Travel Unravel

So this last month I’ve been traveling all over the country, and I feel very lucky that I was able to do so.  I started by going up north to Garissa to visit a volunteer there.  Garissa gets a bad reputation because it’s only 5 hours away from the Somalia border and thus has a large Somali population, but it’s actually quite a friendly and interesting town.  At least they have different food from the typical Kenyan fare.  After that I went to Nairobi for our Mid-service Medical check up.  It is the first time we all got together since our in-service training in November.  It was great to see everyone and hang out in Nairobi for a while.

After that I went to Makindu to visit another volunteer.  Makindu is on the highway to mombasa, and the volunteer there is working on an “activity center” complete with a well for water.  Since I am hoping to get a well in my area, I wanted to check out their operation.  A few volunteers gathered there, and we went to a nearby resort tucked away in a city called “Sultan Hamud” where we had pizza and went swimming.

Then I continued to Mombasa for the week that Kenya voted for their new Constitution.  Peace Corps wanted to keep close tabs on us for that time, so we weren’t allowed to travel during that period.  But while in Mombasa, I got to see Inception, which was funny since there is a scene in it that takes place in Mombasa.  The whole theater laughed at that.  We also went to the beach for a day to relax.  The coast has a lot of Muslim influence, so one night we went out for Shwarmas and Sheesha.  It was great, and reminded me of my first shwarma in Riyadh.

A week later we had a training in Kakamega Forest.  It is called a Cross Sector training because it brings volunteers from all the sectors together to share ideas with their Kenyan counterparts.  A few of us have never been to that part of the country so we went a few days early and got to go hiking in the forest a little bit.  It was beautiful but you could tell there were was a lot less there than used to be.  Many of the local people cut down trees for fuel and making charcoal.  It was still nice to be around so many trees though, as the ones near me are so short and thorny.

The training was also pretty good.  It was interesting to see the counterparts interact with each other.  And I think my counterpart was inspired by some success stories that we heard.  So hopefully he will see that hard work will eventually pay off.

On the way back I stopped in Kisumu for the weekend to see my old western friends.  Kericho was pretty close to Kisumu, so I got to see the volunteers over there more often, so it was nice to be able to hang out with them again.

So I also got some ideas at the cross-sector training.  I think that a well would be a good idea for a group in my area.  They keep just waiting for a donor to fund a bore hole, but I don’t think one is coming for a long time.  So in the mean time, I got some materials on how to dig a well manually.  And seeing as how I’ve had a lot of free time on my hands I think it would be a great idea to show them that they can take matters into their own hands, so to speak.  I’ll let you know how it goes, as I imagine it’s not as easy as just digging until water magically appears.  But I think it would really help and empower the community.

And for now, I’m back at site, cleaning the inch high layer of dust that accumulated on everything in my apartment.  It’s nice to be back home.