The time in Kenya has been flying by and we only have one more week here! It makes me very sad to be leaving especially since we are all bonding and forming such a close knit little family. That being said I thought it might be time to do a little profile on all of the people here, okay MARSHA? So our Whole Foods group is eleven peeps, all from North America, everyone except one from the states.
1. Me. Duh.
2. Lisa, our Team Leader and a Store Team Leader from Toronto, Canada. Lisa is a tiny little spitfire with curly blonde hair and mad interviewing skills. Lisa asks all the good questions when we are all meeting people and doing site visits so that everyone gets all the good deets. She is also a master at many things including baking and baked the most amazing pizza and brownies for everyone last week. She is also a great communicator and helps everyone by facilitating conversations that we might not otherwise have.
3. Katy, trainer and education manager at Allegro Coffee which is owned by Whole Foods. Katy is from Denver, Colorado. Katy is extremely patient and kind and takes the most insanely awesome photos. She is a mother of two tween-age girls and so naturally all the children here flock to her when we are about town. She is facilitating all the coffee aspects of the opening of the café, along with being a general badass mambo jambo. Katy made everybody the most bomb ass lattes and mochas today when we finally got the espresso machine going. She is full of knowledge and so good at sharing it. Katy rules.
4. Ken, gro-body Associate Team Leader who lives in Basalt, Colorado. Ken is one of five Coloradoans dominating the scene here. Ken brings the mountain man aspect to the team and was one of the first one up our crazy ass Mount Longonot hike (to be discussed later). Sings a lot. Used to have dreadlocks down to his ankles that he told me after he showered he put a towel on his hair and lay on the ground and had his lady walk on them to dry them. That shit cray.
5. Ryan (or Lion, as the Kenyan’s pronounce it) is a grocery Associate Team Leader from Little Rock, Arkansas. He is a tall drink o water and is fucking hilarious. We were recently at a mall in Nairobi and he just shouted HAGRID!!! At this beasty mo fo that looked just like the Harry Potter star. Ryan also introduced the card game palace to our crew which we play almost each and every night. Ryan also is ON POINT with pop culture references and we could go back and forth reciting Forest Gump all day long. Lieutenant Dan ICE CREAM. Also invented ‘your dad week’.
6. Tyler, is a specialty coffee and tea buyer from Bend, Oregon. He immediately fell in love with Kenya and Maai Maihu and CTC and may or may not move back here to work because he loves it so much. He also gets the man of the year award for carrying nineteen liters of water up on our hike so that everyone else could be free of carrying stuff. He also brought some soccer balls that the kids here freak out over.
7. Chris is a Whole Body Associate Coordinator from Denver, Colorado. Chris is my main bitch for sure. She is calm and collected and is always hooking me up with the necessities, like human contact and chocolate cookies. She is also a fellow artist and has been painting some of the coolest, most badass stuff in Café Ubuntu. She is also a fellow traveler who can revel with me about all the similarities between here and India which are many.
8. Kevin is a Grocery Dairy Buyer from Atlanta, Georgia. Kevin is a tall dude ass that is constantly wandering around Kenya getting stared at for being such a large muzungu. I also one day told a group of kids that I didn’t have any candy but that Kevin did and that his name was ‘ Big Daddy’. Which prompted this tiny group of scoundrels to hover around him shouting ‘Big Daddy! Give me a sweet!’ hilarious. I also thought that Kevin’s Kenyan girlfriend was cat fishing him until by bluff was called and she showed up one day to be hella fine and hella real. Kevin is hilarious and his external/internal dialogue are on point and make everything fun. Citizen SOUL POWER.
9. Marshaaaaaaa is an Associate Store Team Leader from Sonoma, California. Marsha is also super fucking hilarious. Catch phrase: “ Shut the fuck up!”. The best thing that happened to Marsha is that she got accidentaly ICED one day when borrowing my laundry bucket. Oakley had stashed a can of Smirnoff black ice in there and we broke Marsha’s ice cherry then and there. Then we had to sit through a meeting. Whoops. Oh also last night she was eating plain rice for dinner sandwiched between two salt and vinegar Pringles. Priceless. Oh and she makes a BOMB ASS guacamole.
