just that. No light though, and at 630pm, it's quickly becoming pitch dark. Simon brought a jug of water, and poured it into a basin as we washed our hands. Out comes the chapati! Yum, I love Kenyan chapati, especially when it's made with not-too-much cooking oil and cooked over a charcoal fire. A delicious beef stew accompanied, made with tomatoes, onions, and Roico (the essential Kenyan spice). No utensils. We pick up the chunks of well cooked beef with ripped pieces of chapati, scooping the salty, favourful sauce with our improvised spoons. Sweet, milky tea is presented in a plastic pitcher - usually in a thermos, but Loki's so hot we don't need one. Delish! Stuffed... nimeshiba. Simon's mudhut is about the smallest I've seen, but surprisingly, it caters for everything he needs. He even has an outdoor extension where he can cook if there are too many visitors inside. He buys his water in 20L jerrycans, and I presume his bathroom is the little scrubby bushes just around. Simple, and enough.

I just managed to have 2 days with Anthony - a welcome respite before he disappeared from the moon into Sudan.. It's like he ceases to exist, no communication at all. Woe is me.

Saw Howard off for his last night before going to back to winter in Norway for 6 weeks. Of course we all went out for nyama choma and beers, and I think us stragglers made it home around 5am. It was Beatrice's fault! (that's Howard's Kikuyu sweetie). That was when Anthony woke up and called me for the last time before he took off!

I am lucky that transportation is so cheap and available here - I can go anywhere I want (provided it's during the day). It costs me 10 shillings (20 cents) to get to Adams Arcade, which contains my favourite coffee shop (Java House) and internet cafe (My Online Office) - plus it has newspapers, grocery stores, chemists, a butcher, and lots of jua kali vendors selling fruits, veggies, suitcases, and stuffed animals. Plus a taxi stand if I need one, and it's close to an ATM machine and a large grocery store, Uchumi. Adams is really my daily haunt. It's also walking distance to VSF-Belgium, and I can also easily get to one of the few shopping malls in Nairobi, Yaya Centre. Yaya is for those rich white people though.. not practically starving ones like me! (kidding )

For $24 (Ksh 1200), I can buy:

250 - internet time, probably 2 hours
300 - enough fruits, veggies, bread, and milk to last me for a week
300 - a phone card (that lasts about 20 minutes when Anthony's in Loki, but a week otherwise!)
350 - lunch in a North American-style cafe (Java House)
20 - transport to and from home on a matatu

About the transportation... god, it may be cheap and available, but it's anything but pleasant. A matatu, as I've mentioned previously, is a crazed Nissan minivan stuffed with passengers... 18, to be precise! Three rows of 4 people, plus 3 in front, plus 3 passengers and/or touts crouched over the middle rows or else hanging outside the door. It's a sight to behold. I've learned to wait for the next one if there's no seat - I hate hanging from an erratically moving vehicle! Once seated, you're jammed in so tight that others have to get out before you can leave. There's no room for personal space, and at least one person reeks to high heaven. The music is usually cranked through screechy tweeters - sometimes I can't hear properly for hours after. However, like most Kenyans, I really felt the loss when they went on strike this week... They are objecting to a new law that will require them to fit seat belts and speed governors, hopefully with the end result of making them safer (3000 people killed on the roads so far this year!!). It's a love-hate relationship... and we just won't mention the buses!

So I've decided that instead of subjecting my poor dear family and friends to this public transportation monstrosity, I'm attempting to buy a vehicle. The price of vehicles is so high in Kenya that I can at least put a down payment on one for the same price as renting one for the time that everyone's here. Cashed in some of my savings and away we go! Now just gotta find one - and get it registered - without the assistance of my logistics manager... I'm also still trying to get my dependent's pass and the certificate of registration for the business. Did I mention that Africa is slooow?

I finally got to see the Matrix Revolutions, but I'm so behind in Lord of the Rings I don't even know if the 3rd one's been released. Going to a movie is a chore - I can't come home after dark unless I get a taxi. And when a taxi is 3000% more than a matatu, I'm loathe to spend the money. But I managed to get to the cinema the other night, and scared my mother witless she called and when I told her that I was in town all by myself at night! Luckily I have taxi driver friends who protected me until my cabbie Dave arrived, and I sent a text message to Jake for him to reassure Mum that her 31-year-old daughter got home ok! Of course, I could have invited some friends, but everyone saw it already... and most of them are either fasting (Ramadan) or wanting to party hard. Curiously enough, my desire to party is waning... all I want is my hubby! Another weird being-married thing is my new found tendency to grow my hair... As you know, I've kept it waaay short for years - but now it's almost long enough for a clip! Not sure what Anthony thinks, but I remember him touching my (then very short) hair and saying, "you mean this hair can grow long??" So it might be a novelty for him )

I'll wind this up, and hope you've been entertained... Remember to check my site for travelling to Kenya advice, a few wedding pictures (more to come when people upload to Epson), some swahili words, and of course all my back issues. http//home.ca.inter.net/~johanna

Have fun getting ready for Christmas in the freezing cold, and drop me a line... remember I'm here all by myself right now! *sniff*

Miss you all,

Johanna

 

For those of you that took some digital wedding photos....

Uploading your photos to my Epson account:

Make sure you create your own album in my Epson account - name it something like Seb's Photos, or CJP, or Prettyboy, or something similarly identifiable. Login at www.photo.epson.com using my full ca.inter.net email address (johanna at) as the username and **** for the password (email me). Once you create your album (it's something obvious like Make New Album), I believe you can ftp the photos to ftp.photo.epson.com instead of using their web interface - choose your album as the directory to upload to, otherwise they'll go into the Incoming Album by default where they have to be manually moved. Email me if you have any problems.

 

 

Copyright Johanna Voerman Khisa, 2002-03. Reprinting or reposting without permission is prohibited.