#10 Kenya: Goodbyes are Never Fun

Before we get to the goodbyes, there’s still some other things.

How about a rump roast matatu? Well, that’s what I ended up riding again on Monday. I think Robin and me had one like that before where my backside slowly got roasted away until it was well done. This time, on the other hand we would have had nice roasted drum sticks as my feet were sizzling away. The engine was overheating to such an extent that just past Kambazi (a town right before Kirengero) the matatu stopped. As it turned out, the Grade 7 kids had been in Kambazi that day for sports-day and were just returning home. I spotted Grace and Joyce in one of the crowds and decided to walk with them the rest of the way to Kirengero. I was just starting to regret my decision because of all the mocking “how are you’s?” of the other kids when my matatu drove past me, yelling out my name and then stopping to pick me up. So yeah... that was nice.

Other than that I also realized that this is probably the only country where you can buy ½ litre of good beer for a mere dollar and a Smirnoff Ice for just a couple cents more (65 shillings) whereas one litre of gas costs 75 shillings. Got to love what they value most. Oh... and a diet coke is twice as expensive as a regular coke – I guess that is so in order to promote the rotting of teeth that is so widespread here already. I wonder if the dentists pay some kind of subsidy to all the stores and restaurants to charge more for the diet drinks. Plus, while we’re on the topic of oddities, there’s no Pepsis in this country. Honestly, to this day I have seen only one lone can of Pepsi at a gas station convenience store and it looked like it had been sitting there for quite some time.

The Pokot trip that I think I may have mentioned in an earlier posting fell through. Robin was exhausted after her safari and was in no mood to spend yet another day driving. Plus the more we thought about the cost ($50 for the day per person), the less worth it all seemed especially when this was supposed to be Robin’s last two days with the kids. So we apologized to Tom (who had stayed in Kirengero just so that he could accompany us up to the tribe) and cancelled the trip.

As for Robin’s safari – she enjoyed most of it, with two exceptions: 1) having to tie her head and body to the seat of her matatu in order to prevent herself from having whiplash due to the incredibly bumpy roads, and 2) waking up at midnight to a girl’s cries for help after someone had knifed through her tent while she was sleeping in it and stolen all her possession. Now everyone please don’t freak out. Nothing happened and no one was hurt – just a huge freight and an upsetting experience. Essentially what happened is that they were camping near a Masai village and the two Masai security guards had decided to go to sleep rather than guard the camp. One of the villagers used the opportunity to make himself some extra cash by stealing from the tourists. As unfortunate as that is on its own, it was magnified by the fact that the girl was in the tent when it happened, it was in the middle of the night and no one was sure of their safety afterwards. Other than that sleeping in tents with hyenas hunting around the tent was supposedly quite cool. Hearing nocturnal animals on their hunt was in Robin’s words “Pretty Awesome!”

She got to see giraffes, rhinos, lions, elephants, gazelles, zebras, monkeys, alligators, hyenas, birds, cheetahs, flamingos, hyraxes etc. The list could go on, but I’m no veterinarian hence can’t name them all off. All I know is that Robin thought that the cheetah was a pet cheetah. It was one of the first animals she saw in the Masai Mara and it seemed to be so surreal that the first thought that crossed her mind was that someone brought it along with them in one of the matatus and just temporarily let it out. As for the zebras, we’ll probably be eating them tomorrow in Nairobi.

As for the orphanage, well... in the beginning the days seemed to drag on for all eternity. Now the days can’t be long enough. As I’m writing this, it’s currently 1am and we’re still in the library working away with probably a good few hours still ahead of us. Time just somehow disappeared. Maybe the finished product won’t look so time consuming, but we honestly put in a good number of really, really long hours into this library. With Robin leaving tomorrow morning we’re wanting to get a few things finished off and this means that we’ll be here for as long as it takes.

For the last few days I’ve been cataloguing the books that were brought by me or were sent by Linda. I’ve numbered and listed over 600 books by now and still have probably a bit over 100 to go. Unfortunately all the work so far has been done on my laptop but they want it in hard copy in a book so I will have to write out all the titles of the books by hand. However, there is no hurry for that part of the job since I will be here till June 15^th. Robin, on the other hand, had to finish of her footprints poem. We also did the kids handprints on the door. That was quite an experiment. The first hands were really drippy because we had the kids dunking their hands into the paint. Finally, after 3 disasters, Augo suggested that we use the paintbrushes to put the paint on the kids’ hands so that there wouldn’t be so much paint to drip. From that point onwards, things went much more smoothly. Now we’re just finishing some of the final decorations, hanging some more things on the walls and organizing the furniture.

And now to the goodbyes. With Robin leaving tomorrow morning for good we wanted to throw something special for the kids and came up with the idea of buying ice-cream for all of them. Since we were pressed for time we decided to take the matatu north (for the first time) to a town called Subukia. We were told that we could get everything we needed there. Well, after traveling from the southern hemisphere of the globe all the way to the northern to get there (since we crossed the equator), we found out that it was essentially a little village with a few stores in it, but no supermarkets, and definitively nowhere that would sell ice-cream. They did however have a hotel with facilities for conferences, but I will not vouch for it. So having discovered this we boarded a matatu again and headed for another trip back to the southern hemisphere all the way to Nakuru where we bought everything we needed (including three 4.5L buckets of ice-cream) and returned to Kirengero.

Then, in the evening, after dinner, we treated the kids to a feast of ice-cream, bananas and crackers. It was a huge uproar. With the exception of maybe one or two kids, none of them had ever had ice-cream before. They were surprised at how cold it was and we even turned it into an educational experience by explaining to them why at the bottom of their metal cups there would be water drops forming. They all had a blast – including all the staff! Thereafter it was time for the kids to perform their dances again as a farewell to Robin. Since I had now seen them about a dozen if not more times, I started our packing.

The packing is a whole other story. Normally if you have a few breakables to pack it’s not a problem because you wrap it up in your clothes. Well, considering that Robin only brought 5kg of clothes with her – comprising of 2 pairs of pants, and a few shirts, there is not much that can be used to stuff a suitcase. It’s not the weight that is the problem, since between the two pieces of luggage and her carry-on she can have 56kg. The problem is that we have a huge suitcase filled with heavy breakables and a lot of empty space between them because we have nothing to fill the gaps with. For now I think the suitcase weighs about 35kg and Robin’s other pack probably about 10kg. So it means there’s going to be some serious repacking when we get to Nairobi. For now it will have to make do.

So yeah... tomorrow morning we’re off to Nairobi. We’ll be staying at James’ place and hopefully heading to Carnivore for dinner. It was supposedly voted one of the best 50 restaurants in the world and serves everything from buffalo, zebra, ostrich to alligator and whatever else you might wish. Should be fun and I’m really looking forwards to some good meat (especially after the ligament that we’ve grown to enjoy here in Kirengero). After that, on Friday morning we fly to Lamu and are planning to bask in the sun for 4 days before returning back again to Nairobi.

We’ll try to keep you posted and in not will update the blog after our return from Lamu. So take care and till later!

Kasia