Kitengela

Just realized that I haven't posted anything in a really really long time. So here's to catch everyone up!

Last week Leslie and I finished our tour of all eight Lea Toto centers and did all of our interviews. I ended up with 17 interviews of social workers and counselors. I have been transcribing some each day. Each interview is between 15-30 minutes long so it is not that bad. Transcribing still takes me about 1-1.5 hours each one. I have scheduled it so that I will be done on Thursday and can start coding and analyzing the data I have. I am taking Thursday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday to analyze because next Wednesday we are meeting with all the center coordinators and some social workers and counselors to share our results. I can't really work this weekend because Leslie, Emily, and I are leaving on Friday morning for safari on the Maasai Mara! Really excited for that.

This past weekend was loaded with fun. The girls staying in Nyumbani Village down near Kitui came to Nairobi so that we could celebrate some birthdays. Meghan, Amihan, Carrilea and a couple of their new friends came to Nairobi on Thursday and stayed until Sunday. We all went out to a bar/club about a block away from our apartment and had a grand ole time. Seriously, great times were had that night/early morn.

Saturday Emily, Sara, Leslie, and I traveled by bus about an hour southeast of Nairobi to Kitengela. One of our fellow students, Edward, at St. Paul's University invited us for a visit to his church. The service started at 7:30am so we all decided that going a day early and sleeping over would be the best course of action. We arrived around 4pm and were picked up and taken straight to the church to meet up with everyone. Some of the youth were there preparing mandazi for the next day. The best way to describe mandazi is like an unsweetened sopapilla. You prepare the dough, roll it out, cut it into squares, and then drop them into a boiling pot of oil to fry. Kenyans eat them with tea, which they take after church on Sundays. The youth were going to sell them to the church goers to raise money for a P.A. system for music. We all had so much fun watching/helping them make mandazi.

Afterwards Edward divided us into two groups for our overnight stay. Emily and I were team 1 and Sara and Leslie were team 2. Team 1 went back to stay with one of the youths and spent all night cooking chapati and ugali. They were complaining the next morning about how difficult it was to make both foods. But totally worth it. Emily and I stayed with the Theo family. They prepared for us beef stew, cabbage, chapati, pineapple, and watermelon. A typical Kenyan dinner (minus rice). The family we stayed with was so accommodating and very sweet to us the entire time. We made some friends for life in Kitengela.

We got up early Sunday morning to attend the youth service at 7:30am. It was great! I loved singing the songs, even if some of them were in Swahili, and listening to the sermon. It is apparent to me now after attending 3 Kenyan churches that it is tradition to make the visitors stand with a microphone and say a few words in front of the whole congregation. Usually I would be happy to hunker down in my seat and pretend as if I always attend that church, but there is really no hiding here in Kenya. We stayed for the 9am English service so that we could introduce ourselves to the adult population. We left after the announcements and welcoming and joined the rest of the youth outside.

The night before the youth had set up a huge tent outside so that they could serve the tea on Sunday. They also had a ping pong table. I did not play ping pong because I am so bad but I did join about 10 others in a card game. They called it poker, but it just seemed like a crazy complicated game of group Uno, elimination style. I'm pretty sure that some of the rules were made up. But it was a lot of fun! We played one entire game of elimination and Leslie beat everyone. It was hilarious that the muzungu beat all the Kenyans!

We ate lunch at the church with some of the youth. We had beef stew, rice, and cabbage (see? typical), which was all delicious. After church Edward invited us to visit with him and his family at their apartment. We met their adorable twin babies. Technically not babies since they are 1.5 years old but totally adorable. The boy, Clive, only needed about 5 minutes to warm up to us. He was even flirting with Leslie by the end of our time. The girl was not amused with us at all. Sara held her for all of 30 seconds before she got upset and reached for her daddy again. She was very distrusting of these weirdly colored white people in her home. I totally understand her anxiety though.

We got back on the bus to Nairobi around 4pm and totally collapsed when we got home. Overall, it was a very successful weekend and memories that we will always cherish.