Halfway point

ok it seems as though photos aren't gonna be something i can upload, but i'll just write a quick post.

it's actually a bit past halfway, there's only about 5 weeks left. stuff in kenya is still great. the work placement is about half an hour from my home, and i work with three kenyan guys from the group. sometimes it can be difficult to push yourself to interact with people from the opposite country, but this way i have no choice :P it's good because there's definitely a bit of a divide, which is natural but still not ideal. i try and make a conscious effort to bridge the gap, but once in a while i have to whip out a lion king dvd or something (which you buy illegally in town, bootlegged for the equivalent of about 1.25$). at work we do a lot of cutting bushes and grass. they have a really interesting tool called a slasher, which looks a bit like a hockey stick. its a long flat metal rod with a bent end, sharpened at the edges. at first i thought it seems impractical, but it's super useful. the other tool we use is a panga, or machete. it's crazy, they use the panga for litterally everything. if they made mini pangas i'm sure they'd even use them to cut their nails. i prefer the slasher, which has a large range, though lately since we haven't had a file - i think our supervisor lent it out to someone - we haven't really been able to use either.

my host family is awesome. it consists of mama and baba kuria, and then also a bunch of host brothers and sisters. there's vinny and hannah, each 16 years old (yeah it's weird but they all have these christian/baptist names), and then about 5 other kids ranging from the age of 5 to 12. not to mention the fact that that's just my immediate host family, my host father has three other brothers, each with about the same amount of kids, that live on the same small compound. i think i'm going to start teaching them some camp games that they can play even when i leave. and they've started a tree nursery on the compound, something i hope to start up in halifax later on.

so life is good, simple and quickly passing by. i hope to fill these next few weeks with lots of good stuff. and for those who haven't emailed me in a while but still consider me their friends... i expect an email.

ok that's all for now!

Photos of Kenya

wow so it took about an hour to load the one photo, i dunno if this is the best one i could chose but here it is. often i let my host brothers and sisters, of which there are a ridiculous amount, take my camera and take lots and lots of pictures. sometimes i come out and play with them, they get so excited. here's me with some of the kids that live around me. they're crazy, but awesome haha

Late and overdue post

well it's about two months into the kenyan side, i thought i'd stay consistently inconsistent and write another post. I'll keep it brief and that will motivate me to write more later since i'll be feeling so internally guilty about not writing much the first time round (haha yeah right).

Well one exciting thing is that my hair IS long enough to chop off now! I have to put it in pig tails since a single ponytail isn't long enough, but hopefully they'll take pigtails, they're both about 8.5 inches right now, which means about 9 inches when i chop it. And then i'll shave my head! At mt.a, if that's still happening.

I wash my clothes by hand, and the laundry detergent gives my knuckles an allergic reaction, which is lots of fun. All our meals are cooked over a fire, and i often go to bed around 10 pm. We have a curfew of 7 pm, so i find things to do at home to kill time. This includes watching tv (all the host families have electricity and a tv, though that's about it as far as electrical appliances go), reading, playing cards or board games, and chatting with Joseph or my host family. Oh yeah and i guess now blogging to you losers.

So far i've seen giraffes, zebras, baboons, eagles, wilderbeasts, antelopes and lots and lots of chameleons. I even kissed one of the giraffes i saw at a giraffe center near nairobi (not really but you can feed them these little food pellets, and if you put it in your mouth they'll stick out their ridiculously long tongues and take it from you). Also, Kenyans are super scared of chameleons, and white people love picking them up, so it creates an interesting scene when you combine the two. Sometimes you find them on the road, run over by a donkey cart or car. Their flattened bodies remind me of Rango. Oh! And i even found a lizard of sorts in my bed one night, harmless but scary nonetheless.

Mid project is this weekend, at a campground built by past participants, called osutwa. It'll be nice to have a weekend off with the team, most weekends are quite packed and it's rare that the whole group chills together.

Ok i'll add photos and post more later, hopefully.