Pedicures, Parathas & Petting a Cheetah

We decided to do a little weekend trip to Kisumu! Nik and I were extra excited because we heard about all the great Indian food this town had to offer. You can take us out of Gerrard Street, but you can’t take the Gerrard Street out of us (side note: Nik has never actually been to Gerrard Street). We actually had a purpose for this trip: for some reason, Nik’s doctor failed to tell her that it was pretty necessary to get a Yellow Fever shot, and so she strolled into Africa without one. Big fail. So thanks to her doctor, she now had to get a needle in Africa, something none of us wanted to do.

We headed to the Matatu station in Rongo and didn’t have to negotiate very much to secure three front row seats in the Matatu for 350 KSH (about $4.00). Of course, because it’s me, I got into the matatu and literally in less than 10 seconds, a piece of metal shanked me in the leg and I started bleeding. This time Mary took the backseat of being the mother as Nik had already foreshadowed that I would hurt myself and quickly pulled out some Polysporin and a Band-aid. Continuing on, we didn’t realize that we had a stopover in Kisii which took about 45 minutes. There are no timetables that matatus follow, they move when they’re full and they don’t move unless they are PACKED with every seat (plus more) taken. So we waited, and waited, and waited. In that time, I had all kinds of people trying to sell me CDs, fruits, watches and my most favourite, safety pins. How someone makes a living off of just selling safety pins is beyond me, but got a pretty good laugh out of it.

Once we got to Kisumu, our preceptor (who was taking a course in Kisumu) met us and took us to the hospital where Nik had to get her shot. (Danielle: I thought of you when this happened and thought about how much you would’ve hated this had this happened to you).  She took it like a champ after carefully inspecting the sealed package that the needle came out of. We decided that we wanted some lunch and headed to a nearby mall. There are only 2 restaurants in the food court and although different, each have the exact same menu. I got a samosa, fries and a paratha, but Mary was craving butter chicken like no other so Nik decided to split it with her (even though in Rongo, she is a stickler about being “vegetarian”). When the butter chicken came, I laughed so hard because it looked nothing like butter chicken. Nik’s dad who owns an Indian restaurant would have been appalled. This “butter chicken” included dry pieces of chicken with an oil-based curry with some onions thrown in. They had no idea what to do but to eat this chicken. When the bill came, it all made sense. The waiter had heard the order as being “broiler chicken” and brought that instead. HAHAHA. I had no idea what broiler chicken was until that moment.

We had reservations at a place called “Soopa Guest House”. Turned out that the people who were staying in the room before us randomly decided they wanted to stay another night and so the staff just agreed. I went to the front desk to lay the smack down and saw there were about 5 other people in line with the same complaint. Not so “soopa” after all. The guy from Soopa walked around with us for about an hour until we finally found a place; a room with 2 beds and a hot stand-up shower for $3/person/night. Everyone knows how much I love deals so this was just spectacular for me. We decided that Nik got her own bed since she agreed to sleep on a towel since there were only 2 pillows. We’re great at decision making.  We met up with Evance (our preceptor), some of his friends and the two other students (who met us in Kisumu) for a dinner. We ordered their “hummus” which turned out to be chick pea soup. C’est la vie!

The next morning we woke up and headed to a place for breakfast where Mary found a hair in her eggs and I found a dead fly in my soup. The only good thing about that restaurant was meeting these old Indian men who pointed us in the direction of a great Indian restaurant (where we would end up spending most of our time). We then headed to Impala Park which came highly recommended to us. After eating lunch by Lake Victoria (with our Nakumatt lunch), we went to the animal sanctuary. We didn’t think that we would be blown away since we had just come from a great safari, but we decided to check it out anyways. We saw leopards, ostriches and buffaloes. Monkeys were roaming all around the park which was the best. Just when we thought our time at the sanctuary was mediocre at best, a worker at the park offered us the opportunity of a lifetime: for 200 KSH (which I bargained down from 1000 KSH), we could enter the cheetah cage (where they were not on leashes), pet the cheetahs and take pictures. HOW COULD WE NOT. It was lunchtime for the cheetahs but they said we could enter anyways. After entering at a snail’s pace, each of us took turns sitting beside the cheetah and petting it while it was eating its large piece of meat. Also important to note that a second cheetah was also in the cage just roaming freely and we had no idea where it was. As we looked up, we realized that about 50 school children had gathered around to see us hand our lives over to these beasts. After trying to lay my head down on the cheetah’s body and it jumping up, I decided I had enough and we left. Craziness. After that, the worker also led us behind the scenes to where the lioness was chomping down on its lunch. He also let us pet the lion (but we were on the outside this time) and it was not very happy. After a few growls (and pictures), we decided our death wish was over and left. **Please note that after telling our moms this story, Nik and I got some verbal lashings**.

