Nairobi and stuffs

Let's see, where did I leave off... Home stays.  The last two weeks have been the most incredible and different weeks of my life and beyond anything I ever imagined it would be like.  I wish I could have updated this earlier, but I haven't had access to a computer (aside from a sketchy internet cafe) since leaving for Riruta.

Anyway, Riruta, a “suburb” of Nairobi is where we all stayed within our host families. Riruta is a community that, in American standards, would be considered very very rural, but is fairly modern and middle class on Kenyan standards. I could ramble on about Riruta, but I really don't have the time or energy right now to tell a cronological story, so I might as well make a list of the most interesting points:

Matatu's: Holy fuck matatu's.  These 14 passanger vans are by far the most terrifying and deadly creatures in all of Africa.  Aside from often being overpacked with the conductor hanging the side of the door, the drivers of these things are fuckin' maniacs.  These half bus half taxi vehicles are the main mode of transportation for locals and seem to take up a good amount of the traffic during the day.  But, with that traffic, comes the erratic driving such as often swerving into oncoming traffic to pass, driving on the side walks, and (in my personally favorite matatu experience) speeding down the side walk for the opposing lane of traffic while pouring rain makes seeing almost impossible.

Wazungu:  There was never a time where one of us would walk by a group of children without first hearing “WAZUNGU WAZUNGU how are you how are you how are you”.  Wazungu (or mzungu singular) literally translates to a European or white person.  I still don't understand why they are so intrigued by us nor why when we answer their questions and ask how they are the simply respond with “fine how are you”.  Is this the only english they teach these kids in school?

Homes:  Most of us lacked running water, or a flushing toilet.  Goats and chickens were often found within our multiple family compounds, and piles of burning trash EVERYWHERE is the norm (all of Nairobi smells like burning trash all the time, fyi.  For some reason, every single family keeps the tv on at almost all times.  I swear I watched more tv these last few weeks than I have all year.  The urbanization of a community like Riruta has come with strange introductions of technology where even my host mom was texting while watching American tv shows, but we all still took showers out of buckets and had to flush our toilet by pouring a bucket of water into the hole.

Giraffe Center: For some reason I ended up going here twice.  Awesome place.  Got to get licked by multiple giraffes.  Nuf said.

Africa boys: Somehow we befriended a bunch of local boys and ended up hanging out with them for a few nights.  That was...absurd.  But we did teach them American drinking games so that was exciting.

Swahili class: Every weekday we had around 4-6 hours of instensive Swahili lessons, which has lead to us knowing an incredible amount for only starting two weeks ago.  We just had our final for the class this Friday morning and can all easily write 200 word essays, conjugate in 5 tenses, and have a stock pile of verbs that have shown to be very useful when out speaking on the streets.

Mimi ni mwanafunzi, si na pesa:  I am a student, I have no money.  Most useful phrase we learned.

There was also so much more but I really don't have the time or energy or physically capacity to write it all down.  My experience living with a Kenyan family for two weeks was beyond anything I imagined.  I've now been adopted into a second family that couldn't be more different than my first.  As a current update:  I'm currently in Mombasa on the coast writing this blog entry but have absolutely no idea how or when I'm actually going to post this...Oh well.  I guess we'll just see.