10. Devon is a Prepared Foods Store Trainer from Boulder, Colorado. Devon is also a bomb cook and was a main assist on our beloved pizza night. Devon is organized and pragmatic which helps us all get in line when we are trying to figure out projects. Oh and is a dance machine, getting down to ipods, car jams, etc. Any and all of the time. I also iced Devon tonight at dinner IN the potato salad. It was awesome.
11. Oakely. OAK-A-LEY. Is a store buyer from Boulder, Colorado as well. Oakley is my boy but gets really annoyed at me constantly shouting his name. Along with his icing antics, Oakley also likes to hand out sweets with me to all the cute ass school kids when they walk past. Oakley is going to do some sick traveling after Kenya around Europe then go home for a hot minute and the next day drive and move to San Diego. Cray. Anyways, OAK-A-LEY is rad. Oh he also ices himself on purpose all the time because he, get this, LIKEs it. So naturally the fun isn’t there to ice him, so I might have to get some gross mango wine and hide it in his backpack. He also got worked the first night we hung out with CTC. Emily claimed that this drink was for girls and was also a ‘panty remover’. hahaha. So much icing on this trip.
We also have some rad peeps that work at CTC that we all get to hang out with on the reg. Ruby Ruth- is another total badass chick that I LOVE. TO. DEATH. She has been instrumental in my Swahili swag and is always around helping our gang get from place to place and hooking us up with internet and making sure that everyone is having what they need AND a good time. She’s amazing and is also always wandering around in the rubble of Kenya in high heel boot and wedges. The other day she was hauling wheelbarrows of rocks in a halter top and flats. She works it.
Tony- Is without a doubt the happiest human I have ever met. Every day we see him he’s more GQ’ed than the day before. He’s also helping me not fuck up my Swahili too bad. He is such a badass that one day we were walking back to the Transit(home) from work(Café ubuntu) and Ryan left his phone there. We were already about halfway home. Tony simply said. This I will do. Then he told Kevin. “Kevin, you will lead the team safely back to the hotel until I return”. And set off running. Not only did he get the phone but he lapped us on the way home and ended up ahead.
Rocky- Is a total baller, total boss. He is always there to help us get down with some local flavor be that Nyama Choma(Roast Meat), pick up soccer games, etc. He is a good critique of my work and said that the painting I did of the Masai man wasn’t buff enough and that the woman was prettier. Well duh I said. Women naturally have a much curvier shape. Plus all the dudes I’ve seen in Kenya have bee pretty svelte motha fuckers. Rocky was a king or drug king pin or famous movie star in another life. He’s just that baller.
Jeremiah- Runs the show here in Maai Maihu and is the co-founder of CTC. Is super hilarious and a total baller. He basically is making deals and dollas all day long. He is also a maniac driver and likes to narrate along as he goes. Loves to drink mochas as well which works as an ulterior motive to opening the café.
This week we have also been doing some really cool work in the café. Café Ubuntu. Ubuntu means “ I am because we are” in Zulu I think? Or some other language, but something South African. I feel bad admitting it, but the work I’ve been doing is super duper kush. I’ve been painting la la la la la. First we did a nice little border around the walls, then some editing on the logo, and my favorite is I got to paint the signs for men’s and women’s bathroom. Which was really fun and a nice little creative outlet. Meanwhile most of the team is outside shoveling gravel, hauling rocks, building mounds of dirt and working their asses off. Welp, I guess the moral of the story is, be an artist and you don’t have to do manual labor. Also, DAD, there I am using my college education. Haha.