After the park, we went to another mall where we somehow managed to get pedicures for $5 and the best 25-minute massage of my life for $2. Oh to live the hard life. Then went to the “Super Nakumatt” where I managed to buy a lifetime’s supply of Mr. Noodles and cookies. Excellent. After that we headed to Haandi, the Indian restaurant recommended to us. The food was insane and I ordered pretty much everything on the menu including some amazing pappadums. They told us that they were having a South Indian lunch buffet the next day for $5/person and we told them to count us in. When we got home/to our room, I was so full that I literally couldn’t move to the next room to watch our soap opera, so while Mary and Nik watched, I took a fat nap. Then we went to sleep, and woke up the next morning just in time to pack and head to the lunch buffet. After a large helping of masala dosas, idlys and jalebi, we went to the Kisumu market (one of the largest in Kenya) and left for home. It was a great weekend and on the way home, the matatu driver was trying to get people into the matatu by selling them on the fact that “muzungus were in there and they could practice English with us”. This place never fails to amaze me.

Thanks for reading everyone!

Love & Masala Dosas,

Shahla

Are We Really Spending Our Weekend On A Safari?

We got to spend our weekend hanging out with lions? Really? We couldn’t believe it either. We had originally planned for our safari to happen after our trip, but somehow Mr. Okidi knew someone who was going to hook us up with an entire weekend safari for $200! We couldn’t turn it down.

Our driver Gabby, one of the nicest people I’ve ever met picked us up at 4 a.m. all ready to go. I was so happy I was feeling better for the 7-hour drive ahead of us. We went through Kisii and Narok to get to Masai Mara, and it was one of the bumpiest rides ever. Luckily, none of us had time to eat breakfast so early in the morning so we were keeping the lack of food down. Gabby picked up about 8 bags of coal on the way and threw them in the back of the truck. Apparently it’s cheaper to buy the coal in Masai Mara and sell it in Rongo. Unfortunately for us, we had to sit with those bags of coal for the entire weekend and by the end of it, my bright neon shirt was literally black.

We decided to do a camping safari instead of stay in the lodges, more for the cost-factor as opposed to the adventure factor, but it all worked out. We got to our site and realized that this was no white-style camping we were used to back home, we actually got three beds, a hot shower and an actual toilet (haven’t used one of those in a few weeks)! After having our lunch (consisting of spaghetti and bean curry), we headed out on our first game drive. We were told that the animals we probably wanted to see the most would be rare sightings and to not get our hopes up. We did anyways.

Here’s what we saw on Day One:

·         Gazelles - these animals are beautiful in person with their curved and short horns. We saw them everywhere and they made me smile every single time.

·         Zebras - I asked Gabby at the beginning of our journey, “Hey Gabby, will we see any zebras?”. Haha. We saw literally thousands of them and they are so cute. Males usually have the jet black stripes while females and babies have more brownish-coloured stripes. We loved that the zebras stood in pairs facing one another. We asked why this was and it was to keep one another cool. The zebras also wag their tail constantly to keep the flies away from them. So cute.

·         Giraffes - We saw these in Nairobi at the park but you can never get enough of these regal creatures, especially in their natural habitat. The “Masai Giraffes” are more brownish in colour, especially on their patches.

·         Elephants - We saw so many and all with their tusks intact, which was so nice to see considering none of the ones at the orphanage had them.

·         LIONS!!!! Ahh we couldn’t believe our luck when we saw the lions. There were a number of vehicles gathered all around one spot, and we realized that something big was happening. Gabby took us there and we were just so shocked to see three huge, sleeping lions. There was so much noise but none of them awoke. We were literally metres from them.

·         Black Rhino - Our guide David (who apparently told us he is in the Lonely Planet) told us that we were so lucky to see one of these since they are one of the rarest creatures.

·         Wildebeests - There are hundreds of thousands of these and these are the most sought after creatures by the lions.

