Sorry I have not updated in a while, I have actually been pretty busy. On Friday last week I spent the entire day with a family near my home. I help them "smear" their new house. Smearing is when you take much (sometimes mixed with cow dung) and literally smear it against the walls. I was a natural..... or so they told me! It was really fun, it was like being in a homestay all over again... only BETTER!  Saturday was a bust, was supposed to teach some groups, but no one showed up. 
Sunday Kibaibai and I went to visit my friend Lindsay in Kakamega.  Yep I brought the pup with me, only he is about the size of a full grown DOG! Seriously he is huge, so traveling on a matatu (those mini vans over stuffed with people) was not an easy task, but we did survive!
 She was given a room at her dispencary and she is turning it into a community resource room. So I went to help her paint. She wanted the world map painted on one wall, so we began to sketch it. Well she wanted it 5 times bigger than the picture we had, so we had to multiply all the measurements by 5. Those of you who know me, know math is NOT my strong suit..... uh hello social worker.... So after completed the entire continent of Africa, Lindsay says.. "that looks small compared to South America" and in fact, it was 12 cm to small. So after wasting all that time drawing it, Lindsay had to go back and re draw..... to be fair, I tried to tell her drawing free hand was not my best area, and especially when you add math to that. But all turned out fine, we didn't finish, so I will be going back to help some more. 
Next week I am going to visit Andrea at her site, she is having an event to celebrate, International Womens Day. It will be a few of us health volunteers, so I know it will be a good time!

Now that I'm reading back through this, I know it seems that I am not doing much at my site. Well the truth is.... I am but just not large scale as I had hoped. With JOYWO I already have groups set up for me, and my main job here is to teach all of them about health and sanitation. Well there are over 400 groups and we are still growing, so I definitely have my work cut out for me. In my community, it is hard to find things to do. I have recently come in contact with our local AIDS resource center, so I am going to be volunteering there more often. And as you already know I started a women's exercise group. We meet on Tuesdays, at the moment I have about 4 women who usually come every week. So I just wanted you to know, I am actually doing work and not just traveling all of the time!

no doubt about it.

I was going to write a serious blog. I was listening to BBC the other day and it was a whole segment about the homeless and poverty in America. I was going to compare poverty in america to poverty in Kenya. I know I have said this before, but every Kenyan thinks every American is rich and happy. Well we know thats not true.... but did you know that everyday in America there are children going with out food, and families moving out of their nice houses in suburbia and moving into tents along with other families who can no longer afford their old lifestyles.  I have to tell Kenyans all the time that in America, having a job does not mean that you have a good life. A growing number of the population has jobs but are still living at or below the poverty line....... 

But I don't want to discuss this serious topic... instead I want to talk about hats. Yep hats, the ones you wear on your heads.... In the states, think about it, on a daily basis, what kind of hats do people wear.  Well I think most people back home wear baseball hats, maybe golf hats? beanies in the winter..?  Well here in Kenya, on a daily basis, you can see a plethera of hats. Just the other day I was on the matatu, we drove past a market where I saw a mama wearing a Dr. Suess hat, and another mama wearing a santa clause hat (which I actually see pretty often)!  The motor bike drivers usually wear all different types of winter hats and beanies. Whats funny is, anything goes here. You can pretty much wear anything, and not one person will question what your wearing. I.e. on our vacation Andrea rocked the fanny pack! So when we are market shopping, we look for crazy things we wouldn't wear in America, and totally rock it here! 

wearing a santa hat...  

rocking the zebra print cowboy hat!

my west african adventure

Well I am back from my most recent adventure. My friend Andrea and I travelled to Ghana and Togo. Now for those of you who don't or didn't know..... Ghana and Togo are in West Africa. So take a map of africa.... find Kenya... now go all the way across the continent to the West... and you will find Togo and Ghana! Now that you know where these countries are you may be wondering... " why did you go to west africa?" Well the answer is, I have always wanted to travel, if you know me at all, you know that, and Andrea has travelled but has always wanted to go to West Africa, so we make the perfect pair!  Our adventure started Thursday January 26th, our flight out of Nairobi heading to Lome, Togo. Our flight wasn't until 3 in the morning (random time I know) we enjoyed our last few Kenyan beers and waited to board the plane. Our layover was in Ethiopia, now that was a diverse airport if I ever saw one! We wished we had had more time so we could have actually explored the country a bit,.... but it will have to be another time. After sleeping in the airport for several hours we boarded and were bound for Lome, Togo.  We arrived around noon, and our first dilemma began,..... Togo was colonized by the french... and neither of us spoke a lick of french! I racked my brain for anything I learned from my 2 years of high school french.... but couldn't remember a lick.  Once outside we needed to get a ride to a hotel. Thinking ahead we asked a security guard how much it should cost to get to hotel Ibis, he tells us 2,000 francs. So we go up to the driver thinking we are oh so smart and tell him we won't pay more! Come to find out later, we got sooooo ripped off, the people in Togo help each other out by lying to travelers!  

Next we go in search of the hostel I had found prior, online. The chez mammy, we walk around for about an hour (with our backpacks, luckily we packed pretty light) asking for Chez mammy. No one had heard of it until finally someone said "Oh you mean Chez mammy (shay ma mi)! She gone, Chez mammy died" and in fact she had. The hostel had been abandoned for what seemed like a long time.  By this time we were exhausted, hot (West africa coast is VERY hot and humid) and ready to give up, so we decided to treat ourselves and stay at a not so peace corps budget hotel for the night. We enjoyed it thoroughly!  Hot shower, pool, and air conditioning. Air conditioning meant we were able to put on make up with out sweating it off! This is me and Andrea before dinner.  

