A Kenyan Birthday

Last week I celebrated my 23rd birthday! Being in Kenya made my celebration very different from what I am used to, but I was able to celebrate with some fellow Peace Corps Volunteers in Kisumu the weekend before, and on my actual birthday the teachers and students at my site were great and I had an amazing day.

First I will start with a recap of my trip to Kisumu. The trip from my site to Kisumu took about 7 hours each way. Luckily I was able to travel with Chris, the PCV who is in Muhuru Bay, not far from Bande. We met in Migori and then traveled from there together. Most of the 7 hours is spent waiting. Waiting for a car to drive through my village that I can take to Migori, waiting in Migori for the matatu to fill with passengers so we can leave, waiting while passengers get off and board the matatu at various intervals along the route. But, all in all, the trip to Kisumu was fairly painless. When Chris and I arrived in Kisumu we met some PCVs from the public health sector as well as 5 other PCVs from our training class. It was great to see the people from our group and also great to meet some new faces. It has been hard going from seeing the other people in my training class everyday to being so far apart (so I must note that when Margaret, Jenny, Whitney and I all saw each other for the first time we ran to each other and hugged and laughed.. all very strange things for any Kenyans witnessing this happen, but we were just soooo excited!)

This was my first time in Kisumu and I have to say I absolutely love it! It offers a lot of amenities but is a little smaller and therefore a little safer than Nairobi. Kisumu was majorly affected by the post election violence though, and there are still many burned out buildings and piles of rubble. It was such a contrast to see tall, new, shiny buildings next to burned out shells of what used to be super-markets, banks, hotels etc. Most of the city is being rebuilt or cleaned up, but you can still see signs of the violence on almost every street. There are also a lot more tourists in Kisumu, which was kind of bizarre, I am used to being the only mzungu (white person) within many kilometers. And it is rare to see even another mzungu in my main banking town of Migori, and most of them are here working with NGOs, missions, and orphanages, not tourists…

While in Kisumu I was able to eat pizza, hamburgers, ice cream, Chinese food, and had the most amazing brownie for dessert one night. These are all foods, with the exception of ice cream which I can buy in Migori, which I cannot get anywhere near my site, and haven’t had since last time we were in Nairobi. We also went and saw two movies while we were in town, went swimming at one of the nice hotels in Kisumu and watched the Superbowl!!! We also went out to a few bars which was fun, but the guest house where we were staying also had a roof-top balcony where we spent a lot of the evening, drinking wine, talking and catching-up on each other’s lives.

Watching a movie was an interesting experience. I walked into the theatre and felt like I had been transported back to America! The theatre was empty expect for me and the other PCVs and it was air conditioned!!!! We all got popcorn and soda, and both of the movies we saw were excellent! We watched Sherlock Holmes and Avatar! I had heard so much about Avatar from people back home that I felt somewhat connected to American pop-culture by seeing it! The movie was breath-takingly gorgeous, and all of the PCVs had to laugh at the similarities between the movie and our lives. If you’ve seen the movie, think about when the main character is trying to learn to live in Pandora, and that was and sometimes still is our lives here. Learning a whole new language, eating different foods, new customs etc etc. Swimming was another excellent amenity that I was able to enjoy. Since Lake Victoria and other fresh water here in Kenya can give you Schistosomiasis (a lovely disease that affects your liver, and can have complications for the rest of your life if not treated) we are told to stay far away from swimming in these places, so even with the temperature soaring, we get to enjoy only the view. So, being able to actually swim was amazing, in fact, I think it was my favorite part of the whole weekend! I had planned to only be in Kisumu for the weekend, and to return to my school to teach on Monday morning, but Peace Corps had informed us that we needed to be in Kisumu on Wednesday morning in order to receive that H1N1 vaccine, so I stayed in town for a long weekend instead of traveling all the way back to site just to turn around. This is what made is possible for me to get to watch the Superbowl! Since we are so far ahead of US time we had to stay up until 3 in the morning just to watch kick-off, but it was fun to watch some American football (actually TV at all) for a change. Unfortunately, we did not get the commercials, which are almost the best part, but we made some delicious nachos, pizza and drank some beers and really enjoyed.

Then on Monday, since I needed to stay around Kisumu anyway, I travelled with Jenny to her site. It was really fun to get to see someone else’s site. Her house is really nice and she has electricity, unlike me, but she also has a 45 minute walk from her house to her school. It was great to meet her students and we spent a lot of time answering questions about the US. The students seemed shocked that Jenny and I didn’t look anything alike… Then in the evening we ate dinner with her neighbors, an elderly couple, and they were great to talk to, and the woman is an amazing cook! The next day Jenny taught her lessons and then we once again headed to Kisumu for one more night before I headed back to Bande.

Since our medical officers were traveling from Nairobi they were able to (finally) bring me the package that my parents had sent me for Christmas! I’m excited to have some movies to watch, a book to read, and more pictures to put up in my house, among other things that I got from my amazing family for Christmas! Traveling from Kisumu to Bande once again took 7 hours, so by the time I arrived I was exhausted.

The day after I returned to site was my birthday! My day started with a phone call from home (where it wasn’t my birthday yet) and it was great as usual to get to talk to my family. I am constantly reminded how lucky I am to be able to communicate relatively easily with my family and friends back home. The rest of the day was spent teaching my classes, including the form 1 students who had reported to school the week before, so it was my first time teaching them. The teachers in the staff room also sang me the happy birthday song, which I didn’t think they would know, so that was a fun surprise. After school I took a nap and tried to recover from all of the traveling and then cooked myself my birthday dinner. I decided to make the most American food I could with what I had in my house, so I ended up eating tunafish and guacamole sandwiches for my birthday dinner.

This post has become very very long, so I think I will stop there, and I’ll write more the next time I head into Migori, and I will also upload more pictures then. Thank you to everyone who sent me a happy birthday message!

Cheers!