Habari Gani

HABARI!!!!! Kenya so far has been insanely awesome and it's only been one week. It's a lot like India but without so much cows in the roads and no honking. The cars definitely drive a little cray but they just adjust to everyone around them and it's actually quite nice. Except for the constant diesel smell from all the cars idling fo days.

We are living in Maai Maihu which is a small town about an hour away from Nairobi. The best part of Kenya is the people, they are so incredibly nice and generous and strong. The little kids are so freaking cute I can't stand it. They come running out of the woodwork whenever we are in town shouting 'how are you?' and love to pose for pictures like teeny tiny models. And the school uniforms are totally money. Kenyan's love to have tea in the afternoon which is I guess a British influenced tradition. All the tea here is similar to Indian Chai and is sweet and extremely hot and served up in tin mugs akin to what we use for camping in the states. There is also a TON of white bread brought to every meeting with Kenyans. And you have to eat it because it's being offered up by super amazing women and it would be rude to turn it down. We were visiting one of the mom's from the CTC and there was literally a bucket of bread served up with our tea. So I go for it, and it's a butter sandwich. Two slices of white bread and a shit TON of butter smashed up in there. Anyways, needless to say I'm probably gonna come home hella fat from so much white bread tea time. But oh well.

The baby rabies is also off the chain here. I've seen regular human babies, baby bunnies, baby kittens, baby piglets, baby goats, baby giraffes, baby warthogs, baby zebras. I of course scream BABY or TINY at them. The Swahili is coming along quite nicely and it of course helps to have our handlers Rubie Ruth and Tony helping me out with my vocab. It's a really fun language and I hope I can learn as much as I can so I can use it in Reno with all the Kenyan's who live there... oh wait. So what we've been doing is back and forth of seeing really incredible tourist things and really realistic Kenyan life. Most of the real stuff happens in the village of Maai Maihu, where we are working with CTC International ctcinternational.org We've met so many incredible women that have struggled and overcome so much and they hardly break a sweat. It's so hard to sum everything we've seen in one week up in one post so bear with me.

We drove out one day to Brown's cheese plantation where this incredibly beautiful woman runs a charming cheese business out of her family's estate. Originally from England they've lived in Kenya for 100 years and her parents started making cheese because they couldn't get anything they wanted here. She basically is a total badass and took the operation over a few years ago. We ate an insane meal in the garden and sampled a bunch of cheese. Perfect for my freshman ten I'm gonna gain in Kenya. Then to counter that we visited the CTC headquarters and met an incredible woman who runs their community health program. She is one of the hardest working women I've ever met and she is so humble and ready to share basically her life story with us. We scoped out the Cafe Ubuntu where we will be finishing up painting and helping with the grand opening later on this month. That's where I got to hold a baby goat that was two weeks old, teeny tiny and was wearing a Masai bracelet as a necklace. Everyday we all cram into some version of a van and hightail it up suicide hill where all the trucks are whizzing up the blind corners on the left side of the road and swerving around. One day we saw a huge truck pulled over and one man was repairing it, and two other had just pulled mats and were sleeping underneath the semi waiting for him to finish it up. There was maybe one or two rocks holding the tires in place but not a lot of security that the truck wouldn't crush them to death.

We drove for a really long time out to the middle of nowhere and then some. We park near a house and walk over to the tree where all the women are sitting in the shade working on bracelets. They are wearing these incredibly beautiful bright textiles and tons of beaded jewelry in bright reds and yellows. As we approach they all began singing this traditional Masai welcoming song that was so cool and amazing that I had to fight off crying like a baby the entire time.

We home visited one of the Malaika moms who sews the canvas bags that we sell at Whole Foods. It was pretty insane. First off the welcomes that we receive pretty much everywhere we go are so genuine and heartfelt. We along with some other Kenyan women all cram into this woman's living room and she just pours out her life story. Her daughter that can now walk and go to school because of the money her mom receives from CTC work is insanely cute and told us when she grows up she wants to be a neuro surgeon. Alice, another woman who works at CTC had us go around and do an ice breaker which was us all going around saying our names and doing 'our style' which is basically any dance move you want. They we all had to repeat it and some of them were cracking all of us up. Mine was the robot. duh.

Yesterday we visited Hell's Gate National park and I rode a bike through the most beautiful canyon and say Zebras running around, warthogs hauling all, giraffes hiding in the trees, gazelles, and water buffalos. No big deal. Friday night we tied one on Kenyan style which is basically pounding Bond 7 ( the local whiskey), and Tusker, our beer of choice with all of our crew at the Transit hotel where we're staying and some CTC peeps, well to the best we could with music coming out of one sad lone speaker. I know this is a bit all over the place but it's really difficult to try and sum it all up. So sorry I'm not sorry. Kwa Heri! Tutaonana!