Showering facilities are toilet shower style with a little ledge to prevent all your nasty water flowing straight into the bedroom. First, flip on the warm water switch, then listen outside and see if the ladies are still doing laundry. If they are, forget it and try again later, if not turn the water on a TINy bit and wait for the craaarfffhhhssshhh sound like thunder that indicates that the hot water is coming. Then rapidly scramble to wet all your hair and get some shampoo in before the water shuts off. After the water shuts off decide if you want to finish the shower with freezing cold water or stand there freezing and try to think the water back into warmness. The moral of the story is to shower in the evening when less people are using water. Food here is actually really good. So good that I again should mention I'm getting totally Kenya fat which is a first world problem if there ever is one. Three squares a day is a lot more than any of us eat and it is beginning to take it's toll. I believe I mentioned before that white bread is a big thing here, and so is tea. In the mornings we fill up tea from a thermos and then struggle to not break your wrist pouring out the gigantic blue jug of warm milk to make Kenyan milk tea, which is a lot like the chai you get in India. Very Very tasty.
We normally eat all of our meals at the Longonot Transit Hotel, my main steez. This is where we all live, sleep, drink, chat, etc. Everyone who works here is super rad, Dom, our local shop manager is always keeping us in fresh coke baridi(cold). Lunch and dinner vary but are usually similar- buffet style. Normally rice is at lunch and dinner, and always potatoes. Usually sliced, diced, etc. One night we all thought we were getting fried bananas in a nice red sauce? But they just turned out to be potatoes that were very long and potato looking? Then we have chopped up Kenyan kale, usually another Indian style dahl or veggie curry, and a few crazy looking meat dishes that I play the vegetarian card on and steer clear. There is also some bomb sauce that we call call red yellow because it's red sauce in a yellow mustard dispenser. It tastes like tapatio but we all know that cannot be, but eat it anyways cause its the bomb ass red yellow yall. The tv is always on here and it's always spanish soap operas dubbed in english? There is also a tiny TV in every single room we've stayed in this entire trip. With three channels, one news which is mostly religious propaganda and shit I don't understand, and the other two are different spanish soaps 24/7
We spent a lot of time in the car the last couple of days so let me give you a little insight into that. First off wherever we go kids literally come sprinting out of their houses or down the hill because they must see our bright white wazungu skin from miles away... Wazungu is the plural of muzungo which basically translates to whitey gringo stranger from far away land. Anyways the kids come pouring out of shantees and shop fronts and school yards shouting Muzungo! and How are YOUUUUUUU! and are extremely insanely world fucking stoppingly cute. I will for sure be putting off worries about having children one day because I know fo sho that I'm adopting a little Kenyan orphan someday and they will be the cutest kid on the block. Anyways, in the car, everyone is staring at us and the thing is a lot of people are just standing around by the road watching the cars driving past. Women and children wave, dudes stare, must like India. Roadside snacks and activities abound. The favorite kid activity is push the tire, kick the tire, or move the tire with a stick while running with a huge group of your friends. It's hilarious, and so cute and I find it equally adorable every single time I witness it. Snacks along the road are corn, corn, and roasted corn. Although on the street the other day we did see a ton of fish straight frying in the hot oil in the hot sun and then laid out in rows, if you wanted to get down on some fish-on-a-stick. Anyways, we partook in the roasted corn during a particularly long stretch, it. was. weird. You want some salt or butter or something but it's just plain and tastes cooked and raw all at once and is basically popcorn on a stick. You may also take your choice of buckets and buckets and buckets of neatly stacked potatoes that defy gravity and are at every roadside town. Bags of tomatoes, handfuls of carrots, oranges, you are offered it up at every speedbump and traffic jam. A raw potato doesn't really sound like a good road snack so I've resisted thus far. I did not resist however, some paprika flavored pringeles that are quite strange and I'm pretty sure cause anal leakage but fuck it, YOLO.
The road stretches on and on, especially when you are in the car for eight hours. Corn fields for as far as you can see, sugar cane, and little houses with children everywhere. Women are usually working hard in their front yards smashing up the jembe into the hot Kenyan ground while their husband is probably off in town standing around with his friends doing jack shit. The amount of children wandering around unsupervised is also unparalleled. Teeny tiny little ones that look barley big enough to be walking are strutting down the street with their gang playing and laughing like it aint no thing. One of the women I'm traveling with saw a group of kids throwing a dead crow at each other and laughing hysterically. Just another fun game to play. We also saw the Kenyan P.E. class going down as we were driving through a few towns. This consists of every kid from school running out to the street and running along the road as fast as they can. In full on school uniforms aka skirts, ties, sweaters, the works. And obviously it goes without saying they are magnificent runners because they're Kenyans and every kid is working this roadside run like it's the Olympic trials. Okay one more tidbit then I need to get off this blasted internet.
We're pimping out Cafe Ubuntu soooo much and it's going to be the badest ass cafe that Maai Maihu has ever seen. Painting and landscaping is what we've been up to and in two days we got that place facelifted like a makeover show on HGTV. One day after work I was chatting up a couple of the local gentleman about the work they had been doing all day. Just digging a fifty foot pit for everyone to poop in. They were in good spirits, obviously cause the work day was over and it was Tusker Time. Anyways, they were asking me about where I was from and what I did for work and how many children I had. I told them I didn't have any children and I wasn't married. Which is odd for an old maid such as myself at the ripe age of 27 going on 28. They asked me why I wasn't yet married, I thought for a hot minute and told them, well guys, I guess I just haven't met anyone I wanted to marry yet. They both then went into gut busting laughter at this comment. I guess it was utterly hysterical that I thought I could maybe or maybe not get married depending if I liked the guy or not. just laughing and laughing. haha. Okay, that's enough for now. Love to all at home.
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