eldoret is happenin'

we made it to eldoret. i slept most of the way in the back left corner of our rented matatu. and just listened to music and watched kenya go by. it's green and rainy and little children walk up the side of the road with their goats. we stopped to see the great rift valley and to take pictures at the equator (!!) we also passed through a small town called bird forest which suffered the most during the post-election violence last year. a few hundred kenyans are still living in IDP camps along the road. our living accommodations are nice. there are four of us to a room and i am in the moi university hostel first, which means we live with kenyan medical students, and we have to cook for ourselves (this morning i had a peanut butter sandwich and banana).

the great rift valley

all of us at the equator

our room

a view from our balcony

the walk from our hostel

the hospital

at the bar/restaurant

meat meat meat meat

yesterday we went for a walk through the town, which is busy and full of people. we had some lunch, walked through the open air market and managed to not get run over. i also bought a newspaper and spent my afternoon digesting the kenyan news.

here are some headlines (and highlights) from the national paper, The Standard (which tends to be bias towards the Opposition side of politics--a majority of Western Kenya):

homosexuality perversion is a threat to survival of humankind: "Homosexuals have coined the term homophobia, to mean intense fear or hatred of homosexuals. Accordingly, I am classified as a homophobic. This is on account of the fact that I cannot stand homosexuals...let me have about me a couple of dozens of Tiger Woods and their dozens of concubines. I can live with that and so, too, can Mother Nature and a whole world out there....but homosexuality is another ballgame all together...it is worse than scandalous that society allows homosexuals to brazenly talk about such psychotic and psychopathic things as 'gay marriage'...then there is the rapist. If the homosexual must have his space, let the rapist have his space too. The lowest common factor between the rapist, the pedophiliac and the dog-man is that they have evolved perverted carnal appetites that run counter to the law of nature..."

how to recover when cheated on: 1. don't act like the victim, yes you are hurt and perhaps confused, but sitting back and feeling sorry for yourself won't help. 2. don't accuse: you need to swallow your anger and pride 3. get to the bottom of it: this is going to hurt, but you must know the reason for the cheating and fix it 4. forgive and forget: this may be the hardest step, but it is the most necessary.

a cougar is born: "I invited Timmy and his friends over and eventually Mr Out of Bounds man bought them a play station 3. Timmy (a 20 yr old college student home for the festive season) and i would cuddle on the couch."

needless to say, I will buy the paper much more often now. There was other news, about the government, a man's goat farm, the matatu strike, the African Cup (soccer. errr, football), and the trouble brewing in South Sudan. But the articles on lifestyle choices I found most interesting and educational.

last night we went out to nyoma choma which is just huge slabs of meat they cut up and serve you with beer and the football game playing. then we went out to the dance club in town, called Spree, to practice our dance moves with the kenyans. It's fun, they play reggae and hip-hop from about 5 years ago and have lasers and bright lights. I watched this Kenyan couple bump and grind for about half hour simply trying to figure out how human hips can physically move like that. i don't have the gene.

hope you all had a super duper weekend.