Also we hiked Mount Longonot this weekend. Which we all thought was gonna be some pretty easy, pretty hard hike. It was fucking gnarly. Hella. So the whole gang went, except ol Kevin who needed a rest day, aka Catfish rendezvous. So the hike up was pretty easy for a bit then it starts getting really sandy, really steep and it is climbing and climbing and I am heaving and gasping like freaking James Gandolfini trying to finish a plate of chicken parmesan. (RIP). Anyways, so Longonot is a dormant volcano and I, along with others thought that it was going to be a hard hike up but then just a nice trek around the rim. NOT. It was chill for a bit then a few enormous climbs up. Oh also the outfit I have chosen for this trek is a pair of American apparel short shorts, leggings and my worn out tiger sneakers. Those babies are SLICK. Everyone else is hopping nimbly bimbly from tree to tree in their rugged outdoorsy shoes and shit, I’m literally sliding down the mountain on my greatest asset(pun intended). I slid down sandy slopes, covering everything in a dust. Pig pen style. By the time the mountain was completed, I looked somewhat like one of the boys from the Sandlot and Uma Thurman in Kill Bill after she escapes being buried alive. But it was awesome. Mt. Longonot- YOU MY BITCH!
Another interesting foray we had this week was into some Maasai land. We were going there to speak with some Maasai grandmothers who have adopted orphans whose parent’s died of HIV/AIDS. Well only one of the mothers were there so we had some other adventures. The best was right when we landed we’re mobbed by a tiny gang of tiny dudes. They are all super, super, super dirty. Their ringleader is of course the tiniest one and is carrying a fucking whip as an accessory. They are all about the ‘GIVE ME A SWEET’ chant. Nobody has any candy when it’s the right moment, so we have to make do. One of the little dudes straight flipped off Ken as his hello. Kevin ended up giving them a bunch of Dentyne Ice that he had in his bag and was trying to get them to share but the way they did this was to have a couple of them chew all the gum and then hand it off. Then they kept tugging on my shirt and looking up at me so sweetly, ‘Why you no give me chocolate?” Then they took us up to some insane livestock market where a bunch of dudes were standing around selling sheep and goats to each other. Aka a huge market where everyone could stare at us muzungus. Some dude kept trying to get me to buy a sheep of his, and when I denied he motioned that he’d be okay taking my sunglasses instead. Okay bro. We have one week left. Tomorrow we leave for a Safari that will be nearby Mount Kenya. We return Monday to help organize more stuff and open the Café on Wednesday. And then Friday I head home. And then Saturday I turn 28. Holy shit time flies. Anyways, tutaonana.
1. Me. Duh.
2. Lisa, our Team Leader and a Store Team Leader from Toronto, Canada. Lisa is a tiny little spitfire with curly blonde hair and mad interviewing skills. Lisa asks all the good questions when we are all meeting people and doing site visits so that everyone gets all the good deets. She is also a master at many things including baking and baked the most amazing pizza and brownies for everyone last week. She is also a great communicator and helps everyone by facilitating conversations that we might not otherwise have.
3. Katy, trainer and education manager at Allegro Coffee which is owned by Whole Foods. Katy is from Denver, Colorado. Katy is extremely patient and kind and takes the most insanely awesome photos. She is a mother of two tween-age girls and so naturally all the children here flock to her when we are about town. She is facilitating all the coffee aspects of the opening of the café, along with being a general badass mambo jambo. Katy made everybody the most bomb ass lattes and mochas today when we finally got the espresso machine going. She is full of knowledge and so good at sharing it. Katy rules.
4. Ken, gro-body Associate Team Leader who lives in Basalt, Colorado. Ken is one of five Coloradoans dominating the scene here. Ken brings the mountain man aspect to the team and was one of the first one up our crazy ass Mount Longonot hike (to be discussed later). Sings a lot. Used to have dreadlocks down to his ankles that he told me after he showered he put a towel on his hair and lay on the ground and had his lady walk on them to dry them. That shit cray.
5. Ryan (or Lion, as the Kenyan’s pronounce it) is a grocery Associate Team Leader from Little Rock, Arkansas. He is a tall drink o water and is fucking hilarious. We were recently at a mall in Nairobi and he just shouted HAGRID!!! At this beasty mo fo that looked just like the Harry Potter star. Ryan also introduced the card game palace to our crew which we play almost each and every night. Ryan also is ON POINT with pop culture references and we could go back and forth reciting Forest Gump all day long. Lieutenant Dan ICE CREAM. Also invented ‘your dad week’.
