Kericho and Ice Cream

Well, I think I just had the best weekend since coming to my site. My good friend came down from mumias to visit for the weekend. It was soooo nice to have another muzungu with me. Like my last post, living in a bowl can get to you after awhile. So, to prepare for her visit, the heaping club helped clean my house and cooked an amazing lunch for us. When she arrived, I took her on a tour of the school grounds. We couldn’t even step onto the walkway before we were surrounded my kids. They loved her and were almost as excited as I was for her visit. Of course how couldn’t they be when they had to listen to me talk about her for the last week. After the tour, we went back to my house and had lunch with the heaping club. I loved sitting in my living room eating amazing food and laughing with great people. Oh yeah, they had to tattle on me about everything. But they were so welcoming, they even made her an honorary member of the heaping club. It was definitely a mental picture moment. After lunch, the ladies cleaned up the kitchen and gave us some space. We spent the rest of the day talking on the couch about school, life and the culture. I took her on a tour of the town and all of a sudden, I was the most popular girl in town. Moe than the usual crazies came up to greet us. It’s like touching the hand of a muzungu just brings joy to their lives. LOL. That night some of my girls came to the house and wanted a picture with kristiann. Since I knew the kids were not going to stop until every single one met kristiann, I promised them we would come up the following night to watch them dance. Saturday, we decided to go into Kericho for a day of shopping. We both almost cleaned out the fabric store and played around in tuskis. We ate ice cream on grass and enjoyed the sunshine. When we got home, it had started to rain. Kenyans have a special way to deal with rain, they stay indoors till it stops. Unfortunately, I think its genetic and not something that can not be learned by a visitor. We both made a run for the school in the down pour. All along the way, we saw Kenyans trying to wave us inside, but we declined and kept running. Up ahead I noticed a car coming. Since half the road was flooded, we tried to move over as far as possible. The car came at a speed it should not have been going and splashed us with muddy water. I think kristiann even got some in her mouth. We continued until we got to my house where we changed out of our wet clothes, curled up on the couch with our sleeping bags and watched some much needed chick flicks. Around 8, we decided we should go up and say goodbye to the kids. They were so excited to see her. We ended up watching some dances. One of the vocational boys was trusted with her camera and was the designated photographer for the night. When the girls were done dancing, one of my students asked if we could dance for them. So kristiann and I got up there and did the macarana, chicken dance and the electric slide. After dancing, it was their bed times, but the kids had other ideas. Krisitann and I got separated and we each had our own large group of kids asking us questions., asking her about America and mumias, and asking me about her. The kids noticed everything different about us. I was red skined, she was white, I was strong, she was weak, she had more arm hair than I did. The kids asked me if I was going with Kristiann the next morning. I teased them that I would, they didn’t like that very much.. LOL It was nice to see the kids wanting me to stay. The kids even begged kristiann to stay. They were all so cute and I looked on with pride. We finally pulled ourselves away from the kids and went back home to go to bed. The next morning, I put her on a matatu with 4 pineapples, 10 mangos, 15 chaptis and threatened the conductor with his life if he didn’t take care of her. We also promised to plan some sort of get together in Kisumu over the next few weekends. Well, its now it a ‘s couple hours from the close of the weekend and the start of another week. It’s wet and cold I still have no idea what I am teaching tomorrow. So I am going to close and say good night for now. Hope everyone had an amazing weekend and I miss you all