Hello everybody. So it is 2:15 on January 15th here in Kenya, and everything is going well. We made it here yesterday morning, about 6:00. It took us a few hours to make it through the traffic coming out of the airport in Nairobi and reach our new home for the next four months. Joseph is one of the men who picked us up from the airport and who is a Maasai and staying in the same home as us.
Home is a bit misleading, as the 'home' we are staying in is not your conventional north american home. There is a few acres of land - I'm guessing around somewhere between 3 and 5. About half of that is set aside for crops - maize, potatoes, and a few other things - but those aren't planted for a few more months. The rest of the land has the 'outhouse' - squat style - and then a fenced in area where there are 5 buildings. Each building has its own function. I believe one is the kitchen - but I have not been in there yet. 1 is where Dustin and I will be sleeping. Its about 7 feet tall - 9 feet long, and 10 or 11 feet wide. It's got two beds and a table in there. Two of the other buildings have sitting rooms, with bedrooms attached. One of those buildings also has a small bathing area. Bathing here is just simple bucket baths. We get a few gallons of water (which is collected in a big tank beside the house when it rains) and we basically just pour the water on ourselves. Pretty basic. There is also a pen for the goats - of which there are maybe 50...? There are apparently some cattle too, but I haven't seen them yet. The buildings are made of mostly corrugated steel or mud and sticks.
There are two other volunteers staying with us right now. Matt and Carly. Both are American, and Matt is leaving today to go back to Colorado. Carly is from Washington State in a city about 20 minutes from the border. She's been here for about 3 weeks, and will be here for a year. Matt was here for just 2 weeks.
The 'village' of Kimuka is a number of these homes - which resemble Albertan farms, but just on a very small scale - so its not like what most people think of a village with a number of homes close together. The village is situated about 10 km from Ngong Hills - which is where Karen Blixen lived and where Out of Africa is based. There's a museum close to here that I'd like to check out at some point. I'm currently writing from Ngong Town, which is a regular developing country town. We have very little electricity in Kimuka, and no phones. The electricity is generated from a battery, which is recharged using solar power.
The village is in a bowl shaped valley, that is considered part of the Rift Valley. Ngong Hill is fairly elevated, but Kimuka is on the bottom of the valley. Yesterday, Joseph took us for a walk, where we saw a few antelope from a hundreds yards or so away, and a whole bunch of giraffes from up to 25 feet away. It was pretty awesome. Our own safari in our back yard. There are no lions in the area, but there apparently are cheetahs. There are also the occasional wildabeast, and some baboons that like to steal crops.
Dustin and I were given Maasai names last night. My new name is Siranga (see-wrong-ah). Dustin's is Ndekoisa (dee-koi-sah).
As for safety, where we are living, there is no real issue regarding saftey. Nairobi is roughly an hour away, and everyone within a few KMs of where we are living are farmers. Also remember that Nairobi is probably only 30km away - but it would take an hour to drive there. So distances are not the same - relatively speaking as they are in North America. We do have some t.v. access, and radio access - so we'll be able to know if anything does happen. But so far it looks like all the violence has stopped. I dont' know about today though - as it was the first day of Parliament, and there were protests planned. Hopefully they were peaceful.
Well I think that's all for now. Sorry for the scattered posting, but we're on dial up internet here, and I'm trying to do 10 things at once.
