I had been told we were going to get an early in the morning for Kisumu, but I thought with amusement and skepticism what an early start is in Kenya. I don't think we had started on much of anything before 11:00 or noon for most of the time I'd been here. Still, I was determined to make sure I wasn't the one holding up the show, and was impressed that we actually got out of the house by 7:30 if I remember correctly (if we got out earlier than that I'm sure Heather and Patrick will say that I'm selling short their efforts to get us out the door, which were impressive) and headed for town. Here I discovered what I probably consider my biggest logistical blunder of the trip. Everyone else was packed completely in backpacks, fine with walking to the stage where we would get on a bus. I, on the other hand, had my gorgeous '70s vintage baby blue suitcase, which I awkwardly lugged along. I had planned on taking my backpacking pack as Heather and Patrick and Ross did, but as my dad and talked about it as I was packing we decided it wouldn't be worth the risk of damaging it or getting it stolen when I didn't think I would have to be carrying my stuff outside of vehicles all that much. Let me say as a heads up to anyone who is traveling to a less developed country like Kenya (and I would guess traveling anywhere) that not being mobile with your luggage can very easily turn into a huge headache. That alone put me into a foul mood as I stumbled down the road with my suitcase. The walk was probably less than half a mile, but when you're carrying a suitcase that distance is enough to be a huge hassle. It also didn't help that all of them were packing for less than a week where I had stuff packed for a month. Another thing I had underestimated was how much packing space my running stuff would take. The clothes aren't too bad because I honestly just wear running clothes a decent amount of the time so those can overlap, but if I take both pair of running shoes and a big container of Gatorade powder, that takes up a significant chunk of space. I was still out of money, which added to my foul mood. That had continued to be a pretty big source of stress for me, which was kind of stupid because Heather and Patrick were fine with covering for me but, especially on top of stumbling around with the suitcase, made feel like the incompetent little brother that they couldn't leave alone to take care of himself.
We packed into one of the big "Double M" company busses and headed into downtown to catch a shuttle to Kisumu. Elijah and Tanna had a bunch of their relatives decide to not come, so we were going to share a shuttle with them, which I was really looking forward to because it meant we would pretty much fill up the shuttle and that would be a really fun group to go with. We stopped by a grocery store to get some snacks for the trip then headed over to the street where a bunch of shuttles were waiting to be filled and take off. Apparently there's no set time that they take off, they just wait until they're filled and leave. It seemed to me like it was a pretty lousy system if you happened to get there and be one of the first people in the shuttle and had to wait an hour or two for it to slowly fill up before finally leaving. But then again, I guess that matches with the whole Kenyan sense of time. What's the problem with waiting a couple hours?
I knew it was too much to think that we would actually get out of there as quickly as Heather and Patrick planned and sure enough Elijah and Tanna showed up about an hour later. I think the chances of leaving somewhere on time go down exponentially the more groups you add because not only does each have a high chance of being late, but none of the groups want to be the first one there so they'll get there extra late. You can imagine the downward spiral of escalation of lateness as each group ensures they're not the first ones there. It was kind of funny to watch Heather and Patrick try to keep a tight schedule to maximize their time in Kenya, but trying to keep a tight schedule here is like catching a fly with chopsticks.
The ride was beautiful, with some gorgeous views out over the Rift Valley. I was sorry this was a ride that I had made in the dark my first time coming and going from Kisumu, because it had a lot of cool scenery all along the way, and we saw a couple groups of zebras and some baboons. We made a pit stop in Nakuru and then headed on a rough dirt roads through the mountains, with more beautiful scenic views. Patrick explained to me a little bit of the environmental impacts of the logging that's happened, which is pretty cool when you are looking out at the land as he pointing out specific stands of trees and indicator species. We headed through Kiricho, which is where a lot of the tea in Kenya is grown, and it was pretty impressive to see the massive tea fields. The fields here, tea or otherwise, don't look like the endless fields in the Midwest, there's a lot more variety to the land. The land is a lot more rolling and a lot of the fields are dotted with trees which make it a lot more interesting than most of the farmland I've traveled through in the US. We stopped along this stretch at one of the roadside stops to get some roasted corn, which is a pretty entertaining affair typical of any commerce here. A small crowd of ladies ran up to the shuttle when they saw we were slowing down with a couple of cobs of corn in their hands and thrust them through the windows into the van, apparently feeling that you were more likely to pick the piece of corn that is two inches from your face, which turned out to be a good marketing strategy in my case because I just wanted to get that corn out of my face (unintentional Nacho Libre reference, but that just makes me even happier that it happened). I didn't even know who I took the corn from because it was just a mess of arms, and I just pressed the 10 schilling coin into the hand I had taken the corn from. I don't think I've ever had roasted corn in the US, but I prefer it to the boiled corn that is the standard "corn on the cob" that we had when I was growing up. There are places along the street all over the place where people sit out with a screen over a small stove roasting corn and selling it for 10 schillings a piece.