·         Buffaloes - Nikita and I busted out a little “Buffalo Soldier” when we saw them. They look like they should be in Medieval Times with their huge headpieces.  

We decided that we really wanted to go to a Masai Village to see how they really live. We managed to negotiate the price to almost nothing (not shocking to those who know how much I love to bargain).  We were invited into their village where a young man by the name of John explained to us the Masai ways. He explained to us that the Masai only survive on three things; 1) meat 2) milk 3) the blood of animals. No wonder they were all so skinny, they never have to worry about cutting down on their carbs! John was 18 years old and told us that soon he was going to become a true “Masai warrior”. We asked him what this meant and he told us that soon enough he would have to go into the Mara for 40 days and 40 nights and bring back the head of a lion. Once he does this, he will be considered a true warrior. It actually made us cringe. We also found out that the men are responsible for herding the cows and finding food while the women are responsible for cooking and building houses. The chief of the village is 81 years old and in a couple of months will be marrying his 8^th wife, who is 19 years old. The wives usually come from other villages since polygamy is very common and they don’t want to marry anyone who is related to them. Pretty forward thinking I thought for a culture whose values are quite old in their ways. We got to see the chief’s house and met many children in the village. Then we were brought to the place where they sell all their beaded items. We were pretty much harassed but I decided to hold off and buy things off the Masai on the street since I knew I could bargain much more. We also got to hold little goats and lambs, and couldn’t help but scream out when Mary carried one, “Mary had a little lamb”. Haaaa!

We had dinner and called it a night since we were exhausted. We forgot how cold it gets and woke up the next morning FREEZING. Nikita took at least an extra 15 minutes to get herself going since she was so cold. We headed off for our next game drive at 6 a.m. hoping that we still had some of the same luck from the previous day. We saw the black rhino again, but the best part of the morning was SEEING A LION EATING A WILDEBEEST. It was actually insane. Seeing the lion just ripping the wildebeest apart and all the blood dripping down its face and chin was so surreal. We stayed for a good 20 minutes before leaving so that other cars could have a chance to see what was going on. As we started driving again we saw a cheetah (also a rarity) AND a lioness just on the prowl in front of our car. We headed to the Mara river to see the wildebeest migration. We got lucky in that we were there the right time of the year. There were literally hundreds of thousands of wildebeests congregated in one area ready to start their way across the river. We looked into the river and saw SO many hippos and crocodiles. David told us that in all the years, no man had ever made it across the river alive although there have been many, many attempts. 

We got back at about 3 p.m. had lunch and started our journey back. What an amazing weekend. And the best part is, in a few weeks, we get to do it all again in Nakuru!

Hope everyone is well! Thank you for reading!!

Love,

Shahla

When All You Want Is A Little Bit of Home...

I guess I win. I was the first to get sick out of all of us here. I thought that it might happen, but not during our first week. During the middle of the day yesterday, I started feeling a bit nauseous. After seeing a bunch of clients in the community, I thought I had shaken it because I felt much better. But when I got home, my stomach was killing me and I felt nauseous again. I couldn’t bring myself to have dinner and had a piece of bread and a granola bar so that I could at least have somewhat of a full stomach to take my malaria pill. Unfortunately, that didn’t work and instead I, for lack of a better term threw up. When you’re at home, you’re used to running to the bathroom and your mom and dad hearing you and coming to ask you if you were okay. Everyone was great here, but I’m sure you can all agree with me when I say that when you’re sick, there’s no place like home. I felt much better after the first time however, whatever I had wasn’t done with me. I was up all night, getting the chills and fever, wondering if I had typhoid or malaria. I called my parents in the middle of the night just to cry a little more and decided when I woke up that I wasn’t going to placement. I slept all day and as I am writing this, it is evening and I feel much, much, much better. I think that I may have had some sort of heatstroke and my malaria pills have warned that taking these specific ones can make you extremely sensitive to the sun. I’ve learned my lesson and I will be staying out of the sun, wearing a hat and drinking lots and lots of water. I can’t tell you how happy it makes me that I’m feeling better because we had a safari booked for this weekend. I’m not sure what I should be most worried about this weekend, getting sick again or getting eaten by a lion ;)

Now that I’ve whined a little bit, let me update you on our awesome placement. Because Monday was an orientation day and I missed today, I’ve had three full days of awesomeness. I can’t really begin to describe what it feels like to be casting a child’s foot while 7 cows look on, or when you have 18 kids from the village all coming to one house to witness an initial assessment. There’s a bit of a difference here when it comes to confidentiality…haha

Here are some of the clients we saw this week

1) A two year old girl who was extremely hypotonic with little to no trunk or head control. The grandmother of the pregnant girl tried to make her abort the child even though she knew she was three months pregnant.

