The Ol' Kenyan Boot

Sorry about the delay in this blog, I wanted to surprise a number of people first. But in essense, this blog states that I am now back in the ol' Seattle area. That's right, Kenya decided they didn't want me, or rather, that it was best if I wasn't around in case things got worse. Surprise!

Arrived back home last Sunday to be exact, Feb 2nd I do believe. Surprised my parents and brother rather well as they didn't know I was coming back. Dan and Dad just stared at me for a couple seconds with a good look on their faces, Mom naturally had some tears and complained about how skinny I was (I think that was the first thing she said!)

Story:
Jan 31st
So, this may seem a bit sudden, and it seems that way because it is. From my being notified that we were leaving to arriving back home was a span of about 100 hours. Jan 31st started out as a normal day, and I was in the orchard with some of the boys working with a hoe around the trees. We were working some cow manure into the ground for fertilizer. Steve, a German gent, came by and picked me up in the Tractor saying "we're leaving this weekend", which was news to me. Within a couple hours "we're leaving this weekend" turned into "volunteers leaving tomorrow" to "all Westerners leaving tomorrow" to "get ready tonight, you got 1/2 hour". What we ended up doing was riding to a ministry (DOM: Disciples of Mercy) in Kisumu with a military guard. Not armored vehicles or anything, just a couple guys in camo with rifles; rifles meaning guns with 2inch bullets. Just on the outskirts of Kisumu we switched vehicles to a DOM van with no guard and entered Kisumu. We switched as a road block was set up and I guess the DOM van was allowed to pass back and forth. The primary reason for the fast exodus was because a 2nd Member of Parliament was killed within 36 hours of the first one. The Farm manager was in Kisumu when the news hit and the people in Kisumu weren't too fond of hearing that a second MP of theirs was killed. Kisumu wasn't the best place to be. I guess within 5 minutes of the news hitting, Kisumu had road blocks everywhere and more burning. Given that there's a decent chance that the MPs were killed for political reasons, and that it was unknown if more were going to be killed; it was decided that we should leave while we can. Thankfully, it appears that things haven't gotten much worse, and no more opposition MPs have been killed, but Kenya is still in turmoil.

Feb 1st:
So we stayed the night at the DOM compound and the next morning around 5:45, under cover of darkness, bogarted it over to the Kisumu airport. From Kisumu, we took a half hour flight to Nairobi where the others got flights out. Unfortunately, as Seattle is asleep when I'm awake, and awake when I'm asleep, I wasn't able to get a ticket for that same day and ticket changing was somewhat difficult (send an email one day, get reply back next day kinda thing). The travel agency was thankfully very flexible and got me a ticket for Feb 2nd, in the evening. I got a ride to a 20dollar a night hotel in the city center and spent a couple hours before dark in the city center. I had a rough night though. I went to bed around 9:30, a little early, but not to abnormal of a bed time for me while in Kenya, but only slept till 12:30 and was awake till 5 when I fell asleep again till 7. Those 4.5 hours my mind was awake and racing I couldn't fall asleep again no matter what. Not like I had anything else to do either so I was bored out of my mind as well. Sucked hardcore.

Feb 2nd:
Spent the morning in the city as well, enjoyed some good city food, talked to some of the local shop owners about politics and all that jazz. Funny, people always wanna know how America does democracy and how come we aren't ours isn't corrupt like their government is. I think my response to that was "American democracy is corrupt as well, and we rig elections too, but we do with with style so the people don't care so much". Which is true and sad, but I still thought it was ironically humorous. I got a ride back to the airport around 11 and confirmed that my tickets existed, then had to sit around till the 6:10pm flight. I got their so early, because I wasn't sure at this point of I was actually 'on' the 6:10 flight, and if I wasn't, I wanted time to get on it.

So, only a short 2 hour flight to Ethiopia with a 2hour layover and I was on my way back to the states. Granted, from Feb 2nd, 6:10pm Nairobi time to Feb 3rd, 3:45pm Seattle time is 32.5 hours, which is a lot of time on an airplane. A LOT! Sucky flight, bored out of my mind most of the time and as I couldn't sleep (can't sleep much on an airplane) I was also sleep deprived which meant mentally unstable. Thank God for movies. But still, on a 32.5 hour flight, the 3 movies I watched only account for 15% of the time, which is too small. Anywhoo, I'm relieved to be home and no longer crammed on a plane.

Now Back Home:
Since this will get read by a decent (I think) number of people, I'll take this chance to also throw out that I will shortly be looking for a place to stay again. If anyone knows of a place that has a garage or workspace that I could also rent, let me know. I'm very keen on finding a place that allows me to work on little pet projects. Everything else is pretty much negotiable (room size, roommates type, blah blah), heck, I don't even care if I gotta sleep in the garage/workshop. While that's probably not legal, but I won't tell if you won't tell! :-) As for me as a roommate, I can be a hermit a majority of the time, quiet, clean, and all that. If you need a reference, with my ex-roommates permission, I will give out his contact info to those that ask.

Also, I got my old phone back up and running. Same number and all.

Oh, and yes, it's friggin' cold here. but now after about a week I'm starting to re-adapt to it. but those first few days were pretty harsh, I thought I couldn't get warm. In fact, I was only really warm after a scalding shower, in which, like a snake, I would absorb heat energy with which I would stay warm for about an hour after words and then freeze again.