Sidewalks, Rugby, and Typhoid?

This will be my last week in Nairobi. One week from today I leave for Kisumu to begin my internship!

This weekend was great! On Friday I went to a lecture at the University of Nairobi, given my Enrique Penalosa, former mayor of Bogota, Columbia. He was advocating public/green space in cities and lectured on its importance for safety, to help reduce class stratification, as better investments than highway infrastructure, etc. He criticized Nairobi for its startling lack of pedestrian/bike space. I mean sidewalks here, if you can find one, are no wider than 3 feet and now that El Nino has come, are many times impassable.

El Nino has come, my host family told me today. The short rains have started and come intermittently throughout the day- it will pour for like 15 minutes and then stop. Our underground water tank is finally starting to fill back up I guess. We have had one day of running water since I left for Tanzania...so like a little over a month on straight bucket bathes now. I am craving the chance to wash my hair under running water.

On Saturday I worked a little bit on 3 big papers I have due in December, they want us to get a good jump on them before we leave for our internships. We went to the U library after the lecture and they had some good sources- though its still catalog cards there and we cant check anything out as visitors, and most books are pre-1990...but we'll make do.
Then out for Chinese food to change up the pace a little bit. We sat at a window table in the Hong Kong restaurant downtown and older British men kept walking in one at a time and staring at our table. The 4th guy turned to us and said something to the effect of "a bevy of beauties has taken our regular spot!" I guess we overtook the usual British-Chinese Friday afternoon dinner in Nairobi. The food was great.
Friday afternoon I went home to learn how to make Chapati- the best flat bread ever, so now I can make it at home- hopefully.

On Saturday we decided it was time for a little Americana so we got together to watch I Love You Man and make grilled cheese (we literally never eat cheese here, so all of us have been craving it.) After the relaxing afternoon we went out to the Harlequin Rugby Club Bar. The rugby team won their game that day and are going to the final next weekend, so they were all in a great mood! It was great conversation and the tables outside were really nice so we just talked to rugby players all night and had samosas (deep fried triangle shaped appetizer-like snack with either veggies or meat).

And today its been pouring on and off all day. I may trek to the cafe to meet a few others and study for our Swahili final, its on Wednesday.

However it is also a bit like Oregon Trail over here: one of our friends, James, has typhoid, maybe. The doc said James will be better within the week so hopefully that is the case. We seem to be dropping like flies, someone new is sick almost everyday. Just colds, and more sinus infections though, so I hope I can avoid getting sick again.

Oh also, I finished The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver and highly recommend it. or try Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight by Fuller if you're looking for another read.

Hope all is well in the states, love and miss you all!