2)      2) A home visit to a girl who had club foot and needed to be casted after surgery. The original plaster that was used to cast her expired in 2006 and therefore needed to be re-casted.

3)      3) An older woman around 80 years old who was a double amputee. We were doing a follow-up visit to teach her how to use her crutches. They harvested tons of peanuts and it is common during home visits that we are provided with some sort of snack by the family. In addition, this family had tons of avocado trees and one of the grandsons climbed the tree to get us 15 avocados!

4)      4) A grandma who lived with her granddaughter since the child’s parents had passed away. The grandmother is suffering from chronic heart failure and requires a great deal of energy just to move. Her granddaughter is severely disabled and lies in her bed all day. The grandmother stated that she was concerned that if something happened to her, her granddaughter would just “rot away” but didn’t want her to be taken away because she would die of loneliness. No other family members were willing to help out by taking the granddaughter in.

5)      5) We went to a school for children with mental illness. These children were so loving and welcoming and many of them loved that we would just sit down and talk to them. One of the saddest cases here was a girl who was approaching the age of 19 but had been locked away in a room by her parents for the first 18 years of her life. She exhibited extremely violent and aggressive behaviours but when we approached her was more than welcoming and even let us take a picture of her. ** On a side note, kids LOVE when we take pictures of them which is great for me because we all know how much I love to (although I think Nikita is becoming more camera-happy than I am). As soon as we take the picture, they want to see it on our camera and then they all get in a circle and giggle. It’s pretty amazing.**

We still get chased on a daily basis by young children shouting “MUZUNGU” at us. I don’t think it will ever get old. It’s going to be weird to come back to Canada and have an actual name.

When we look at client names, it shocked us that the majority of the children had similar last names. We couldn’t figure it out until the physiotherapy students who have been here for a few weeks explained it to us. Get this: Many children are given last names depending on the time of day they were born. So:

	GIRL	BOY
A.M.	Akinyi	Okinyi
MID-DAY	Adhiambo	Odhiambo
NIGHT	Atiano	Otiano

After placement, our evening consists of journaling, reading, eating dinner and then watching “Soy Tu Deuno”, the most ridiculous Spanish-English dubbed soap opera. It’s so bad it’s good.

We’ll be leaving for our safari at 4am Saturday morning so that we get there in time to see a game drive at night. We’ll be camping out instead of staying in a lodge. Wish me luck on the 7 hour car ride it takes to get there!

Take care everyone :)

Love,

Shahla

Toileting & Showering 101

Hi Everyone!!!

We’ve finally  arrived in Rongo, where we will be staying for the next 8 weeks! Mr. Okidi (our dad for the next 8 weeks and also the clinic manager) picked us up from the bus station. It was about a 10 minute drive to his and now our house! We met his wife Perez, who is a lovely, lovely lady. She welcomed us with open arms and called us her daughters :) We also met Masi who is their daughter. She was very nice and talked to us for quite some time. Chris, their son lives in a separate complex on the same property with his wife or “committed partner” who is pregnant and expecting their first child.  We just found out that the baby will be due in the next few days or so which is quite exciting!

The Okidis have a number of businesses/ways they generate income; in addition to taking students (income generating due to the fact that we have to pay a fee), they also have a store which sells food and internet minutes, a bricklaying business, a farm and they own property. We got a tour of their compound. The main house is cozy and welcoming and has four bedrooms. Mr. & Mrs. Okidi use one of the rooms, and currently two University of Alberta students are occupying two others. Therefore, since there were three of us, we were given the outside “house”, I say that in quotations because it is nothing like a shack but more of cement walls which have three beds and a separate room for toileting AND showering (we’ll get to that later). As we first entered our “house”, our jaws dropped. It was probably at that moment that we realized that we were no longer in the comfort of home or even Nairobi, but we had arrived in rural Africa. There were bugs and spiders everywhere, not very appealing to Nikita whom I didn’t realize was THIS petrified of bugs. The Okidis told us that the University of Alberta students were finished their placement in two weeks and after that we could move into the main house. That little bit of comfort made us all suck it up and take this living experience as just that, an experience.

