Kisii

I’m living in a town called Kisii in the Nyanza Province, a bit west of Nairobi and not terribly far from Nyanza Lake/Lake Victoria. I don’t have an address here; few people do. So when taking a piki-piki (motorcycle) home, I tell them to take me to the “Chief’s camp” on my corner and walk about a minute from there. If you’re picturing little huts and a village chief wearing a cloth skirt or something, stop there. It’s a concrete building with a respectable flagpole, and most adults around here dress more professionally than I do.

Kisii is a hilly town with paved roads downtown and everywhere else muddy roads and exposed red soil. There is some beautiful greenery in the center ravine as well as on the hills that skirt town. Chief’s camp is just opposite the ravine, which I walk around on my way into town. I took that walk with Sam yesterday and with John today, joining the endless streams of people who walk on the roads throughout Kenya. Few roads have shoulders and I’ve yet to see a paved sidewalk anywhere, so everyone just crams onto the roads and tries to avoid the crazy drivers - especially the piki-pikis.

There are so many little kids everywhere. They walk in uniformed, staggered packs along the side of the highway in the mornings on their way to school, and they walk alongside their parents in town after school. I’m literally the only white girl in town and Sam is the only white guy, so the kids like to gawk at us and either yell “mzungu!” (foreigner or white person, I’m not sure) or shake hands while asking, “How are you?” They’re cute, but I’m being called mzungu more frequently here than I was called the equivalent farang in Thailand, where white visitors were much more common than in Kisii.

Yesterday Sam and I headed to the grocery store and stopped at a few bus stations near the stage (ridiculously busy lot with matatus en route to nearby towns and Nairobi), and today John and I had lunch at The Nile restaurant before doing some shopping for our training session tomorrow. The Nile was good – I had chicken tikka with chipati, but the best part was its location overlooking an active but not insane intersection in town. I liked being able to sit there and people-watch, which I’ve had surprisingly little opportunity to do so far. Then we walked home, things quieting down with every block away from town and back toward the Chief’s camp. We walked on the muddy edge of the road around the ravine with the harsh sun nearly obscuring my favorite view in town – this lush green valley with its few cows munching away on the grass and a couple women working quietly on their small terraces of crops along the hillside.