Time to describe the intricacies of life in Litein.
The people here are warm and welcoming and love to laugh with me (or at me, but I’m used to that). Many speak English and they light up when I greet them in Kalenjin, their mother tongue. Chamgei? Mising!
The weather is gorgeous: the mornings and evenings are cool and chilly and remind me of the kind of weather at Pine Springs Camp in PA. It usually warms up by about 10 or 11a and stays in the wonderful mid-70s. And it rains probably five days out of the week, usually in the afternoon around 3p but there’s an occasional thunderstorm at night.
The landscape is wonderful: it’s hilly and green, comparable to middle TN, northwest GA, and western PA (everywhere I’ve lived). But the plants are more exotic, like a jungle. And it’s rare that I see a hill of solid trees: Kenyans take advantage of and farm every inch of it. So most land, even hillsides, have crops (maize, corn, wheat, potatoes, and tea, mostly) growing all along them or cattle grazing there.
In one of her e-mails to me, my mom asked if I was losing weight. Far from it. My Afrikan mum doesn’t want me to run by myself, so I’m still searching for a running partner. I do abs and push-ups in my room each morning and jump rope for a lil bit of cardio. But the Kenyan diet is ridiculous. Incredibly carb-heavy. For breakfast, I drink one or two mugs of chai. I also eat one or two hard-boiled eggs, or sometimes they’re fried. And then there’s the slices. It’s white bread with a thin layer of butter in between. The first week I was here they prepared six slices for me; that’s like half a loaf! Now my hosts know I can only eat three or four with my tea and egg and occasional banana. Dang.
Lunch is the same as dinner, except our carb at lunch is almost always rice, while at dinner we either eat chipati (a denser version of a tortilla) or ugali (sticky, firm mush made out of maize flour… the closest thing I could compare it to is mashed potatoes, but it’s much different). With the staple carb is served either plain meat (beef or goat!) and a vegetable, or they’re together in a stew. Soooo tasty. For real—I have fallen in love with Kenyan food. And all of it is coated in a yummy layer of cooking fat. Oh, and I drink one or two cups of freshly boiled milk from the cows outside. I never tried drinking whole milk in America, but I’m guessing this is fattier, thicker, and warmer than its American cousin. And it’s rude to refuse food, so I’ve really been putting it away. I do not want to step on a scale any time soon.
Transportation is insane. To get to town (Litein), we walk. It takes about ten minutes from my home, unless it’s rained recently, then it takes longer: none of the roads are paved, except for major highways. So every other time I go someplace, my shoes are caked in mud from the roads. And my muddy legs are much more obvious than my African friends’ legs. No fair. To get to the schools for de-worming or to visit a different town for the weekend, we take a matatu. There are two different kinds. One is a stuffy 12-passenger van that always carries many more people than 12 (I think I counted 20 people one time), plus an occasional squawking chicken or box of stinking dead fish. The other is a normal, four-door sedan. Most are Toyotas and plain white in color. But instead of just four extra passengers, I’ve been in one with 11 other people; that’s four people up front, four people in the back, and four people in the trunk (they’re wagons). And the last form of transportation is a boda boda. They’re motorcycles. I’ve seen four adults squeezed onto one several times before. Whenever I ride, I either ride with Mary Ben or Victor and they tell the drive to go pole pole (slowly). We usually only take them when we’re going someplace really rural on back dirt roads. I see them whip by on the pavement with no helmets and it scares me to think what would happen if the driver crashed. I have no desire to drive a car here. There’s hardly any pavement, and there’s even fewer painted lines. No speed limits, no police cars. People pass other vehicles whenever they want, especially on blind curves. I’ve never prayed so much in a car before. Plus, the driver is on the right of the car and they stay left on the road. I’d surely crash headfirst into the opposing lane of traffic.
[Pictures to come as soon as I figure out how to get them off my camera without a camera cord, which I conveniently left in the States.]
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