We got on the bus to Kisumu at 9:00 on Thursday night. I was disappointed to not be traveling during the day so I could see everything we were passing, but we held off until Thursday night so we could travel with Patrick's mom and aunt. I must say I was surprised with how nice the bus was. I was ready for an oversized matatu that would make this a death march through the wee hours of the night, but the bus actually pretty closely resembled a Beachliner (or if that's an unfamiliar term, a nice tour bus). I stayed awake for a little while to see if I could see anything, but to no avail, so I pretty quickly went to sleep. We arrived around 4 in the morning and took a taxi to Patrick's uncle and aunt's house a couple miles from downtown Kisumu. There were a couple relatives up, and I met Uncle Peter, but I quickly accepted the offer of a bed to crash in until a more reasonable hour. I woke up at 9:30, and went out to the living room to find myself in the middle of crowd of aunts and female cousins. Judging from what I've seen here, it appears they have a setup almost opposite of the Hamilton family, with a horde of female cousins, but maybe those are just the ones I saw. Either way, I was caught in one of those awkward situations where everybody belonged to a group that had something to do except me, so I just sat there and drank tea and stayed quiet. The aunts took off, and Uncle Peter briefly came out before going to work, then the cousins disappeared leaving me to explore the grounds. It is a pretty big house by Kenyan standards, and with much more space around the house than anything I saw in Nairobi. After the aunts came back, they plopped me on the back of a motorcycle taxi to go show me a route that I could run through the neighborhood, which I was happy to do. First, because this would be my second time running outside the Otieno's estate since arriving, and second because I'd wanted to ride one of the motorcycle taxis since I'd gotten here. It's pretty impressive and terrifying to watch them work in Nairobi, because when the faithfully observed informal traffic law is that if there is a gap big enough you shoot it, these guys can shoot some pretty darn small gaps and are much more effective (and fearless) moving around the city. Things were different here though, where the traffic didn't demand any of the same antics. They would actually shut the engines off on all the downhills, and move pretty slow on the uphills. At least in this part of town there are few matatus but tons of the motorcycle and even bike taxis. Lots of bikes ride around with a cushion on the back that you can sit on and get a cheap ride. This is a pretty darn good option, especially when you're coming out of town down toward Lake Victoria and the bikes move about as fast as the motorcycles.
Once I got out on my run I felt like a bird out of it's cage for the first time. I'd got pretty burned out on running that loop around the neighborhood, and even doing the loop I'd been shown that took about 10 minutes was a breath of fresh air. Everything was so much less crowded and more peaceful than Nairobi. The problem was, I was running at 1 in the afternoon, and the combination of heat (I believe it was above 80, with significant humidity) and elevation (I think we're above 6000 feet here) quickly caught up with me. I ventured well off the assigned route, exploring side roads and carefully tracing my tracks. I returned exhausted after an hour, but happy. After washing up and eating lunch I went into town with the cousins. We walked around a little bit, but the downtown of Kisumu is far less impressive or interesting than Nairobi, so we left after walking around what I believe was actually a decent portion of the town. The main attraction of Kisumu I wanted to see was the view of Lake Victoria. I walked back home with Grace (one of the cousins) and her friend we had met in town. They checked to make sure I was alright walking that far, understandably uncertain of if an American would be able to cover the distance. I told them their concern was well placed, but that I would be fine walking the maybe mile and a half home. I think when I head home the amount of daily physical activity will be appallingly low to me, because here it has been the norm to walk a couple miles every day and I think that is pretty standard for Kenyans in general, and if anything maybe most walk farther than that because I've been in urban areas for my whole time here. When we got back they had me watch and learn how to make chipatis. The process makes sense to me, but if you sat me down with the ingredients on my own my guess is you would end up with something a long way from chipatis that was much less edible. Flo came back from town later, and we sat talking and making the rest of the dinner, and by that I mean they talked and made the rest of the dinner and I sat listening and watching. We missed the sunset on the lake, which bummed me out, but I believe we'll be able to hit it tomorrow night, so we'll see.
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