First big post (unless this is accidentally the 2nd time it posts)

I have to begin this post by thanking Emily for letting me use her laptop, and I am thanking Nick for letting both of us use his electricity. I don't have internet as I write this, but I am going to save it to my flash drive, which I will hopefully be able to finagle on a regular basis once I get to site.

This is long overdue, but I want to thank Amanda Shing (or A Man Dashing) for coming out to meet me in Philly before I left. Once I get to site, I will see about some kind of mobile pedal-powered peanut sheller...

This is my paragraph about food. We have a lot of corn (mahindi) and kidney beans (maharagwe). If you combine mahindi and maharagwe, you get a dish called githeri (not quite my favorite food). The staple food is called ugali, and it consists of mixing corn flour (unga wa mahindi) with boiling water and stirring until the water boils off. It's pretty tasteless, but it goes well with kales (sukumawiki) and carrots (karoti). There is also a dish with potatoes (viazi), onions (vitunguu) and unripe bananas (ndizi bichi). There is also a delicious meal with lentils that we've had a couple of times (we haven't learned how to say lentils in Kiswahili yet). We also get some of the dishes mixed with goat or beef. It's always something of a surprise. The cuts aren't very lean, but starting next month, when I am cooking for myself, I will probably become nearly vegetarian. The other staples are chapati (unleavened bread) and rice (wali, though a lot of people say mchele, which is the name for rice before it's cooked). Breakfast is always exciting. Some days, my Mama will make pancakes or French toast, other days it will be boiled sweet potatoes (not quite my idea or breakfast). Most days, it is eggs or chapati made with a dollop of kimbo (basically, concentrated trans fat). I am rather looking forward to cooking for myself and will probably have a diet heavy in fruits.

The volunteers usually meet in town to bond, since we will be pretty spread out soon. I am learning Kenya Sign Language (KSL) from the Deaf Ed volunteers (especially a really cool guy named Lapu Lapu). Some days we sit in a restaurant and play some Liar's Poker (shout out to 3w).

I have had a lot of time to read. I won't offer reviews of the manuals supplied by the Peace Corps or the language books. I read Ant Farm by Simon Rich, which I really liked (a collection of funny short stories). I discovered that having an almanac (from 2001) is like having a somewhat incomplete and outdated wikipedia, but I still like it. I got 50 pages into Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth, but I couldn't get into it, so I gave it up. I have also been reading a book with old Supreme Court rulings; most interesting part was when Wallace Mendelson (sp?) submitted the argument that Taney was a much better justice than Marshall (this would be a good issue to debate on the comment section of this post).

In charcoal news, still no oil drum. If anyone knows about some other kiln I could use, I would love to hear. The people in town are probably growing tired of hearing me talk about it, but hopefully it will pay off soon. The deforestation is really bad here, so I will try to make a tree nursery once I get to site.

Also, I know that I wanted to avoid going on diatribes, but I think that this one is merited. On p. 40 of the Daily Nation (the local newspaper I see in town) I got to read about Rod Blagojevich getting arrested. Kinda embarrassing to have consecutive governors in jail. I really hope that this will be some kind of catalyst for reform in Illinois politics. Although as some Kenyans point out, at least our officials get prosecuted..

Lastly, sometimes the internet stops loading when I try to send emails, which is making it kinda frustrating. I hope to get better about replying soon, but I always give up after the 2nd attempt.

CYOTFS