Our Plumber is an Idiot Have you thought seriously about living without running water for a few days? Water disruptions are a pretty normal occurance in Kakamega and I have endured a few multi-day affairs. Your heart sinks if the water stops Friday evening - it is highly unlikely that anyone will bother to fix the problem until Monday morning. Your only hope is if the problem is global enough to affect someone Important such the District Commissioner or the local Member of Parliament - in which case the problem will be fixed quickly (heavy sigh). What to do? Well if you have some loot you want to fix yourself a reservoir tank - the bigger, the better. And of course, knowing how water flows you ideally want your tank above the level of your house - a pump-free solution! You would also want a competent plumber to rig things up for you.
Now granted, building a water tower is a bit beyond the scope of normal plumbing activities and I don't expect a plumber to be a civil engineer. However, I do expect a plumber to know that water is f**king heavy and some raggedy-assed scrap metal welded together might not properly support a 500 liter reservoir tank. The gag above played out the first time they tried to fill the tank (of course..). I got a frantic call at work from our house-keeper who thought the tank was going to collapse right into our house - an event that might have gotten us onto the evening news.
Moral: Good tradespeople are as hard to find here as anywhere else…if you find one, be very, very nice to them.
White Sand In Mombassa/Black Tie in Nairobi Good grief…even by blogging standards I have been slack recently. What have I been up to? Well, we went to Mombassa on the coast for the Christmas break. I had been told so many conflicting things about Mombassa that I wasn't sure what to expect. Let me confirm one thing - it is hot there (think Florida in high summer without air conditioning). Otherwise, my experience of Mombassa was sharp contrasts. We were staying at an all-inclusive resort with a bunch of German civil servants (not all Germans or Civil servants of course - but I'm hoping you can visualize - think over-designed prescription eyewear).
The beach was nice:
I hate sounding so jaded because for many average Kenyans, going to Mombassa as a tourist is a dream, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity- they might manage it on their Honeymoon but it is a big deal. We brought a few Kakamegan friends with us on the trip (all of whom had not flown in an airplane before) and it was fun just watching them enjoy a few perks.
The real city of Mombassa is actually a Muslim dominated town - the Kakamegans who were traveling with us felt as much tourists as we musungo did, I think.
The one thing I did not like about Mombassa is that I lost the slightly elevated status I enjoyed in Kakamega and turned in to that dreaded character - a tourist. In Kakamega I am a curiosity with an unsavory association (colonialism) balanced out by an attractive association (people assume that I am rich). These associations skew my interactions with people but I have never really felt like a tourist (a freak, occasionally).
Our holiday ended with a trip to Nairobi. We have been very kindly invited to a black tie new years event at Muthaiga Country Club http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muthaiga_Country_Club . Muthaiga is the grandest of sports clubs in Kenya and I had been looking forward to this event for some time. In fact, I actually had a suit made for me Kakamega by my tailor, Julian:
(Note: I have discovered that I can have a suit hand-sewed for about $20 Cdn + the cost of the wool…so I have been indulging. Here is a more casual summer suit Julian made for me:
I am working up the courage to ask for something with a more African styling, but the odds of looking like a dork in such clothes are very high.
I digress.
The sports club (which I'm told is featured in Out Of Africa) is spectacularly preserved and so is the crowd. Were it not for a few native Africans were enjoying the party (as opposed to the rest, who merely serve it) , it would have been possible to imagine the empire was not lost. I am fascinated to be in a room where you really can pick out the breeding from the accents - I think with a little practice I might be able to distinguish a Cambridge education from and Oxford one. . The crowd, as far as I can tell, is mainly a mixture of genuine ex-pats and a few executives for multi-national companies who are doing stints in Kenya. Ultimately, I am disappointed that this sports club still belongs to the musungo. The Kakamega club, while far more humble, belongs to (has been appropriated by) Africans. I have been graciously welcomed there but my skin colour invites curiosity, not instant entitlement.
The food starts and it is pretty darn good, I must admit. I eat everything put in front of me including a seafood appetizer I believe, based on the menu, to be a Salmon mousse. I soon discover that the mousse includes other fishy things (shrimp, of course, which I am allergic to). By the end of the meal I feel slightly woozy, but I also have been fighting a stomach bug since leaving Mombassa. I try to buckle down and find my second wind.
The music starts up and I am dismayed that it is basically the same music used in North America to coax stiff musungos onto a dance floor at a wedding (think Abba - 'Dancing Queen')
The stomach bug, the seafood mousse, the music - reader, I threw up on a flower bed out behind the club. At 11 PM I am barely standing and am certainly done with the scene. I plead to my date that she stay and enjoy the party, but she insists on leaving with me and seeing me safely to my hotel (a gesture I greatly appreciated).
