Sick Day

It will appear that I am posting twice on the same day, which technically I am but the next post is one I wrote about five days ago and couldn't post until today. Today I am home sick. I have fluish symptoms and a slight fever, so I told my boss I wasn't coming in today. I have called in sick, including today, exactly twice in my entire working life. I hate doing it and I rarely get sick. However, here in Kenya it could be the flu or something that I ate, but it could also be malaria or typhoid, so I didn't want to risk making it worse or infecting anyone else in my first week here. So I stayed in bed all day and read a book and slept and checked my email, which after our super busy training schedule and hectic traveling, was a good change.

I'll back up a little and fill in the days from my last post. Saturday I slept in a little and then started to sort through everything I brought to Kenya. Midmorning I got a call from a woman I work with named Mary inviting me to lunch. I went to town to meet her and we went to her mom's house for a few hours. Well actually from 11:30 til about 6, which is how Kenyans tend to do things. She has a 6 or 7 year old daughter named Mercy who is adorable. Mercy speaks Kikuyu primarily, but has been learning Kiswahili in school and has also just started learning English, so we could communicate fairly well between the last two languages. I got back home in time to pick up a few things from town and have dinner (hard boiled eggs and bread).

Another girl from work, Ann, had come with us for lunch and invited me to church with her in the morning. We went to the English service of a Presbyterian Church of East Africa, scheduled to start at 8:30. When we showed up a few minutes before 9, they were just sort of getting started. After only about an hour (about 1/3 of a usual Kenyan service) they announced the English service was ending and the second Kikuyu service would be starting soon. I left to come home because I had a pile of clothes to wash. I had meant to wash them on Saturday, but went to "lunch" instead. Now most of the other volunteers loathe doing laundry here. It's a very tedious process. You start with three basins of water. Dump laundry detergent (Toss, Omo, or Sunlight) into the first one and then put clothes in to soak. Take each item and rub with bar soap, then using a technique I think I've just about gotten the hang of, rub the item back onto itself over your hand/wrist vigorously until clean. The first time I did laundry I wound up with four bloody knuckles, but they have since healed as I have improved. Then the item goes into the first rinse bucket, then the second, then wring out and hang (inside out to prevent getting it dirty again) until dry. Like I said, the other volunteers hate it but I find it kind of soothing. It makes my back hurt because there's no good way to bend over the basins and it usually takes a minimum of an hour and a half, but I feel a great sense of accomplishment when I'm done.

Aftear laundry I read for a while (the Peace Corps has given us all kinds of manuals and handbooks to read) and had more eggs and bread. Then Ann invited me over to her house for lunch (ugali and sukumawiki. google them, they're definitely not my favorite). She had invited some of her friends from church and was insistent that they become my friends too. That's good, but I don't make friends instantly and couldn't quite explain that to her. Then we went back to church for a youth group meeting and then home to bed.

Monday morning was my first day at the co-op. My boss asked me to come in at 9 and attend a board meeting at 10 (I think I said it's a pretty Western company). In training it was explained to us that generally meetings scheduled for 10 will start anywhere between 11 and noon, so I expcected to wait. However, at 2 when I was starving for lunch and still waiting for the meeting to start, I wasn't waiting so patiently. Mary fed me chai (tea) and chapati and a mango, for which I was very greatful, and then finally around 3 I went into the meeting to meet the board members and introduce myself. Ten minutes later we were done. Then Mary took me around town and helped me buy some more things for the house. I'm pretty well set up now except for furniture. We were going to discuss that today, but when I got home last night I started feeling not so hot. I bought groceries to make banana bread and spaghetti, so I got the banana bread going and by then I was feeling really not good. Since I was cooking the bread on a charcoal jiko (stove) I checked it after an hour, saw it needed more time and that the coals were dying, and just left it and went to bed. It turned out really well, despite everything. Baking here is interesting. I'm happy to experiment with it for something to do, but I wouldn't want to have to do it this way forever.

That brings us back to today, which is ending peacefully. I want to spend the rest of the week finishing settling in and starting to get to know the co-op. Feel free to email or call anytime...I'd love to hear from you. Miss you all.

love me