The Kisumu Adventure

I don't think I ever could have imagined what an adventure this past weekend would be! Three friends and I took a bumpy 8-hour bus ride to western Kenya, drank Tuskers at our hotel bar with locals, slept on rock-solid beds with cockroaches galore, ate fresh fish fried with our hands on the shore of Lake Victoria, took a motor boat ride to a remote fishing village, saw hippos splashing and swimming in the lake, and so so so much more. But I think I'll leave you with just one story for now. And I'll try to get right to the point.

I met Sarah Obama! (Barack's grandmother, for those who don't know.) While in Kisumu, we decided to venture out to Kogelo, a small village not far from town where Obama's family lives. We'd heard of a few people who'd gone before, and they said it wasn't too difficult. Just catch a matatu and you'll be there in about an hour and a half, they said. Well, we learned the hard way that it's not quite that simple...at least not for rural-Kenya amateurs. After spending some time wandering the Sunday market in town, we thought we'd catch a ride to Kogelo at about noon and have lunch there before looking around. So, we started asking around for a matatu going in that direction.
This was our first learning experience: matatus in the Nairobi are a different animal than matatus in the rural areas. First of all, matatus (remember the small, run-down vans I wrote about earlier?) in the city are capped at 14 passengers. And believe me, 14 hot, sweaty people in a run-down van is an experience in and of itself. But in our matatu to Kogelo, we had TWENTY hot, sweaty adults in the van. Not to mention the bundle of corn, the box of bananas, and the other random produce someone was traveling with. But what was worse is that after abour 2 hours, we started to question if we were even going in the right direction. In rural Kenya, the luxury of highway signs is few and far between. Finally we stopped at a small town, yet we were only shoved into another matatu that said they were going in the direction we wanted. After about an hour in that one I tried to ask the driver if we were nearing Kogelo, but whatever he shouted back to us did not sound like an affirmative. Just as we were starting to freak out (we had a night bus to catch in a couple hours to get back to class in Nairobi on time the next morning) the matatu spit us out in another small village. That is, if you could call something this small and remote a village. We quickly realized that we would not be having lunch. Nonetheless, upon our immediate arrival about 20 Kenyan men surrounded us, pleading with us to pay them to take us to Kogelo on their motorbikes. Amidst the chaos, we finally spotted a guy with a car (which looked slightly more assuring at the time) and decided to go with him. Once packed inside the old blue junker, a few men once again surrounded us, and before we knew it we were being pushed down a slope to get the engine to start. Once we picked up speed, the dust from the road began billowing out of the floorboards (or what was left of them). And off we were into...well, we weren't quite sure.
Finally, we arrived at a gate with a few cement, one-story houses inside. A security guard approached us, and after exchanging a few words he invited us in. Once we signed the guest book, there we were, in Obama's family's home. He motioned us over to a spot on the lawn where two old women were sitting in lawn chairs. It was Sarah Obama and her friend. We introduced ourselves and talked to them for a few minutes in broken Swahili (Sarah doesn't speak any English), and then a young guy appeared, who introduced himself as one of her grandsons. He showed us around their small compound to the graves of Barack's father and grandfather. Then he translated for us as we chatted a bit more.
The time we were actually in Kogelo went by in a flash. By the time we figure out how to get back to Kisumu, we were starving, thirsty, dirty, sweaty and exhasted, but nonetheless it was a fantastic adventure.

That's it for now... thanks for following along! :)