6. Tyler, is a specialty coffee and tea buyer from Bend, Oregon. He immediately fell in love with Kenya and Maai Maihu and CTC and may or may not move back here to work because he loves it so much. He also gets the man of the year award for carrying nineteen liters of water up on our hike so that everyone else could be free of carrying stuff. He also brought some soccer balls that the kids here freak out over.
7. Chris is a Whole Body Associate Coordinator from Denver, Colorado. Chris is my main bitch for sure. She is calm and collected and is always hooking me up with the necessities, like human contact and chocolate cookies. She is also a fellow artist and has been painting some of the coolest, most badass stuff in Café Ubuntu. She is also a fellow traveler who can revel with me about all the similarities between here and India which are many.
8. Kevin is a Grocery Dairy Buyer from Atlanta, Georgia. Kevin is a tall dude ass that is constantly wandering around Kenya getting stared at for being such a large muzungu. I also one day told a group of kids that I didn’t have any candy but that Kevin did and that his name was ‘ Big Daddy’. Which prompted this tiny group of scoundrels to hover around him shouting ‘Big Daddy! Give me a sweet!’ hilarious. I also thought that Kevin’s Kenyan girlfriend was cat fishing him until by bluff was called and she showed up one day to be hella fine and hella real. Kevin is hilarious and his external/internal dialogue are on point and make everything fun. Citizen SOUL POWER.
9. Marshaaaaaaa is an Associate Store Team Leader from Sonoma, California. Marsha is also super fucking hilarious. Catch phrase: “ Shut the fuck up!”. The best thing that happened to Marsha is that she got accidentaly ICED one day when borrowing my laundry bucket. Oakley had stashed a can of Smirnoff black ice in there and we broke Marsha’s ice cherry then and there. Then we had to sit through a meeting. Whoops. Oh also last night she was eating plain rice for dinner sandwiched between two salt and vinegar Pringles. Priceless. Oh and she makes a BOMB ASS guacamole.
10. Devon is a Prepared Foods Store Trainer from Boulder, Colorado. Devon is also a bomb cook and was a main assist on our beloved pizza night. Devon is organized and pragmatic which helps us all get in line when we are trying to figure out projects. Oh and is a dance machine, getting down to ipods, car jams, etc. Any and all of the time. I also iced Devon tonight at dinner IN the potato salad. It was awesome.
11. Oakely. OAK-A-LEY. Is a store buyer from Boulder, Colorado as well. Oakley is my boy but gets really annoyed at me constantly shouting his name. Along with his icing antics, Oakley also likes to hand out sweets with me to all the cute ass school kids when they walk past. Oakley is going to do some sick traveling after Kenya around Europe then go home for a hot minute and the next day drive and move to San Diego. Cray. Anyways, OAK-A-LEY is rad. Oh he also ices himself on purpose all the time because he, get this, LIKEs it. So naturally the fun isn’t there to ice him, so I might have to get some gross mango wine and hide it in his backpack. He also got worked the first night we hung out with CTC. Emily claimed that this drink was for girls and was also a ‘panty remover’. hahaha. So much icing on this trip.
We also have some rad peeps that work at CTC that we all get to hang out with on the reg. Ruby Ruth- is another total badass chick that I LOVE. TO. DEATH. She has been instrumental in my Swahili swag and is always around helping our gang get from place to place and hooking us up with internet and making sure that everyone is having what they need AND a good time. She’s amazing and is also always wandering around in the rubble of Kenya in high heel boot and wedges. The other day she was hauling wheelbarrows of rocks in a halter top and flats. She works it.
Tony- Is without a doubt the happiest human I have ever met. Every day we see him he’s more GQ’ed than the day before. He’s also helping me not fuck up my Swahili too bad. He is such a badass that one day we were walking back to the Transit(home) from work(Café ubuntu) and Ryan left his phone there. We were already about halfway home. Tony simply said. This I will do. Then he told Kevin. “Kevin, you will lead the team safely back to the hotel until I return”. And set off running. Not only did he get the phone but he lapped us on the way home and ended up ahead.
