A weekend at Tom's

On Saturday, I went to go see Tom, another education volunteer. A few people had gone to his site right after training ended, so I was going to meet up with them. Unfortunately, it was not exactly smooth traveling.

After bargaining the price of my bus ticket down to 50% more than it should have been, I relaxed for most of the bus ride. Then, when we arrived in Meru, they shuffled all of us off of the bus. Meru is only about 3/4 of the way to Tom's site. In spite of my repeated inquiries about whether or not the bus was going to continue past Meru, they still left me high and dry. I was kinda upset about being gypped and then being lied to (language was not an issue, I asked him in both English and Swahili), but my adventure was only just beginning.

The bus conductor seemed to actually feel a little bad for me, so he helped me catch a taxi to the matatu stage so that I could finish my journey. As with all Kenyan vehicles, we had to fill up completely (6 of us packed like sardines) before we could make the 7 minute drive across town. As we were going up the hill, the matatu in front of us swerved a bit to block the whole road and then stopped. Three men got out of the matatu and came over to the taxi. They pulled three of my fellow passengers out and started hitting them. They didn't have weapons, just punching and using a belt. They opened my door, but I immediately pulled it closed and locked it (it's hard to keep doors locked when you're riding, since people are always getting into and out of vehicles). At this point the matatu had moved out of the way. The taxi just drove on to the matatu stage. I wasn't sure, but it looked like the passengers managed to get away. I wasn't entirely sure what happened, but I think that it had something to do with Mungiki, which is something like a gang that seems to cause a lot of lawlessness in Kenya.

Anyway, the rest of the trip to Tom's was comparatively uneventful, although it was a bit more complicated than I would have liked. Anyway, I arrived and soon after, we ate a wonderful dinner. I hadn't realized that I hadn't eaten anything in 24 hours. Traveling sometimes does that to me. Anyway, Tom has built a wood-fired brick oven (he is a really cool outdoorsy type) so we had hot pizza to eat. He is still working out a few kinks, so the pizza was a bit crunchy (we think that was ash) but it was delicious.

The following day, we went up to the nearby town of Maua. There are some Danish medical students who are working in the hospital there and one of them was having a birthday. We spent most of the day with them. It was a really fun exchange. I hadn't really had occasion to use the three sentences of Danish that I know in the past 5 years, but they really came in handy at the party. We capped the day by eating chocolate banana bread and lots of fruit and singing happy birthday in 5 different languages.

The most exciting part of the day, however, was playing a lawn game called Kubb. The game is apparently Swedish and had been left by some previous volunteers at that hospital. If you have ever played Bocci Ball, it is somewhat similar, but Kubb is way more fun. You have throwing sticks and you try to knock over Kubbs without having your Kubbs knocked over. We taunted each other a lot, and of course, we had to make sure that the birthday girl won. I fully intend to buy a Kubb set when I get back to the States. I imagine wikipedia has a pretty good description of Kubb, so I would definitely recommend reading up on it, since I know that this paragraph has not done it justice.

After that, we went back to Tom's site and he made some amazing chicken soup (with lots of ginger). Then we packed up and got ready to go to our permaculture training the next day. It was a lot of fun being at Tom's site and he was a really great host. Unfortunately, Tom is a lot more in shape than the rest of us, and he made us hike up the hill near his place a whole bunch. Oh well, I guess it was good for us. And it was really refreshing to see so much green everywhere.

Post about permaculture will be coming around May 9th. Books 4.0 will probably be combined with Books 5.0 (I'll write about that on May 31). I have an internet phone again, so you can email me. Also, if you comment on my blog, I usually respond to those (via email) pretty quickly, so please comment to your heart's content. School reopens on May 4, so it's back to teaching soon.