A mix of emotions (and pictures)

My host family on Easter!! Well, most of them anyway. This is outside our house in the compound.
The beautiful beach at Lamu island (from the post a few weeks ago).

The sun setting at Lamu island (Mom and Dad, I was walking through the sand barefoot on my cell phone with you guys when I took this picture... remember??)

The beach on the northern coast of Mombasa on Easter day.

My bedroom! And blue mosquito net, that's less than perfect, and the sheet that never comes out from under me thanks to the heat. Unfortunately this picture doesn't quite do it justice... you can't see the cockroaches and 5-inch long milipedes. Really though, I'm gonna miss this room. Especially when I go back to sharing with 4 people, including two kids, in Nairobi...

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Aside from the fact that I want to break this computer right now because I've spent about an hour trying to upload pictures to the blog and it's still not working (gotta love technology in Kenya), this week has been a crazy mix of emotions. Here's yesterday morning for example. I wake up at 6:30 a.m., an hour before my alarm, and can't go back to sleep because I'm thinking about all the things I need to do and people I need to see and gifts I need to buy and errands I need to run and papers I need to write before I move back to Nairobi on Saturday. I eventually just get up decide to get an early matatu into town to get a start on it all. Then in the matatu I start thinking about how I don't want to leave my family and my village and Mombasa and even that dirty, sweaty matatu because I love my life here right now, and once I leave it will never be like this again. But then when I get off the matatu, I realize there's a brand new giant hole in the sole of one of my flip flops (which I've worn exactly every single day since arriving on the coast), so I'm going to have to add that to the list, which is continually getting longer. At lunch break I grab a matatu to the market near north coast to try to get a new pair of sandals, which was a huge wrong turn on my emotional rollercoaster. I don't know if I've written about this before, but these are the things I won't miss about Kenya:

1. Getting marriage proposals and "I love you baby"s from complete strangers at least every other day.

2. Having to hide my phone in matatus so that when the guy next to me asks for my contacts I can say I don't have a phone.

3. Hearing "hey mzungu (white person)" or "jambo mzungu" from about every other person on the street in Mombasa.

4. Having to know exactly how much everything costs or should cost beforehand so that when they tell me something's 400 shillings, and it's really supposed to be 50 shillings, I know they're giving me a mzungu price.

5. The old man who has kids my parents age who waits for me on the street outside of my internship and tries to give me presents and take my picture and take me home with him.

Now, this is just what I won't miss about a normal day. Going to the market, alone, as a blonde white girl is not good when your patience and emotional energy is already running low. When guys are literally grabbing your arms, pulling you to look at their items, shouting "mzungu" and "hey baby" at you from all directions, you better be ready to hold your ground. After about 20 minutes of that, I quickly realized this was not my day for bargaining. I gave in, took a matatu back near work, and bought a pair of sandals for twice the price at a shoe superstore.

But that's not the end of the story...

For the past week I've been dreading going back to Nairobi. The city in general is more dangerous, more fast-pace, more stressful, more dirty, more over-populated, and on top of that I have about 25 pages of papers to write and research for when I get back. Plus two exams.

But then I met up with two of my friends from the program for lunch, and before we know it we're talking about going to our old hang out in Nairobi when we get back, and sleeping in Carolyn's host family's soft beds (with real mattresses, not foam!), and having running water, and faster Internet, and seeing my friend Rachel again who's been across the country, and starting our traveling journey... and suddenly I'm excited to go back to Nairobi! But I don't want to leave here! But I can't stand the "mzungu, I love you mzungu" here! But I don't wanna leave life with my host family! But I have 25 pages to write and two exams to study for and no computer! Ahhhhh!

Kinda get the picture?

Anyways, Mama's taking me to the bus station Saturday morning at 10 a.m. and shipping me of to Nairobi whether I like it or not, so there's no need putting too much thought into deciding how I feel about it. The good news is, because my other two friends on the coast have been experiencing similar bipolar episodes lately, we've unanimously decided that our 28-day journey next month will include at least a couple days back here in Mombasa. So this isn't goodbye for good, Mombasa. Just goodbye for now.

Easter in Kenya

Thanks for the Easter posts McConnons! I missed you all yesterday. Although Easter here was really fun too. I woke up late that morning because the night before some friends and I were out all night (bars and discos don't close til 5 a.m... either that or they don't close at all). After my host sister had tried knocking on my door and calling my name, Mama finally sent me a text about a half hour before we had to go that said "hi we are getting ready for church are you okey?" It was funny, cause no one sleeps past about 7 a.m. in my house (except for me, of course, although the heat usually wakes me up by about 8). The majority of Kenyans are Christian, so the Easter holiday is big here. Friday and Monday are national holidays and most offices and schools are closed. My host family is Catholic, so they celebrated as well. We all went to church at 10 a.m., where there were hundreds of people crammed into a church the size of...well...the size that isn't supposed to fit that many people. The service lasted until 1 p.m., with lots of singing and dancing and sweating and more sweating. It was probably about 90-some degrees in there, let me tell you. After the service we went home and had lunch and just hung out for a while before two of my host sisters and I took 4 of the grandkids down to the beach for all the Easter discos. The whole weekend is literally one big party here, with giant signs all over the place advertising party after party. One sign near my house read something like, "Good Friday Party: Go-Go Dancers at 10 p.m." Slightly ironic? When we got there, the beach was absolutely packed. It was like walking through the state fair, but on the white sand of the Indian Ocean with hip-hop music blaring and camels weaving through the crowd (of Africans, not Minnesotans). We went to a disco called Surfside where people danced all night, even the kids. It was nice to be on the edge of the ocean, where we could catch some cool breezes and have some relief from the heat. We eventually grabbed a matatu home at around 9 p.m. because the 3-year-old fell asleep (miraculously, amid the blaring hip-hop and noisy crowd).

