Note: I got to talk with my brother for the first time since I've been here yesterday, and his first comment to me was that I should organize my blog posts into paragraphs to make them more readable, so the Josh Hamilton adjustment will be put in place from this post on. Enjoy, and if it makes them much more readable send your thanks to Josh.
I'm writing this on Thursday afternoon as we're getting ready to depart for Kisumu, and I have to say that this week has been pretty chilled out or relaxed or boring, depending on your perspective (probably boring for anyone looking for some great story about me watching a lion eat a person, but very nice for me. You people hold your horses though, you'll get your stories soon enough). We still haven't gotten to the museum, which has been at the top of my list since the end of the last week, but the desire to rest a little bit and the lack of urgency have combined to discourage any immediate action. In fact, I don't think I've gone into town at all since Sunday. Part of that is that the novelty of just "going into town" is wearing off, so unless we're doing something, just walking around town isn't as intriguing as it once was. I feel like I'm starting to get a little bit familiar though, and the other day I looked at a map and was able to identify a lot of things to get a framework for how the town is laid out. In the last couple days riding around in mutatus Junior has made a point of having us sit in the cab next to the driver, which just makes the whole thing even more entertaining/terrifying because you can see every near miss and every pedestrian diving out of the way as we shoot down crowded streets. There was also a new first for me on one of these rides that the driver took the matatu up off the road on the wrong side of the road to get around some traffic, which was one of those things I had to kind of pinch myself as it was happening because I just couldn't believe that what I was seeing was actually happening. I read all of Nate Seely's blog from his trip to Indonesia, which was hugely uplifting for me. I was surprised by how comforting it was to read about something about someone struggling with similar issues, just when you feel like you are pretty alone in the world. Nate, if you're reading this and even if you're not, you rock. Keep the faith buddy, although by the time you read this you'll probably be home, but keep the faith anyway. I've found that every hint of home, whether checking facebook and emails or American movies and shows, or talking with my parents has been a huge comfort to me, and those are actually the times when I realize how much I miss home.
A couple of relatives have stopped by, including Uncle Roger, who I'll be staying with in Eldoret for the next couple weeks. The plan is that Mama Patrick, Flo, Glen's mom, and I (if you're having trouble remembering everybody, join the club) will take the bus to Kisumu tonight and have tomorrow and Saturday in Kisumu to hang out with relative, admire Lake Victoria, swim across Lake Victoria, etc. The funeral Patrick's dad's brother will be on Saturday so there will be a lot of family in town for that so we'll hang out with them, then me (and I think Flo) will head to Eldoret with some of the family from there, and then there I'll be until the end of July. Not sure how often I'll have an Internet connection, so postings could be spotty, but I'll keep a record locally on my computer so I might just flood the blog with about two weeks of posts if I'm not able to get a connection sooner. Talking with Roger last night though, he said he would be taking what sound like a pretty awesome trip over to the Mombasa area end of the month, where I could see a lot of the cool stuff on the coast and do some camping along the way too, which I really want to get in, that sounds a little scary but awesome. I'm still not sure about hitting that trip because I already have plans to go to Mombasa with Kenneth (my housemate from Uganda) and with Heather and Patrick, but that sounds like the kind of place that it wouldn't hurt to visit a couple times so we'll see. Earlier yesterday I went to a local barber with Junior because he needed to have his hair cut, which I thought was pretty funny because he barely had enough hair to cover his head as it was, but he had it shaved right down to the nubbins. The barber shop was a section of one of the roadside shacks with enough room for two barber chairs and room for the barber to walk around the person and not much more. I was afraid to even walk into a barber shop for fear that they would just start hacking on my hair and beard just as a public service, but I had good time talking with the other two guys there. I think both of them were also barbers, but it was really one of those stereotypical barber shop scenarios where it looked like there was a group of regulars who would just hang around. We talked about America and Kenya, and how I thought they were different and what my impressions of Kenya were. I have a vague feeling that for as many people as I can meet it's better for them to have a face or a person they can attach when they think of America rather than a big, rich country on the other side of the world that's lucky enough to have Obama.
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