Rocky- Is a total baller, total boss. He is always there to help us get down with some local flavor be that Nyama Choma(Roast Meat), pick up soccer games, etc. He is a good critique of my work and said that the painting I did of the Masai man wasn’t buff enough and that the woman was prettier. Well duh I said. Women naturally have a much curvier shape. Plus all the dudes I’ve seen in Kenya have bee pretty svelte motha fuckers. Rocky was a king or drug king pin or famous movie star in another life. He’s just that baller.
Jeremiah- Runs the show here in Maai Maihu and is the co-founder of CTC. Is super hilarious and a total baller. He basically is making deals and dollas all day long. He is also a maniac driver and likes to narrate along as he goes. Loves to drink mochas as well which works as an ulterior motive to opening the café.
This week we have also been doing some really cool work in the café. Café Ubuntu. Ubuntu means “ I am because we are” in Zulu I think? Or some other language, but something South African. I feel bad admitting it, but the work I’ve been doing is super duper kush. I’ve been painting la la la la la. First we did a nice little border around the walls, then some editing on the logo, and my favorite is I got to paint the signs for men’s and women’s bathroom. Which was really fun and a nice little creative outlet. Meanwhile most of the team is outside shoveling gravel, hauling rocks, building mounds of dirt and working their asses off. Welp, I guess the moral of the story is, be an artist and you don’t have to do manual labor. Also, DAD, there I am using my college education. Haha.
Also we hiked Mount Longonot this weekend. Which we all thought was gonna be some pretty easy, pretty hard hike. It was fucking gnarly. Hella. So the whole gang went, except ol Kevin who needed a rest day, aka Catfish rendezvous. So the hike up was pretty easy for a bit then it starts getting really sandy, really steep and it is climbing and climbing and I am heaving and gasping like freaking James Gandolfini trying to finish a plate of chicken parmesan. (RIP). Anyways, so Longonot is a dormant volcano and I, along with others thought that it was going to be a hard hike up but then just a nice trek around the rim. NOT. It was chill for a bit then a few enormous climbs up. Oh also the outfit I have chosen for this trek is a pair of American apparel short shorts, leggings and my worn out tiger sneakers. Those babies are SLICK. Everyone else is hopping nimbly bimbly from tree to tree in their rugged outdoorsy shoes and shit, I’m literally sliding down the mountain on my greatest asset(pun intended). I slid down sandy slopes, covering everything in a dust. Pig pen style. By the time the mountain was completed, I looked somewhat like one of the boys from the Sandlot and Uma Thurman in Kill Bill after she escapes being buried alive. But it was awesome. Mt. Longonot- YOU MY BITCH!
Another interesting foray we had this week was into some Maasai land. We were going there to speak with some Maasai grandmothers who have adopted orphans whose parent’s died of HIV/AIDS. Well only one of the mothers were there so we had some other adventures. The best was right when we landed we’re mobbed by a tiny gang of tiny dudes. They are all super, super, super dirty. Their ringleader is of course the tiniest one and is carrying a fucking whip as an accessory. They are all about the ‘GIVE ME A SWEET’ chant. Nobody has any candy when it’s the right moment, so we have to make do. One of the little dudes straight flipped off Ken as his hello. Kevin ended up giving them a bunch of Dentyne Ice that he had in his bag and was trying to get them to share but the way they did this was to have a couple of them chew all the gum and then hand it off. Then they kept tugging on my shirt and looking up at me so sweetly, ‘Why you no give me chocolate?” Then they took us up to some insane livestock market where a bunch of dudes were standing around selling sheep and goats to each other. Aka a huge market where everyone could stare at us muzungus. Some dude kept trying to get me to buy a sheep of his, and when I denied he motioned that he’d be okay taking my sunglasses instead. Okay bro. We have one week left. Tomorrow we leave for a Safari that will be nearby Mount Kenya. We return Monday to help organize more stuff and open the Café on Wednesday. And then Friday I head home. And then Saturday I turn 28. Holy shit time flies. Anyways, tutaonana.
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