The previous weekend some friends and I caught a bus, and then a ferry, to Lamu -- an island off the northern coast of Kenya that's one of the oldest and most preserved Swahili towns in Kenya. It was absolutely beautiful, with over 12 kilometers of beach and old, traditional structures from hundreds of years ago. There are only two cars on the whole island -- instead everyone uses donkeys for transportation. Everywhere you walk there's donkeys just chilling by themselves, not tied to anything, or wandering along the beach without anyone with them. A couple guys we hung out with there said that when they're not using them, people just let their donkeys wander and eventually they'll come home again. It's so sweet how they treat them almost like pets. There's even a donkey hospital on the island! And trust me, that's pretty amazing in a country where it's often hard to find a decent people hospital. After a late night swim one night I rode our friend's donkey named Beyonce to get some nyama choma (barbequed meat) in the wee hours of the morning along the coast of the Ocean. It was amazing. His other donkeys, among them Obama and Shakira, were already at home asleep for the night. It was a pretty relaxing weekend in all, filled with lots of swimming, fresh fish-eating, and boating on a traditional dhow (like a sailboat).

Before I go, I have a quick note for the Bye-Nagels... The other day I was packed in the back of a crowded matatu when an old Backstreet Boys song came on the radio. For a moment there, I almost thought I was in the back of your mini van, squished between Kyla and Kyri and Katie and Krista in Germany, not in Kenya. :)

I've found that the longer I'm here, the harder it is to write blog posts. Everything that seemed new and different before no longer seems so new and different anymore, and it's hard to remember sometimes what I should explain and what's different from home. It's a good thing, really. I feel so comfortable here in Kenya, and more specifically on the coast. Today the program director came to visit me at my internship and reminded me that I only have three weeks left here, which made me so sad! I don't wanna leave my host family or Shanzu or Old Town or the Indian Ocean or anything. The comforting thought is that I'll only have a week to stay in Nairobi and then I'm free to roam wherever I want for my last month here in Kenya.

Tuesday was Maulid, an Islamic celebration to mark the birth of Mohammed. The women in my organization had their celebration on the patio of their restaurant overlooking the Indian Ocean just before the sun set. Because it was a special religious holiday, the girl I worked with suggested I wear a hijab, as all the women there would be wearing one (of course). So that day I dressed in a long black skirt and brought a scarf that she helped me put on my head. I was a little nervous at first, but all the women seemed to appreciate that I dressed for the occasion, and many shot me smiles from across the patio. For the ceremony, we all sat cross legged on mats in a big circular huddle around a finely decorated rug with different bottles and incense and ornaments on it. The women sang song after song, each leading a different part, with intermittent readings in between (that I could not understand whatsoever). Then after about an hour we stood up and a few women came around and poured rose water on our heads and painted scented oil on the back of our hands. I'm not really sure what everythng meant, but I sure came out smelling nice. I asked one of the aunties what the rose water symbolized, and she said she didn't think it meant anything, but that it was just tradition. We finished just as the sun was setting, and then we all had samosas and fried potatoes and donut-type things together, still sitting on the mats. It was really a beautiful ceremony, and it was so relaxing to be sitting outside in the breeze of the ocean surrounded by peaceful, loving song.

Last night when I got home my host mama's second oldest son's wife, Mary, one of the many relatives in the compound who have readily adopted me as part of their family, told me her younger sister was here to measure me for an African dress. Mary said she brought back cloth from Tanzania that she thought would look nice on me and she wanted to give me the dress as a gift. She also told me to tell her when I had about 3 hours free so she could do my hair (she runs a little streetside salon on the edge of the compound). I'm really excited about the dress, but the hair could be interesting... I'm not quite sure what she has in mind, and if she realizes how different my hair is from everyone else here. But I guess we'll see! Either way it will be fun. She's such a sweet woman.

Last week Patrick and Carolyn came over to attempt what is nearly the impossible in Africa: making homemade pizza. It took us about an hour at Nakumatt, the largest supermarket around, to search for ingredients that resembled food from back home, but we eventually made do. The main problem was that we could only find individual dough/crust-type things. And I have a very large family. So we arrived home ready to make a dozen pizzas, only to find that the oven, which mama hadn't used in over a year, was broken. That also complicated our plans for dessert: brownies. We ended up using a round frier-type thing that they use for chapati to grill/fry the pizzas, and once one was on the frier we threw a pot over the top to try to melt the cheese. One by one, we made a dozen pizzas! Well, nine edible ones...three were burnt to a crisp. The real problem came after... no one liked the pizza! I know, it's hard to imagine anyone not liking pizza, but almost everyone hated it! My teenage host brother and cousin, who will eat just about anything, were hilarious to watch -- they literally were almost gagging over it. All the kids said they'd had pizza once before and hated it. Thankfully mama liked it (we originally decided to make it because she had said she liked it and wanted it), but that's because she used to work in a hotel or something where she ate it a lot and got used to the taste. After dinner, and after Mama finished eating not only her pizza but the boys' as well, she helped make an over for the brownies by heating sand really hot... I'm not exactly sure how she did it but I know she heated the sand and then we put the brownies in a pot inside the sand with charcoals on top. They turned out to be delicious, and cooked in only about 25 minutes. Thankfully the brownies were a big hit! By the time we were finished it was getting late so Mama insisted Patrick and Carolyn sleep over. The three of us and my host sister, brother, cousin and Auntie (the house help) stayed up until past 2 a.m. playing different card games and laughing and chatting. It was so much fun. Everyone was tired the next day, especially the boys who had to get up at 5 a.m. for school.

Well, that's all I've got for now. Until next time!