I was meant to publish Sunday’s entry yesterday but literally didn’t have the energy. Since Monday I’ve been experiencing something like a mild tonsillitis that’s never really developed and seems to be remedied by paracetamol and sitting still. I think all my rushing around in the last few weeks has caught up with me in the form of exhaustion. Also it’s not like I don’t spend plenty of time resting here but I’ve been finding it harder and harder to sleep at night (possibly my malaria medicine?) so I’m more tired than I should be.
It turned out that the power cut was perfectly timed yesterday so that the power came back on in the evening before Obama’s inauguration ceremony in the USA, 8 hours behind us. We ate a quick dinner and then gathered in the Kigens’ upstairs room to watch the only TV there is at Mwamba. NTV had CNN live for most of it except when they cut to scenes of people dancing in the streets in Kisumu (where Obama’s Kenyan family is from).
It’s hard to get across just how much people here have taken on board, ‘the world’s first Kenyan president’. Maybe the best illustration is the ‘Barack Obama’ matatu that I’ve caught a few times from Turtle Bay, not only is his name printed on the outside but there’s a picture of him on every seat (see photo). During Robin’s few days away she was let into the marine park south of Mombassa (Kisiti?) for free! Now is a good time to be an American in Kenya, maybe it is anywhere in the world…
Inside the 'Obama' matatu
Sunday 18th Jan
Robin’s back! Last Monday morning I got a text saying “Is roof still free? Coming back today” She’s really fallen in love with this place and just couldn’t stay away. The roof wasn’t free any longer as we were about to be inundated with students from Finland, 15 of them with 4 professors and a driver. (This is more than we can reasonably accommodate but since when did we start saying no to guests at Mwamba?) Henry and Belinda had never met Robin but they were obviously impressed by how we were all missing her and said she could come back and stay on the balcony of their house for a bit.
The Finish group were meant to arrive around dinner time but they rang to say their bus had broken down and they’d be late. They still hadn’t arrived by 11pm so we went to bed and asked Laurence to wake us up when they arrived. I’d just dropped off to sleep when I heard Laurence’s knocking and had to get dressed again and serve stew and rice to a room full of tired but still hungry students. Then I stood around in a daze waiting to wash up, disorientated by the sound of Scandinavian voices and how they all sat and chatted, enjoying their food like it was 12.00 pm not am. Most of them didn’t even look that tired which was more than could be said for me. They were very polite but obviously a little disappointed when they saw the size of the rooms and the number of them staying in each one. One of them tried to explain to me that they were “Big Scandinavian women” and the mattresses weren’t really large enough for them. I thought she was being a little hard on herself as the students were all pretty slim and anyone would have struggled to fit 5 into a room meant for 3. However, we did eventually manage to squeeze them all in and go back to bed; another triumph of African economy over Western worry.
Aaron and Suzanne surprised us by arriving back the next day as planned despite coming by the infamously unreliable overnight train from Nairobi to Mombassa, once known as the ‘lunatic line’. (I’m hoping to get that train myself going the other way. It’s supposed to be the best way to travel as long as you don’t have to arrive in Nairobi in time for anything in particular). It’s been much easier than I thought it would be living with the two of them so far, though Robin coming back has helped of course. I think I’ve just been so busy I haven’t had time to be a gooseberry. Now that the newspapers have started announcing the power cuts in advance it’s made it a lot easier to plan what you’re doing for the day - I’m inching along with the information display, I’ve finally got a draft copy of the newsletter out and left it around for the staff to comment on - on Tuesday I’m sure the newspapers will be full of Obama Day part 2 and we may have to make sure we read about it in the paper as another power cut is also forecast for the same day. As Aaron put it, “We won’t be able to see the ‘riots’ in Kisumu on TV”. It will make a change from the more sombre articles there’ve been recently on the ‘Communications Bill’, which has increased media censorship and nation wide teachers’ strikes. Life here is hard sometimes but people are always willing to find something to celebrate about.
Robin outside the front of the house
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