The next morning we headed to the Togo Peace Corps office. There we were treated like family, the head of safety and security gave us names of hostels in Ghana and booked us a room in Togo at a local french hotel. They also had the peace corps car drive us to get our stuff! The Hotel Gallion became our home base in Togo. That night we met a girl who is a teacher in Lome and had done peace corps Macedonia.  We spent the night dancing and to regge music and playing in the band! She invited us to stay with her and her son for free, remembering what it was like as a volunteer. She welcomed us with op en arms and it was nice to be in a home. While in Togo we hit up the grand market, the beach and many different pizza places!  After 3 days we decided it was time to visit Ghana. We were able to walk across the boarder! At the coast of Togo, it is only about 26 miles across!. 

So we walked into Ghana having no plans and no idea what to expect. We hopped a trotro (like a matatu) to Accra, the capital.  Peace Corps had recommended the Salvation Army as cheap safe place to stay. Cheap it was, with 6 beds to a room and only 7 cedis a night (a little less than 5 bucks a night) we couldn't beat it.  Not knowing what to do in Accra, we headed to Jamestown which was a port for shipping and holding slaves back during the slave trade. Well now its not much more than a lot of shanty towns.

 Definitely a cultural experience. That night we decided to get up early the next morning and head to Cape Coast which we were told is where the beautiful beaches were. We got salad and sandwiches at a recommended place, and ended the night sipping wine and chatting with some German girls staying at the same hostel. Well at around 1 a.m. I woke up throwing up, an hour later Andrea woke up sick as well.... this continued until past 7 in the morning. So much for getting an early start to Cape Coast. We both decided we needed to get to the beach to relax, so we struggled to get on a trotro (no air conditioning) trash bags in hand just in case, and headed to the coast. Again with no plan, we arrived and took the word of a taxi driver and went to a hostel called The Oasis, and an oasis it was. Right on the beach, a cute little hotel, dorm style beds and only 10 cedis a night, we were in heaven. 

Still feeling sick we were not able to party the way the other Americans, that we met, were. But we still had a nice time. The next morning we got up early and headed to Kookum National Forest for a canopy walk.  It consisted of 7 rope bridges hanging 100 meters over the forest floor. It was absolutely beautiful! 

Afterwards we visited the Cape Coast castle, walking distance from our hotel. The castle used to hold hundreds of male and female slaves before shipping them off fro selling. It was a compelling and emotional tour, we learned a lot. 

 Afterwards we watched some cultural dancing and drumming at a local bar. To conclude this loooooong day, we fell asleep on the beach to the mesmerizing sound of the waves. While at the Oasis,  we met a PCV who's site was near by. He had told us about the super bowl party that the marines at the U.S. embassy were having and invited us. So Friday morning we headed back to Accra to watch some good ol' American football. He had also told us of a "better" place to stay. We searched for over an hour, again with our backpacks, but to no avail, so settled back in to the Salvation Army. Since the party was supposed to be at midnight, we thought it would be a good idea to go early just to make sure of the time. We were told the embassy was not far so we walked. Well it turned out to be "not far" just around 5 kilometers. By the time we got there, again hot and exhausted, we learned that that party was not until Sunday..... DUH that would be why it's called super bowl SUNDAY! We broke down laughing so hard we cried! The marines invited us in anyway, they were having a BBQ and there were other PCV's there. We enjoyed a cold beer, chatting with PCV's and a few games of volleyball. We left making plans to possibly meet up later for beers at a local pub where they only cost 1 cedis (less than a buck!). Andrea and I were resting at the hostel, when one of the volunteer's we had met, Steve, busted in and said "get up we're going out!" We met a handful of other PCV's and enjoyed the local atmosphere. Our stomachs were still not back to 100% so we left early and headed back. 

We decided we had had enough of Accra, and didn't want to wait around for Sunday, so we went back to Togo the next morning and hopped a trotro to Kpalime. Just 2 and half hours north of Lome.  By this time we were ready to relax, so the next day spent the entire day at the pool, of a luxury hotel that we weren't staying at, but enjoyed the peace and quiet. The next day we went to a beautiful waterfall in the village of Wome, and spent the day wadding and relaxing in the pool beneath the falls.

We headed back to Lome the next day and stayed with Meg for the next 2 nights before heading back to Kenya. 

We had an AMAZING trip! But it is definitely good to be home in Kenya. I missed Kibaibai like crazy! and when I got home yesterday i barley recognized him, he grew sooooooo much! Now it's time to get back to work, but will never forget our adventures in West Africa!  

Here are just a couple more pictures:

Andrea and I on the rope bridge above the rainforest

At the beach in front of the hostel The Oasis

A girl selling water near the Cape Coast Castle. 

Im baaaaaaack!

Hey everyone, i'm back from my most recent adventure! I actually typed up an entire story about it, but since the internet in my office isn't working Im in an internet cafe and do not feel like re typing the entire thing. So therefore you will hear about it later :).  But I just wanted to let everyone know I'm home safe and sound! Ill update soon!