Whirlwind Weekend

There's no better way to start a weekend than with a clean house. My friend Rose came over around 8 a.m. I had met her a few days before (she's actually a family friend that I had been introduced to many times... but I didn't actually have a conversation with her until Wednesday).

She is about my age and has had a pretty rough life.So we struck upon a deal where she would wash my laundry and help with housework and I would pay her. She does hair for a living and I told her she could do my daughters hair when she got home from school too.

We had tea on Friday morning and then I turned on the iTunes and she did laundry and I swept the house. Then she mopped the floors and collected her $3.75 (300 KSH) and left. I know it doesn't sound like a lot but her husband (when he's around) leaves her $1.25 (100 KSH) per day for food for her and her four children.

Rose's faith in God is amazing, especially considering that her husband is unfaithful and any day she could contract HIV.

After Rose left I went to Ngong to run a few errands. I also met with Kim, the houseboy of my friend Mercy in Meru. He left her employ (on good terms) and ended up here Ngong. Last week when I was coming into town on a piki piki I thought I saw someone who looked like Kim and it was him! Too funny! Anyway, he is doing fine... but of course needs a better job and do I know anybody who might employ him... of course I do... have to call her and see if she is still in need of a gardener/guard.

Then I rushed home and packed a bag quickly and was out the door to Nairobi. I met with Geoffrey and his friend Elias in Nairobi. Geoffrey works in Nkubu on the way to Meru and runs a microfinance NGO. I met him in 2006 when I was living in Chogoria. He wants me to come work for him, but the job he wants me to do is one that a Kenyan with a journalism degree could do... so I would never get a work permit to do it. He's a bit weird besides. So am taking anything and everything he says with a grain of salt.

As I was walking to Tusky's (a supermarket chain) to meet Amina (Judie's best friend Hodan's mother - hope you got all that), she walked up along side me. I said goodbye to Elias and Geoffrey and Amina and I went into Tusky's to pick some treats for Raymond who I was going to visit at Machakos Boys High School the next day.

If you think American supermarkets are crowded on Friday evenings... you should have seen this Tusky's. Now the aisles are narrow anyway... but the place was like a beehive. We fought our way through the crowd's to purchase juice, lemon cake (like bread), toilet paper and soap. Lucky Raymond!

We then headed to the Railways Matatu Stage, it's a big bus stop in front of the Kenyan Railways Depot. You need to keep your wits about you or you will definitely be run over. There are many mats that go past the development where Amina lives but she wanted a specific one that would let us off close to the development. It took us an hour to get to Amina's. We then had some tea and bathed and watched an Egyptian revolution on CNN. Amina and I slept in her room. She on a mattress on the floor and me in her bed. Somalis are nothing if not generous to a fault. We told each other our stories in the dark. Amina is a Kenyan of Somali heritage. She was born in Kenya. She told me about her divorce about the toll it had taken on her children, but mostly she told me how happy she was. I started thinking about Rose and how unhappy she was and how scared she was to be alone. And I wished I could introduce Amina to Rose.

The next morning Amina was up early making chapati for Raymond... like I said generous... and Raymond is lucky because Amina makes some mean chapatis! Amina and her friend Halima took me to the bus stage near their house. It was wicked hot at 9:30 in the morning! I had to fight a crowd to get into the mat... as there were many people waiting to go to Machakos and no matatus.

The ride took almost an hour and I had no idea how far it was or where exactly I was supposed to alight, so I had to pay attention to every road sign after the first half hour. I saw a school gate that said Machakos School and conferred with the conductor and some of the other passangers that this was in fact the school I was looking for and then walked up the 300 meter path to the school. I was half an hour late and waited another half hour for the meeting to start. The meeting was held in the assembly hall and there were rows of benches for the parents and guardians to sit on.

I had never been to a parents meeting at a Kenyan school so I had no idea what to expect. But had expected a chair with a back. Eventually, I guess after boys started getting out of there Saturday morning classes they started to bring in chairs from classrooms, so I moved to a chair. Minor relief as I was wearing a black polyester skirt and it was about 80 degrees in this room.

After two hours we were given a soda. I left after 3 1/2 hours to get some air, but the woman I struck a conversation up with outside was a doctor and had sent for her son... who happened to be in the same section of tenth grade as Raymond and went to call him for me. So instead of staying in the meeting Raymond and I got chairs from the library and sat under a tree and talked about school. Then he gave me tour of his school... when we walked past the assembly hall, the meeting was still in session - it was almost an hour later!

Raymond walked me back to the matatu stage in town and I headed back to Amina's. I had left my bag there because I had a date, yes that's what I said, a date... and I wanted to shower and change before meeting Valentine Gandhi. Yes, that's his name. Val facilitates the Nairobi branch of InterNations, which is like a networking/social website/gathering for expats. He's 32, and originally from India. He's running a huge research project for UNDP on the moneymaker pump that is made by Kickstart.

I took a mat back to town and then a taxi to Westlands. The taxi driver told me the fare was 800 KSH ($10), I talked him down to 500 KSH ($6.25) which is the actual fare. I met Val at Westgate a fancy mall in Westlands and we went to a Japanese restaurant, which was nice but the food was just so-so. We then went bar hopping and because I wasn't going to go back to Ngong at midnight I stayed at Val's. He has a huge apartment with a couple of roommates in a posh Nairobi neighborhood. As posh as it is, it doesn't have a generator so had to do without drying my hair. I know it's short... but it looks far better when it's blow dried!

Val and I got up and went to breakfast and picked up his friend Micah who goes to an evangelical church in Karen. It was a pretty diverse church, lots of interracial marriages and expats with adopted children, but Kenyans and Sudanese and Koreans. We did figure out that Val was the only Indian... anyway the message was good and I think I could be persuaded to go again.

Then we went to Que Pasa in Karen because Micah was starving. After, she and Val headed back to Nariobi and I jumped in a mat and headed for Ngong. I suddenly realized I had forgotten my bag in Val's car. So after a few missed communications we met up at a gas station and I got my bag back and got another mat.

As I got off the mat, the rain started. Drizzling at first... so I bought milk at a kiosk on the way home. Almost as soon as I walked through my front door the sky opened up and poured all it's pent up water in my backyard. NO MORE DUST! But alas I had forgotten to fix the water tank after having it cleaned so that the rainwater would actually run in it. I stripped and wrapped a leso (kanga - a triangular piece of fabric that Kenyan women use as a skirt or an apron or a towel) around me and ran out to the tank and adjusted the pipe so the water from the roof went in the tank. Then I came in took the leso off and dried myself off with it.

Whirlwind weekend over, I sat down to read a book and then the lights went off... ahhh, Kenya!