Halloween Weekend

Halloween weekend started on Friday afternoon. As soon as I finished my lessons, I ran outside to wait for the bus. It took 40 minutes to arrive, but when it showed up Jackie and Jodie (Jodie is a friend from college who is currently working in Arusha, Tanzania which is 5 hours west of me) had saved a seat for me. We grabbed a quick lunch in Voi before heading to Mombasa. We knew we had a lot to catch up on, so we frantically discussed lots. I was especially excited to hear all about her new venture called Global Cycle Solutions. The work sounds really exciting, and the challenges that she is facing must be really frustrating.

We met up with a few other volunteers (some from Peace Corps, some from other groups) in Mombasa and headed to Jonathan's place. Jonathan was an amazing host for the whole weekend, and I don't think that any of us could adequately express our gratitude for how well he managed everything. After arriving, we ran out and grabbed dinner at a local cafe (where many of us were sadly engrossed by the WWE episode on the TV). Then we went back to Jon's house and helped him put the finishing touches on decorations for his house and laid the plans for the following day. We stayed up until just after midnight, so I wished people a happy Halloween and a good night.

Saturday morning was an early morning (comparatively), but everything moved at a leisurely pace, so it was nice. I took care of some computer stuff and then a group of us hopped on the Likoni Ferry to head back into town. We met some more volunteers and people went off their separate directions. Jonathan and I stayed at a restaurant for a lunch meeting with Deanne about our HIV hotline project (attendance seems to have decreased slightly). It sounds like our roles in this project are about to change pretty drastically, but it should mean that everything may be running smoothly in a pretty short timeframe. Or maybe we're about to become mired in something beyond our comprehension. Still, I think my optimism is justified.

In the afternoon, we swung over to Nakumatt for some grocery shopping (mostly food for breakfast the next morning). I apparently don't know how to read a receipt so I made fun of Jodie a lot for buying way too much bread before learning that she had bought a pretty good amount. Then we went back to Jonathan's place for the party. But since we had some time before the party Jackie, Jodie and I had another meeting on some follow-up work for D-Lab since we all attribute our presence over here to that class (and of course, I can't take a fun weekend without filling it with meetings for secondary undertakings). Jackie provided us with delicious store-bought and refrigerated hummus (much better than my concoction) to make it a dinner meeting. As we were wrapping up our meeting, people started arriving in costumes.

I ran and put on my costume (all it needed was a lab coat and some gel in my hair so it would stick out), grabbed my props (a beaker and some test tubes with a few chemicals inside) and promptly began accusing no one in particular of calling me crazy (like any mad scientist would). The party was a huge success. I got a beaker of wine from a lion queen, I yelled at a nerd for her methods of data analysis, I played lots of rock-paper-scissors with a hare krishna, I tried to bargain with a hawker, I told pirate jokes with a swashbuckling pirate, I got candy from Superman and drank beer and Jell-o shots with a really sleazy Italian. However, the most amazing part of the party was the matatu conductor, the matatu driver and the matatu. They played their parts perfectly and drew uproarious laughter the whole evening. We drank and danced and I finally made my way to sleep at 3:30 while half the people were still singing and dancing.

I emerged at 6:30 and found that several people were already (or still) awake. We lounged a bit before I started the breakfast crusade. Over the next 3 hours, I scrambled 45 eggs (we bought cheese which made the eggs and extra-special treat). Jodie made a crazy amount of toast (all the more impressive since I was using the only frying pan, so she had to do it in a stockpot). We got lots of compliments on our cooking, though that may have been due to how empty people's stomachs were (my hangover might have led to a few shells getting mixed in with the eggs). Then a few of us stuck around for computer work (yet another debt I have to Jonathan) and house-cleaning before heading out.

I said good-bye to Jonathan and thanked him profusely. I also said good-bye to Jodie and promised to visit her in Arusha soon (she is letting me borrow her laptop case, so I can't back out of this one). Then Jackie and I headed back to Maktau. In spite of the blackout when we got home, we pulled out our laptops and planned projects for a few hours before deciding that we would both get a really, really good night's sleep.

This was my first time seeing an MIT person in 353 days. I think it really helped me to pull off the "work hard, play hard" mentality the whole weekend.