Day 9

Hey everyone, it’s Julia again! Today was a busy day as we had to go run some errands in Kisumu. We brought along Christine with us as she convinced us that because we are Mzungus, we wouldn’t get fair prices for the fruits. We also brought Julie along for the trip into the city, and we spent the car ride to Kisumu getting to know her a little better. She seemed to be very much on the same page as us with pop culture, and we came to the conclusion that Justin Bieber is hated globally (though we both agreed that his new songs are catchy).

Once we got to Kisumu the first thing we did was go to a farmers market to buy some oranges and bananas—the breakfast staples to our survival in Kenya. While Christine was doing the fruit haggling, a woman running a stand really, really, really wanted us to buy some of her sweet melons. I think we said no thank you about 100 times and she still kept asking us to buy her melons. We went to a lady to purchase oranges, which were KSH 120 per kg. When the lady asked for KSH 650 for 5 kgs of oranges, Christine responded with, “My dear, 120 * 5 is 600. Not 650. I’m afraid you are terribly wrong.” Christine’s really good with her math, whereas we engineers were sitting and pondering what 120*5 actually was.

When we were done with the fruit buying, we went to the Nakumatt to buy some basic necessities such as toilet paper, paper towels, and ice cream. We also needed to buy some household bleach to shock chlorinate the tanks at the school. When Julie and Christine saw what we would be using to treat the schools water with they accused us of wanting to poison them. It took some explaining to get them to trust that we were not actually poisoning the school children because the amount of bleach would be minimal.

By the time we were done shopping, we were hungry for lunch. Julie called her friend who was from Kisumu to see what good places there were to eat, to which her friend said “lol this isnt Nairobi.” So, we wandered a bit and walked into a mall (questionable?) food court. There we had about 6 people at once trying to get us to go eat at their restaurant. Considering that all of the places looked like another Pankies, we pretty much said “nope” and decided on eating at a Java House at a new mall near the area.

When we walked in we realized what kind of place we just entered—an over-glorified Starbucks with a full menu…it was perfect. I don’t think I could have contained my excitement to have been eating a guacamole bacon cheeseburger and drinking a fancy hot mocha. I felt right at home, and I know the others did too as we were all ecstatic to have found a place to relieve us a bit from our homesickness. Julie said our excitement made her realize that she was taking Java House for granted.

After a really good lunch, we went back to Miranga Primary school to help Tom and Heather wrap up the 2DR cables. Tristen took this as an opportunity to climb a huge tree. Once he started having problems climbing up the tree, we realized it would be a huge problem getting down the tree—and it was. Jared, Julie, and I used this moment as a team building exercise—with all of us setting ourselves up to work as a prop for Tristen to stand on and jump from the tree with.  Meanwhile, Sriram was filming this glorious (yet painful) team building activity, and Ajay sat in the car refusing to help because he was eating a Java House Burrito (too good to leave). After we helped Tristen get down from the tree, Sri-mom and I scolded him and reminded him how we signed liability waivers.

By this point in the day, we were all exhausted but happy. After cleaning up the 2DR tests, we all went home for a nice relaxing night. I can’t wait to see what else is in store for us tomorrow!