Dust and Family Bonding

The dust here is overwhelming. Because of the drought and the natural end of the dry season, the dust has been quite a nuisance these last two weeks.
My host family and I all managed to come down with something, they attributed it to the dust, but I had a fever on Tuesday night so I spent a good portion of Wednesday afternoon in Urgent Care. Don't worry though, they said its just a sinus infection, not malaria or anything, so I started antibiotics and will hopefully break this cold-feeling soon.

As for the health care system, my experience was relatively inexpensive- about $14 to register and see a doctor, $12 for a blood test, and $25 dollars for antibiotics- so not too bad overall. And the facility was great, basically the same as Southdale, and much more organized and efficient that the Man Community Clinic or Logan County Hospital (but we've all heard those logan county stories...). So clearly it falls into the range of acceptable American facilities, though I'd question whether the Logan facilities should, or if they just do because no one seems to notice (just an observation I thought I'd voice).

Other than the sinus stuff this week has been good. We have decided to play soccer on Mondays and Wednesdays, and when we got to class on Monday one of the MSID staff said he had set up a match for us. It was against a Kibera high school girls team (Kibera is the biggest slum in Kenya). We arrived in mix-matched clothes, thankfully one of my friends had sweats I could wear as I only had a skirt, though the pants were green and my shirt was red so I think I looked pretty ridiculous on the field. It was a dirt field, nicer than the one we've been playing on, with goals constructed from tree trunks. Out of nowhere a referee showed up and we realized this was the real deal. It was a lot of fun, I scored once on a great pass, and we won 7-3. The girls were really good though, we had two of our program staff play on our team and without them I don't know if we could have beaten them. It was great though, and we are playing them again on Wednesday.

On Monday night I got home and my host mom was home (she's usually at work) so it was great to spend time with her. And Tracy (my 6 year old host sister) was being so goofy that night that we all ended up on the floor laughing after a competition to see who could jump the highest and touch the ceiling. The dust is so bad that I don't spend much time extra time outside because walking 45 minutes each way to school on Ngong Road and playing on a dirt soccer field are about all my system can handle on the dust count.

Tuesday was class again, and I found myself sketching up plans for the chicken coop my internship wants me to build. However, these plans looked more like a room addition than anything and would probably be a bit overkill for chickens, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.

This coming Monday is a national holiday, the end of Ramadan, so we do not have classes. A group of decided to travel to the coastal city of Mombasa. It is supposed to be hot and muggy, but I'm very excited for the beach. We are taking the bus and arriving Saturday morning. We've rented a few small cottages on the beach and are all pretty excited about a weekend away. We'll arrive back in Nairobi on Tuesday morning and probably head straight to class. Other groups of students are traveling to Mt. Kenya and a group wanted to go to Uganda, but their trip was canceled because of violence.

A note on cattle in the city: we are learning a lot about the impacts of colonization as well as seeing it everyday. The area Nairobi is in used to be occupied by the Maasai. The Maasai still rely on cattle and the market and slaughterhouses are a few miles further out of town than my neighborhood. The location of these and the consequences of the drought bring herds of cattle into town to graze on their way down Ngong Road. The herds also find their way into the neighborhood and it is not uncommon for us to walk along side them on our way to school.

Ngong Road runs from the city center, downtown, past the small university where we have class, intersects Suna Road and continues out of town. I live off Suna Road in Jamhuri, Suna is dotted with vendors and we usually but fruit on the way to school (yep. mom and dad, I love bananas again), then we turn onto Ngong and pass a few grocery stores, Java- our favorite coffee shop, and many other stores. I don't mind the walk to school, though hot, it is always in good company which I enjoy.