Yesterday, the urban home stay component came to and end- and it was a bittersweet ending. I was stoked to be back on the compound and around the other students but I am really really lucky to have had such an awesome host family. The Okello family, despite being a very rich urban family, is very down to earth, knowledgeable, and accommodating. They were not pretentious or greedy as may be the case for other host families- other family's kid were bratty or the parents were snobby. I really lucked out, as I mentioned before I had two host sisters 10 and 12 and an older sister who was away at boarding school. The girls were so mature and knew a lot about Kenyan society and I had some really intellectual conversations with them about presidential elections, gender roles, and other current events such as the current public hospital strike. By the time I left yesterday I felt like I was completely part of the family, and I had a routine that kept me going. Maxwell and I would talk about current events, the house-help Katherine and I would watch Triumph of Love- a spanish cheesy soap opera, the girls and I would bake, and the mom and I would talk about her worries about her eldest daughter in boarding school. I got along perfectly with everyone in the family, and I can tell that I am really going to miss them. Looking back, it was so much different than my rural home stay... The food was pretty much the same breakfast: sweet potatoes, mandazi, corn flakes, bread and jam, and of course CHAI and so much of it! The maid would pack me a snack everyday, and I would bring my lunch stipend to buy lunch everyday. After school Josephatt, our driver, would pick the girls up and then me, then bring us back to the house. The family only had one car and everyone needed to be picked up at different times which is why they hired Josephatt to drive the car. Depending on the traffic, it would take us one hour to almost two and a half hours to get home from school. Since no one pays attention to traffic lights, the police manage traffic and often take bribes. Recently, the president has been passing thorough Nairobi as well as the Ethiopian president and the South Sudan leader because they are all collectively building a port on the coast of Kenya. So, traffic has been very bad because the roads would have to be closed down. Anyway, I would take chai when I got home and do my homework at the big dinning room tables with the girls. At around 7:30 I'd go for a run around the neighborhood which was only about 400m so it was like running around a track. Lights lined the outside of the neighborhood, and we had Masai guards that would walk around so it was completely safe for me to go running. Sometimes when I would pass the guard's post they'd run with me for a little bit. I eventually got tired of it so I turned my runs into workouts- when the Masai guards would try and run with me I'd start sprinting to shake them off. Other times when I got sick of the neighborhood loop, I'd run at the Arboredom close to where I take classes. This park has an extensive network of trails and is patrolled by police officers so once again I feel safe running with a friend there. I even got to meet and run with some Kenyan marathon runners- it was so cool! Then after running I'd shower, eat dinner, do more homework and go to sleep. But before I sleep, I'd always get a knock on my door and the two girls would come in and give me a hug. I am so glad that they speak English- the girls are completely fluent and they only speak English mixed with a little bit of Swahili around the house. I am able to understand everything even when they speak in Swahili. The absence of a language barrier helps for great discussions. Then that's my day! I'd wake up at around 6 and repeat it all over again. Traffic in the mornings is terrible too, it usually takes us more than an hour to get to school and the girls are always late getting up.
Almost every night we'd had ugali, spinach, and gizzards. This was my least famous meals- the gizzards were all tendon-y, and the spinach tasted like wet laundry. On top of that ugali is kinda like wet, really thick bread, and I didn't like that either. The ugali, spinach, and meat would all be rolled together using fingers and eaten together I didn't care for the mixture, needless to say I didn't eat much for dinner while I was here. Another thing I am not going to miss is the lack of hot water and power outages. Sometimes there would be no water at all, but normally we had water and it was only cold. The power would also randomly go out and during the weekends it would go out for over 3 hours due to power rationing. Other than that it as pretty easy to adapt to the lifestyle here.
One day my host sisters and I made peanut butter chocolate cookies. Chocolate chips don't exist here so we bought chocolate bars and cut them up. It was hard to measure out ingredients because they didn't have measuring cups- they didn't do alot of baking, mostly cooking dinner. Plus, the family is so busy with school (school is on Saturday's too), and work that they don't have a lot of time for leisure activities. On the weekends the parents are so exhausted from work that they don't feel like doing anything other than sleeping on the leather couches in the living room. Another time we made vegetable and meat pizzas for dinner and on the last morning I was here I made them chocolate pancakes- all of our recipes came out really well! I was happy to have the girls doing something else than homework and watching Hanna Montana- yes they have plenty of American shows here as well as music.
I felt very comfortable here, and I felt like I belonged. When my dad or mom would introduce me to people they would introduce me as their daughter. When a lady asked my host sister who I was she said that I was her sister. It was so cute and I really felt like I was their sister. We got so close throughout the three weeks I was there- we bonded over cooking, making fun of the trashy soap operas, and complaining about the traffic. I definitely plan on seeing them again before I leave Kenya in May.
One day we went to a village market which wasn't much of a market, it was more of a super outdoor ritzy mall. The mall was swarming with white people and it was almost shocking to see so many. We are so used to being the minority and by now we are comfortable with it. Then we come here and we are the majority- it was a weird flip flop. This mall had outdoor restaurants, frozen yogurt, and tons of jewelry and clothe shops. This was nicer than any mall I have ever been to in the U.S. and it not something I expected to see in Kenya. For lunch I ate a turkey, avocado, and swiss cheese sub sandwich and it was better than anything I could get at Wegmans! It was great because previously before coming to the village market we were hiking in one of Nairobi's forest and we were hungry, and hot. We were all sharing what foods we missed from the U.S. and I said Wegman's subs- so this place answered all of our wishes haha.
On Monday I will be traveling to Amboseli and later on to Mombasa. We will be living with a traditional pastoral group, and we will stay in dung huts for a night.
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