Going with the flow

On Friday I taught my chemistry lessons during tuition (one of my colleagues decided to double my workload at the last minute and then started harassing me for needing extra time) and headed to the bus stop in town. I wound up waiting almost two hours, but the wait was worth it, since I managed to catch a bus that was going straight to Mombasa (Taveta-Mombasa buses are rare, so I think this qualifies as a jackpot). I arrived in Mombasa in the afternoon and headed straight to Nakumatt (a wonderful grocery store here in Kenya) only to find that they were out of Macaroni and Cheese (my first instinct was to buy enchiladas, but I wasn't going to have an oven to use, so I had to put that on hold). Instead, I bought macaroni, and I bought cheese and other ingredients to make it from scratch. Then I headed to Jonathan's house (an ICT volunteer; read more about him here). We miraculously managed not to injure ourselves or fall violently ill in our pursuit of macaroni and cheese so we considered it a success. Our night also consisted of reading the wikipedia article on stick figures (I blame Randall Munroe) and other miscellany before crashing.

We headed up the coast on Saturday (the first time for either of us to travel to North Coast) where we met up with Ari (a business volunteer who works on an eco-tourism project a.k.a. taking people snorkeling in the gorgeous seas near his village) who was just about to head out on an excursion. We tagged along and saw some beautiful coral and all kinds of exotic fish and an indescribably beautiful area. We joined another Peace Corps volunteer named Sarah (she is a deaf education volunteer whose site is near Ari's, and she is deaf) who was bringing her deaf colleague who was visiting Kenya along for the ride. We had a lot of fun although I wound up drinking a lot of saltwater (apparently I need to improve my snorkeling technique) and getting a stunner of a sunburn (kinda glad I don't have pictures of this one; I put on sunscreen, but this is still excruciating). I took the opportunity to practice my sign language, but I wish that I had more opportunities to improve it.

After snorkeling, we grabbed a quick snack before Jonathan, Ari and I headed off to Ari's house so that we could slaughter a goat for dinner. Ari was very excited about his new skinning knife that he brought from the states, but we decided to let one of the neighbors do the honors (personally, I'm still squeamish about the slaughtering and my meat consumption has declined considerably here). We spent a while playing with Forgus, a dog who stays near Ari, and had a nice time while the neighbors enjoyed all the work associated with turning the newly slaughtered goat into a meal. It was also at this point that I realized the extent of my sunburn and have been moving around tenderly ever since. We spent the evening in Ari's living room talking with the neighbors and eating some delicious goat before crashing pretty early (I think the snorkeling took more energy than any of us realized).

The next morning, Jonathan and I woke up early to travel to Malindi for our 9 AM meeting (the entire purpose of our excursion was to meet with our other teammates about our HIV information hotline). We brought in two of the new public health volunteers (they definitely have relevant expertise) named DeAnne and Mitch and a deaf education volunteer named Erin (since we also want to figure out considerations about disabled Kenyans as well; check out her blog here). The two Kenyans on our team had uncovered a wealth of information since our last meeting, so we had a productive discussion and the meeting lasted two hours.

After the meeting, we went out to explore Malindi a bit. We found a nice juice place and enjoyed drinks there before heading to a fantastic restaurant called I Love Pizza. We found the service a bit slow, but the food was excellent, and it gave all of us a chance to chat a bit more (just the five volunteers at this point, the two Kenyans had other engagements). The conversation was mostly funny, and it was nice to get to know some of the new volunteers. One of the most memorable moments was when they were talking about the Peace Corps Kenya flash disks they had received at the end of their training. We received nothing of the sort (we also found out about some other privileges they had enjoyed during training which were marked improvements over what our group endured) so we grilled them about their toys and grumbled a bit (soon we'll be the longest serving active volunteers in Kenya, so I guess we're developing into old curmudgeons). After enjoying my Mexican Chicken pizza (I also tasted Erin's ambrosia-like passion fruit juice to which they add a hint of cinnamon) we had to go our separate ways.

Jonathan and I hopped a matatu back to Mombasa (we went back and forth owing each other money the whole weekend, and since he paid for the last ride, I am still in debt to him 200 shillings). The matatu made it in record time, so we headed back to his place to recoup before I went home. Jonathan's place is actually just south of Mombasa, so we had to cross the Likoni ferry (always an adventure) to get there. After eating a tasty stir-fry and watching some Arrested Development (one of my favorite shows) I had to hop on a matatu and head back to site (I needed to put breaks in between my matatu rides since the sunburn was killing me; fortunately, Jonathan had some aloe that I applied).

The whole purpose of the weekend was to just go with the flow and see where things took us. All in all, I have to say that it was a huge success. Now I have to get back to school, where I fear life will become incredibly stressful very soon, so I am glad that I was able to unwind completely this weekend. The other funny note was that at the matatu stage some hawkers (any place matatus are waiting, you will be accosted by people selling everything from soda to socks) selling razors labeled ALSHABAB (for those of you not up to date with your Somali news, they are the main rebel group trying to bring down the government these days). I thought about buying one for one of the volunteers who was arrested by the Kenyan police under suspicion of being al-Shabab, but the hawker moved away before I could flag him down. I'll try to get one for you next time, Abdul.