By the time we got back on solid pavement Heather was feeling pretty car sick and I wasn't doing so well myself. I think coming back to Seattle every ride is going to feel luxuriously smooth, even on the bus. I'm glad to have the experience here though because I think having good roads is one of those things I never think of even being grateful for at home. To their credit the Kenyan government is doing a lot roadwork on improving the roads, both in the Nairobi area and nationally, hoping it provides an economic boost to have easier travel. When we got to Kisumu there was another agonizing walk with my suitcase for maybe a quarter mile to a close by mall, the same one I had stopped at with Elijah after church a couple weeks ago, and hung out there while Patrick and Elijah went to find a bank or cause some trouble or something like that. While we were sitting there waiting I talked with Ross about the post-election violence in 2007, and finally heard a more complete version of it. I'd heard it referenced numerous times as it still looms over much of the political proceedings today as the government works to institute the new constitution that was drafted as a result of the unrest and dissatisfaction with the 2007 election. What I hadn't known was that Kisumu was pretty much the original place where the violence started, with a lot of buildings being burned and pretty massive riots that resulted in a large number of deaths. Apparently the original cause of the violence was basically that the candidate from a nearby area that is pretty poor and doesn't receive very much government funding looked like he was going to win but the results shifted very late in the game, making it look pretty clear that voter fraud was happening. From there the anger over the election fraud turned into something of a tribal conflict, with members of different tribes destroying the homes and businesses of members of rival tribes, and in some cases killing people. This is another place where to get a more accurate and complete story of the post-election violence talk with Patrick or Kenneth or Wikipedia. To me it really is a pretty interesting, though horrible, episode, because it was a turning point for the country that is now resulting in a concerted effort to clean up corruption and build a better nation. I was glad to hear the story from Ross, because it sounds to me like the kind of thing where you would hear a different story from different Kenyans based on their tribe, so I was happy to have a more objective perspective to compare that against. From what Ross said there is still a decent amount of tribal animosity in some areas, although all the Kenyans I've talked to have seemed to downplay tribal differences.
After waiting for a while Ross and I took off to go see some stuff. I wished I was able to spend some time in Kisumu with Ross because he knows the area pretty well from the year that he lived here and seems to me to have a similar taste to me for what's interesting to go see. He told me there was a really big open air market near the mall, and I was pretty disappointed I hadn't gone when I was in Kisumu before. Before we even got out of the mall we were approached by a friendly young man, about my age I would guess, who struck up a conversation with us about what we were doing here and where we were from. We talked with him for a couple minutes then said goodbye and headed out to the street. It was a funny conversation because I, and Ross too, expected him to ask for money or ask for help getting to the States or something, but at least as far as the conversation went he seemed to just want to talk. Ross was a little bit annoyed with it because he had obviously approached us just because we were white, but to me I'm glad to make as many connections with people as I can and be approachable. A torrential downpour started just before we took off, and we made a run for the street to get some took tooks to take to Peter and Leah's house, but just the distance through the parking lot to the street was enough to soak us.
Compared to when I had been here just a couple weeks earlier the house was pretty empty. Elijah and Elisha had gone to school and Atieno was still coming back from Nairobi. Miriam and Nora were there, and I think Leah was there but I don't really remember. I hadn't run yet, and after the drive I was eager to stretch the legs and get in what I could before dark, so I threw on my running clothes and headed out into the rain, which hadn't let up at all. It was a great run though, one of those where you splash through all the puddles without caring because you're soaked all the way through. I think I got even more cheers than usual from the groups huddled under the shop awnings, astonished that a mzungu was plowing through the water whenever nearly everyone else had ran for cover. I'm not sure if they recognized me from when I had been running there a week and a half earlier, but either way their shouts carried me along, and I picked up the pace both because of the excitement of the run and knowing that I wasn't going to get far before dark so might as well go hard and get in a little bit of speed. I felt a giddy sense of satisfaction with the run, felt like I was about to jump out of my skin I was so happy to be out running in such epic conditions. Rather than being a miserable run, as the dark, rainy ones often are, it was a beautiful run that I cherished every moment of. Lightning filled the sky, adding the epic, exciting nature of the run, but it was close enough that I turned and hightailed it back to home. By this time the darkness was gathering fast, and even in my euphoric state I was anxious to get home. Adding to my anxiety were a couple places where the power lines were throwing sparks, which would have been cool if it wasn't so dangerous. A couple of times there were awesome lightning strikes that lit up everything like day for a split second, and if I had lost any of the excitement of the run, those would shock me back into frenzied, ecstatic state. When I got home I took off as many clothes as I could at the door, wrung them out and hung them up to dry. Every article I was wearing was saturated, but it had been warm enough that I wasn't even cold.
That night I helped Uncle Peter out with moving some video files from a friend's laptop to his, and showed him some basic concepts about how to organize and find files and programs on his computer. He was happy for the help and both him and I were regretful that we hadn't started on this when I was here for longer so I could have taught him more. All we did was creating new folders and copying items into those folders, so I really wish I could have shown him more. I was surprised he didn't have more computer skills considering he's a pretty successful businessman, but my guess is that it just shows that computer skills here aren't as essential in the corporate world as in the States because computers aren't as widespread. They're still very useful and valuable skills to have, but you can get by without them in a way that I don't know if you could in the US.
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