This That and Whatever

Aug 31, 2010 – Vicki arrives this week on Friday.  Hopefully she makes the connection in Nairobi to Kisumu.  She has to pass through immigration which can take a while.

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There are a lot of internet cafes in Kisumu, some with what we might think is an unusual side business – or maybe the internet is the side business.  At one ksh (about 1.2 cents) a minute I’m not sure haw much they can actually make.  I think one way they make money is having a slow connection so you wait a long time to load pages.

T-shirt of the day – worn by a girl: I wish these were brains.

Joyce’s road rage trigger has been found.  Of course she is walking, but it relates the piki pikis (motor bikes).  Since side walks (or paths) here aren’t always available, many time we must walk on the side of the road.  The pikis seem to like to honk at you and then pass close to you, even when they have the entire rest of the road available and no other traffic and the road is just as good on the other side as where we are walking.  This just ticks Joyce off.  So unusual for her as she is always the one back home to tell me to chill when things irritate me when I’m driving.  And what she hates even more is when they drive on the footpath that is actually a footpath on the side of the road and in no way part of the road.  They do this mostly when the road is muddy and the path is drier.  Sometimes they even do it because the road is so rutted (because is was wet and has now dried) it is smoother to ride the footpath.  I must admit, I don’t like when they ride the footpath either and a lot of times I don’t move – pretending I don’t know they are coming. 

It has rained a few nights here in the last week.  This makes the roads much less dusty.  But it has already made some areas very muddy.  I’d like to see more rain, just to see what Mbita is like after lots of rain.

Tuition is going this week at school.  That’s like tutoring for most the classes.  Seems just like classes to me but it is not.  Its to help the kids learn more or catch up.  It’s mandatory and is all day just like school.

The hammer cocks are trying to build a nest on the solar panels at Steve and Judi’s.  I happen to notice that one was flying up to the roof with a mouth full of grass.  We investigated and found quite a bit of debris already on the panels.  Joe cleaned them off last night, but this morning I saw one taking another load up already.  I’ll have to check tonight to see how much is up there.

Went to Kisumu last weekend.  Joe’s football club was playing in a tournament so we could ride there in some comfort.  Since we had 9, maybe 10, players in the car, Joyce road on my lap in the front seat.  Still better than a matatu.  When we go to pick Vicki from Kisumu this weekend we get to ride public.

Interesting that it was quite green on the other side of the lake where the ferry land and Mbita is really dry.  We just don’t catch much rain here, right on the lake.

Got a good meal in Kisumu, and got to the great ice cream place.  Got caught at the restaurant for a while in a thunderstorm.  It’s sort of enclosed but still rain was blowing in from the sides.  When we arrived at where we were staying, with Sandy and Dick, we had to get out of the tuk tuk and pound on the gate, getting quite wet.  But it was a warm wet.

Sandy is an upper cervical chiropractic, so Joyce and I went to get adjusted by her.  For the $6 it seems worth it and we hope to go next weekend again.

It’s weird to me on how many car washes there are around, particularly in Kisumu.  Some roads are just lined with them.  A number of them even have pressure washers.  I’d be afraid to wash some of the cars, as the dirt seems to be holding them together.

While in Kisumu a glue sniffing street boy came up to us and asked for money for food.  Morgan offered to trade him his glue bottle for some food.  He agreed handing over his bottle.  Morgan dug into her bag and pulled out a bag of nuts.  This wasn’t satisfactory to the boy.  He complained that the nuts (peanuts I think) were dangerous.  We said no, but his glue was.  In the end Morgan ended up trading him back.

Time to review pictures and post a few of those.

Remember, Have you cake and eat it to while surfing the waves of the internet at Bhavniks.

Paul