June 17, 2007

Ok, this is a long one.

The last thing I wrote about was our Tuesday afternoon adventure in Nairobi; I feel like I have a lot of catching up to do. I was really good at blogging while on Semester at Sea, but because I have such limited time on my computer I don’t feel like I’m putting as much time in as I should be. So here it goes.

Our second week at work was easier than our first. We had Tuesday off and then only had 3 more days of work until the weekend. Wendy and Dave were leaving for safari Friday morning, so that was something they were looking forward to and we could count down to as well. We’ve been spending a lot of time doing laundry (the kids get sooo dirty) and we’ve also been watering the garden because we planted carrot seeds our first week. Other than that, we really don’t have many duties but we try to find things to do around the place. They have little arts and crafts things that we work on occasionally, but eventually your fingers get a little tired of that. Friday we arrived at work and Margaret, who is usually there every day, still wasn’t there. She’d been gone for most of the week and usually she finds random things for us to do, but there was no laundry or labor needed from us on Friday so we were at a loss. The orphanage gets all of its money from donations and is currently working on a new building with a new kitchen, storage area, and guest rooms. It’s basically just a concrete structure right now and nothing in it is put together, so its going to need a lot of work. The children that are at the orphanage are all very close and familiar with one another, and Ryan thought it would be a good idea to buy some white paint so the kids could add some flavor to the building. We didn’t have enough time on Friday, but I’m hoping that we can paint the building soon so the kids can add their own personal touch to the place. Ryan’s father is also donating funds to the orphanage to help them finish the construction of the building, so that’ll be great to see if anything comes of that in the next six weeks.

We went to the Boma for about an hour on Friday, and on our way to water our crops, I saw a couple of the boys holding a young goat (or kid) and moving him. Usually this goat is always hopping around and making noise, so I was confused as to why he was letting the boys get near him. Then I walked over and noticed that the goat was very sick and apparently, dying. They laid him on some rocks and basically just sat there staring at him because they didn’t know what was wrong with him. I found this very difficult because you could tell the animal was frightened just by the look in his eyes, so I sat down and just gently rubbed his tummy for a while, hoping to make him feel a little more calm. We tried to get him to stand up on his own, but it was as if he was paralyzed and his entire body was useless. He couldn’t hold up his neck or stand on his little legs. The boys thought he had an African goat disease and suggested I hurry up and go wash my hands before I got sick, but I really didn’t think it was that big of an emergency. There was nothing I could do for the goat, so after 10 minutes or so I went and washed myself off and tried to find something else to do, but I was eventually lead back to the goat during its final minute or living, and sadly he died. I don’t know how African orphanages handle baby goat deaths, so I just left and went to play games with a few of the girls. Next thing I knew, Moses Walker, one of the young boys, walked by me with a big knife and I had a bad feeling. Then I see Boss pulling Ryan away because he really wanted to show him something. And shortly after that, Boss is running around with a kidney or liver in his hand, and I knew crazy stuff was happening. I never went over to see, but the boys told me that they had dissected the kid in order to see what killed it. I guess they found like ¾ of a bar of soap and that could’ve made him sick, but we’re still not sure if that’s what made him meet his end. So that was my first baby goat dissection and I’m not sure I’ll ever really need to witness one first hand.

Because Wendy and Dave were leaving for the weekend, Will and I thought it would be a nice time to take Mr. Phillips offer of a weekend at a hotel in Nairobi. We headed out Saturday morning (Ryan dropped us off at the Mutatu) and took our trip into the city. We called the Sarova Stanley hotel Friday and made a reservation so we were all set when we got in on Saturday. We went and stopped by VICDA (Volunteer Interns Community Development- Africa, GVNs partner company) and I picked up a couple packages that my Mama sent me (thanks Ma). We had this big plan of going to a Japanese restaurant very close by because we love our Asian food and really wanted some Teriyaki chicken with white sauce. Lonely Planet told us it was right around the corner, and we spent 10 minutes looking for it, but it was nowhere in site. We stopped by close hotel and the concierge told us that it had shut down. Then I looked at when the Lonely Planet was written, and the most recent guide book was April 2006. Needless to say we were pretty disappointed, but we stopped by a Chinese Restaurant and had some food there. We got to our hotel after than and wow, nice surprise. We had heard really good things about it, but it was a beautiful hotel and definitely for American and European tourists. The exchange rate here in Kenya is 1:64, so our money goes a long way. A night in a 5-star Kenyan hotel is probably a third of the amount that it would be in the states. We had a great room, great service and SHOWERS. It was so wonderful. I would have liked to stay for a couple nights, just so we could see what the hotel had to offer, but one night was great. We went to Carnivore that night, which has apparently made the world’s top 50 restaurant list a couple times, and it wasn’t as good as we’d hoped. We both admitted that we weren’t hungry enough or awake enough for the experience, but we just didn’t find the food to be that good. It’s the same style as a Brazilian steakhouse, where men with pieces of meat continuously come by your table offering you different types of meat, but the thing with this restaurant is that it’s supposed to be exotic. Because of gaming issues and endangering species, the only exotic food we were able to try was ostrich meatballs and crocodile. I tried both and really enjoyed the ostrich, but wasn’t as into the crocodile. Our hotel arranged for us to be driven there by a cabby who would wait until our meal was finished, and then to drive us home as well. His name was Charles and he was a very friendly guy, so that was very nice of him and the hotel to do that for us.

Saturday was a pretty lazy day. We woke up a little too late for the included breakfast, so we ordered some room service and I had an awesome Turkey Club. Emphasis on the awesome. We were thinking about going to a movie, so we went to go check out times and what was playing, but there really weren’t any options that interested us, and we figured we’d be better at spending our day just exploring some of the city. We stopped at an African Art shop and got a couple tapestries for 50% off, so that was pretty exciting. I had left my USB at the internet café the day before, so we went to go look for that too, but unfortunately everything is closed on Sunday, so I think that may be lost forever. We stopped by the Hilton Hotel just to see what that was like, and it looked like a very impressive place. We just wanted to go check out the pool area, but then we decided to stop and have a drink at the bar, and then that turned into a late lunch. So we had a pretty relaxing afternoon, and after lunch we just headed back to the hotel, gathered our stuff, jumped in a Mutatu, and headed home. We got back to Esther’s and Manasseh’s place around 5 and walked into our room and found it very, very clean with new sheets and a non-ant infested floor. That was exciting. I also found my bottom retainer, alone. My immediate thought was that Naomi a.k.a. Baby, went shopping in our room again. So I asked Esther and she was like, “Oh is that the little thing in the purple case? She took that, I don’t know where it is now! Tehehe!” So I’m a little nervous about that and hoping that it shows up soon and that the chickens aren’t chewing it up.