Farewells in Kenya (Day 2)

I slept pretty well through the night, but I was woken up at one point as the mosquitoes were attacking and then I woke up early to see one person off. After that, I passed out until 11, when I was greeted by someone telling me that my friend Nick (he was the closest volunteer to me for most of my time in Peace Corps) had arrived a while ago and hadn't been able to reach anyone (we both had dead batteries on our phones).

We hurried over to meet Nick and had a bit of brunch. We wound up sitting at the restaurant for a few hours catching up and grading Nick's students' exams. I think Reuben learned a bit about education over here as he joined in the fun (nope, not being sarcastic, marking papers definitely made me a bit nostalgic). I was really impressed with some of Nick's students, and I think that his effort to help them improve really shows. I also had a Coke as we were grading, and as much as everyone says that Coca-Cola tastes the same wherever you buy it (with the exception of high-fructose corn syrup as opposed to sugar), I have to say that Kenyan Coke tastes better than Tanzanian Coke. Maybe it's my imagination? Maybe there's a bad bottler in Arusha?

After that, we decided to spend the afternoon at the pool, so we put on our shorts (close enough to swimsuits) and headed to the pool. It was really perfect weather, and the pool was a little small, but just big enough for diving. We swapped more stories, and I felt really happy when Nick told me that there was another volunteer who had raised similar issues to what I raised to Peace Corps Kenya about his work and they had given him permission to decrease his teaching load significantly and work on more secondary projects. I don't know all the details, but it's nice to know that the staff is trying to accommodate volunteers these days. It made me wonder how many more volunteers from my group would have stayed around had they been more supportive back then. Still, the important part is that attitudes have definitely changed.

After that, Nick had to get back to his site, so we tried to hurry back to the bus stand, but we couldn't find any vehicles heading that way, so we wound up walking most of the two kilometers (it was nice to talk more, but Nick was becoming more anxious about missing the last bus back to his site). We made it in time and Nick got home safely, which was nice. Then we ate a quick dinner and played more cards. Once again, it was after midnight and I decided to crash. Reuben headed out to the club and later reported that it had a decent scene for a Sunday night.

Reuben and I woke up the next morning, packed and hopped on the bus back to Arusha. The ride was pretty uneventful. I mostly read The Economist on my phone. As we passed through Maktau, I saw my old landlord Mr. Kori and noted that he was looking well. Then, we saw six elephants further down the road. At immigration, I was trying to get my permit stamped, but they told me that I will need to go to the immigration office in Arusha (a place where I don't have happy memories) to get it stamped and attached to my passport. However, above the stamp in my passport, they wrote "RR" for Returning Resident. Reuben and I made it back to Arusha without further event (although 17 hours on buses in less than 60 hours is making my spine increasingly unhappy) and then hopped on some motorcycle taxis and headed to the office to put in the last two hours of the workday.