Kenya Dig It?: Quick Update, then Rural Week info.

I know it's been a longggg time since I've posted, I got distracted for a while- and then bam midterms and then Rural week! which also means the semester is more than half way over! in fact we only have about 5 weeks left until we go to the Coast. Which also means about SIX WEEKS UNTIL I'M 21. which is ever more absurd.

Anyways- Happy belated birthday to the bestest baby sister ever, miss Erin HK, I cannot believe you're learning how to drive!! I don't think mom and dad want to believe it :)

Ok i'm going to run through things happening in my life:

1. kiswahili - it's going pretty good, I impress myself on occasion with what I know- but then again I also get frustrated when I can't figure something out

2. USIU- not bad, i did well on my midterm, just chugging along- we have a group project coming up- NOT looking forward to it.

3. Nafsi work- moving along quickly, trying to get a bunch of things organized, and i'm giving a workhop on March 15th! wish me luck! the grant proposal work is going to start most likely this week,

4. Independent Study aka graffiti research- aka most of my life, enough said there. actually there's been an awesome development just not all these huge pieces are popping up in time for the election- political ones, basically exactly what i'm researching! see below-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iw2DVDENyOA&feature=share
or
http://www.nation.co.ke/News/Writings+on+the+wall+for+greedy+MPs+/-/1056/1359472/-/13tygqz/-/index.html

and i finally found an academic advisor for it- he's being a HUGE help, since he seems to know everyone and their mothers.

5. da group/ friends/ mandela/mandi-- are all wonderful, unfortunately mandela was sick this week I made him go to the doctor (for his first time ever by the way...) so that was an experience, but now he is on the mend all is well.
and MANDI:

Ok so that's that in a summary- i'm sure other things happened I honestly just don't remember with 5 million things running through my head at once.

OK now i wrote everyday in my journal during rural week so i could update you all accordingly, don't worry i didn't forget anything exciting- it just, well, wasn't really exciting.

let me start off by saying: i hate farms. the smell, the animals, the quiet, all of it. I don't mind pooping in a hole, or all the bugs, or not having a mosquito net, or the bucket baths, it's just the farm. agh.

This semester we went to a different part of the country (if you recall I went to Western Kenya, and it was the rainy season), not it;s the hot dry season in Kenya, especially where we were in Ukambani or Kamba Land (a tribe in Kenya). It's basically dessert, and farms. Why? i don't know. but it is. And it is brutally hot, the kind of hot that makes you just want to sleep but you wake up with a stomach ache and all sweaty. but hey, at least it wasn't snowing. I'll take hot and sweaty over snow and cold ANY day. <-- well duh part of why Kenya was an excellent study abroad choice.

Ukambani is MUCH more spread out the cloest house to me was about a 30min walk away, luckily my Baba (host father) has a pikipiki (motor bike). The house I was in was much nicer than in western, they were actualy cement/stone structures with windows stead of a mud house. My family had SO MUCH land, enormous land, a bunch of cows, SO MANY chickens, and about ALL of the goats I've ever seen. The family harvested maize and beans to sell at the market. they had 4 children 2 in boarding secondary school, and 2 young girls one was 7 the other 10. the grandparents and "househelp" or farm help also lived on the compound.
picta time of where i stayed:

the house