Life Never Stops Over Here

We have done so much these past few days. On Tuesday, Gio and I accompanied Tess to Waithaka. She has a couple of good friends out there, and she wanted us to meet them. Both of her friends work at a school, so we got to spend the entire morning with the kids. It was amazing. We got some great pictures with the children. We played soccer, catch, volleyball, and a ton of other random, fun stuff. The kids also sang us some songs. They were in both English and Swahili, and each song had a set of motions. Playing with these kids really brightened my day, but the next trip we took would change my outlook on this whole experience.

Once school let out, Tess's friend, Nancy, took us out to Kibera. Kibera is the largest sum in Africa. The conditions in this place were so horrible. We met up with one of Nancy's friends, and she took us out to her place. We just wandered the slum for an hour or two. It was life changing. Nancy's friend had a child, Morgan, and she followed me through our whole walk, holding my hand. It was the worst life I ever could have imagined, but the attitude of the people was something I never would have expected. People weren't miserable wrecks. They were just living the life they had to the best of their ability. Children were running around the ditches full of human feces playing ames and laughing. It was amazing to see people happily enduring one of the worst types of life. Most of the people were so accepting of what they had.

The next day, Tess went home to Melbourne, Australia. That was sad. Tess was a great person to have in the house. She was always having fun, and we will miss her a lot. Other than that, Wednesday was fairly uneventful, so I will go on to Thursday.

Jason had a ton of things to do on Thursday (actually his credit card didn’t work, so he couldn’t do as much as he would have liked, but he was still pretty booked), so he sent Gio and I out to run an errand in Athi River. We took a matatu out to the street of Daystar University, and we hitched a ride with the Vice-Chancellor of the school the rest of the way. We grabbed his mail from the school’s Post Office, and we then headed out to give Francis some money. Francis used to stay at Taraja Boys Home, and he has been friends with Jason ever since. Jason tries to help him out whenever he can, so Francis will be working on the restaurant. He is staying out near Taraja, but he had no money. Gio and I went to help him out. I think it is great that Francis will be working on a project that will solely benefit the Boys Home he grew up in.

That night, Gio and I hit a bar. It was a great time. We were going to eat at the South C Sports Club Restaurant, but it was empty, so we ate at the bar. This was the most dull bar I have ever seen (not that I have seen many), but we had a great time with it. We drank so much, I even fell off of my bar stool. I had four Stoneys, and Gio had three Krest’s. Kenya has the coolest soda. The food was great, and Alex and I had a good time hanging out together.

Yesterday, Jason had more ATM difficulty, so we spent the day trying to fix it so he could finally send this girl, Winnie, to secondary school. I went back to the house early to grab some PIN number for him. I had a migraine, so I slept for most of the day after that.

Later that night, after I had slept off my headache, we went out to the theatre. Jason’s girlfriend, Lydia, is a pretty famous actress in Kenya, so she had an in at the Phoenix Theatre. Lydia is actually on a few Kenyan television shows, and she does a ton of theatre work. The play we went to was nice. It was pretty funny, and it ended up being a great experience, but the highlight of the night was dinner. We ate at Trattoria’s, aain. This was the first time we had ordered actual meals, and they were amazing. It was some of the best Italian food I have ever had.

Today has been pretty relaxing. Saturdays are always nice. Mithoni, the cleaning lady, came this morning. I was out of clothes this week, so I did a little laundry by hand myself. I figured if Mithoni can do it, then why can’t I? Well, Mithoni walked into the patio place where we wash clothes, pointed at my pants, and said, “Those aren’t clean.” Needless to say, I have given up on laundry, and I will now make sure to have enough clothes to make it to Saturday.

Jason has a student visiting the house right now. He got to leave school for the weekend. His name is Eliud, and he seems to be a great kid. Also, there was a pretty big fire outside the apartments today. It was awful. One of the kiosks outside was accidentally caught on fire by a child. It was another one of the most horrible things I have ever seen. There was a huge crowd of people, but there was no way to get any water over there to put it out. It is another experience I will never rid from my mind.

Well, that should be it. We are headed out to the movies with Eliud soon, so I should check on Gio with his 57 minute (and counting) conversation with Pringles. I’ll try to keep posting as much as I can. I love you all.

-Victor Rogers IV