It is only later I recall how much my maternal grandmother loathed the british class system she grew up with and how pleased and proud she was to live in Canada. I can only think she would approve of my puking on the flowers.
Our Gardener has a sense of humour. 
When Mark, our gardener, showed me what you are seeing above I stared at it stupidly for a full minute. Then my jaw kind of dropped. Then I laughed.
What’s On Your Mind? What do Kakamegans think about? What is important to the average person? I have no idea. What I do have is a short list of google search terms I transcribed from the cache of a browser in my favourite internet cafe - Zalmac Insurance (it’s an insurance office that also acts as an internet café – interesting business model). The café seems to be mainly frequented by students and young professionals + the odd musungo aid worker. Needless to say, this list is completely unscientific. Here ya go:
nascombi
"God Bless the Broken Road" lyrics
African development foundation
Aids prevention youth
Alexander von Humbolt Research Fellowships
Atlantic Studies
Bailey family foundation
Biology cartoons
British youth sport programmes
C++ security project
CarEth foundation
Chicago Humanities Style
Dutch youth sport programmes
EDUCATION EXPENDITURE
EDUCATION POLICIES
Elly Omondi Odhiambo
INCOME PER CAPITA
Kenya National Sports Council
Math cartoons
Mitsubishi GDI
Mitsubishi SUV
NGO support kenya
Namawu Alolo
Star firefund
State Universities in America
The Heardley Trust
The jj Foundation
adsense software
aidsallieance
application letter format
billy kaigai
chachi francis
challenges to mbo
environmental education sponsorship for amatuer experts
exam analyzer project
ezekial mwenzwa
gmail
how to build and sustain a successful performace management...
International Funders
International HIV/AIDS Funders
khang'ati judith joy
khang'ati nascombi
kippra
lighthousechapel international
results based management
science cartoons
science quotes
song lyrics
sports funding kenya
swiftkenya
un jobs
We have reports that rats are chewing at cables in our attic. I have already have definite evidence of cockroach activity in the house. (door jamb provided for scale).
This little bugger was surpisingly fast and took several shoe impacts before he finally went down. If we ever meet a group of these guys, there may be a problem.
So I’m sitting in the living room (alone, of course – I have the house to myself for 3 weeks) and I hear “activity” in the attic. At that point I’m thinking: “either small rats or really big cockroaches”. As a horror film, the script pretty much writes itself. Its been nice knowing everybody.
You Don’t Really understand comfort food until you’ve been uncomfortable I haven’t had a hot shower in 3 weeks. Mosquitoes buzz around my head a night. The classroom I teach in is beastly hot in the afternoon – some of my students are sitting in direct sunlight (the same equatorial sunlight that will burn me in a few minutes – curtains are supposedly soon). Dogs howl so loudly at night they actually wake me up.
Does all this bother me? Not much…I don’t generally worry about details like this very much and I have sort of been running on adrenaline since I have been here. However, when I hear that our house-keeper has prepared fried chicken, fried onions, and mashed potatoes for dinner – I am thrilled. This after eating a heaping plateful of beef stew and rice for lunch. This place is a lot of fun but it must be admitted that everything is just more difficult (and I am absolutely loaded with money relative to local standards). At the end of a day where everything takes a long time and doesn’t work the way I expect it to – lard and starch become very appealing. The general consensus amongst the Musungo is that it is normal to gain weight here – I understand why.
Game on. The boss has gone back to America. For 3 weeks at least, I am essentially in charge of an office of 40 people. My first executive action? I organize a football game (I mean soccer, of course) and give everyone Friday afternoon off.
I intend the football game to be extremely casual. I want everyone to play. I explicitly state that the women are to be able to play if they want to (polygamy is common here – you don’t make any assumptions about the status of women). Everyone nods at me when I describe my intentions. It is for naught. The University kindly helps with arrangements for the game. This means we are suddenly playing in the University stadium on a regulation size pitch. There are uniforms, there is a referee, there are even some spectators. The men claim the field and the women (plus a few non-playing men) wander over to stands to cheer without a word spoken – there are cultural codes at work here that I don’t have a handle on yet. I briefly consider fighting to get back to my casual game – but so much effort has gone into setting the game up I decide to go with the flow. Everyone has a great time anyway. I play a half and am actually complemented on my skills – flattery I don’t take seriously but still like.