On a side note since I haven’t commented on the weather, Mary, Nikita and I realized that rule number one is that your parents are always right. All of them told us that it would be chilly at night and that it would rain, yet none of us believed them. So equipped with some shorts, capris, t-shirts and only two sweatshirts each, we now realize that we packed more for our Europe travels as oppose to our 9-week African adventure. It rains, no pours here at least once a day, usually around 6pm for about 25 minutes. In the room that I’m sleeping in, there is a leak in the roof which is just lovely…luckily I don’t sleep until 9pm haha…

I mentioned to Perez as soon as I got here that I was vegetarian because during our bus ride over here, we saw numerous windows that had big slabs of beef just hanging in the window with flies buzzing all around. And in our compound just outside our door, we have 5 cows and a number of chickens just walking around. There’s no way I could eat that…and since fish is out of the question in Canada, I just can’t bring myself to eat it here…Our first few meals have been pretty decent as Perez makes some good vegetable dishes. Their main vegetable, kale, is not very tasty. We have a lemon drink which we have to dilute with water. So far, none of us have been sick or have had any kind of adverse reactions to the food. My malaria pills have been going down much better which makes me very happy!

So for all of you who have been to Africa before and have visited family, going pee in a hole and showering with a bucket is no big deal. I can’t remember the last time I’ve had to do this so it was quite a learning experience for me.

On our bus ride from Nairobi to Rongo, the real toilets started disappearing and the holes starting appearing. I had to get lessons from Nikita and Mary because I forgot how to “pop a squat”. Many of the bathrooms don’t have toilet paper here, so we asked the hotel in Nairobi to give us a few extra rolls to take with us. There is also no running water anywhere nearby, so hand sanitizer is key! Positioning yourself over the hole is important so as to not miss and go on the floor (I MAY have had one accident). In our house here, one of the stalls has a toilet bowl with no seat. It takes more leg muscles to squat over a toilet with no seat as opposed to a hole on the ground. We’ve gotten pretty used it to now that it’s our fifth day, but there are many more days to come.

Showering is another story. For all the “muzungus” reading this blog, let me explain. In the shower stall, there is a bench and a small tub. Outside of the stall in the main hallway, we have a huge vat full of cold (non-drinkable water). Perez heats water for us which goes in another container. We take some of the hot water and fill it inside the tub in the stall. Then we take as much cold water as necessary to come to a temperature which is right for us. Then you soap and shampoo and use a little jug to scoop the water and throw it on you. The key here is to ration your water so that you have enough to wash out the soap, shampoo and conditioner. 

And there you have it folks, toileting and showering in rural Kenya.

We also had our first day of placement which was the same as it would be back at home, orientation on the first day. The clinic is quite big and has various equipment and supplies to use although many of them are worn out and limited in nature. We met our preceptor, Evance, who is 26 years old and graduated with a four-year undergraduate degree. He is extremely nice and took us on a walking tour of Rongo which lasted 2 hours! He told us that “in the clinic he is our boss, but outside of the clinic he is our friend”. Perfect!

We had heard some rumours, but today we met Mr. Okidi’s second wife who is much, much younger. Mr. Okidi must be about 60 - 65 and his second wife is about 30. He has three kids with his second wife who are 8, 3 and 1.5! It was pretty interesting to see the interaction between them. It was very limited with Mr. Okidi playing with his children most of the time. His second wife, Maureen was very nice and cooked us lunch (chicken and rice with carrots) and gave us Fanta which we loved!

I don’t know if I’ve missed anything, but you can leave questions in the comments section and I’ll do my best to respond. And Alex, yes, you can adopt the elephants but it’s a long process. We’ll update you when we get home :)

And, if anyone feels like making an international call, our number is 254-787-848-171

Thanks for reading!

Love,
Shahla

Elephants and Giraffes and Camels, oh my!

Hello!!

What a day!! I've never seen so many animals in their natural habitat!

Our day started with a visit to the the David Shelrick Wildlife Trust we we got to hang out with orphaned baby elephants. Most of these elephants have been victims of human warfare, and their stories were incredibly sad to hear. The youngest elephant at the orphanage was only 3 months old. He had been at the orphanage for only three days after being rescued from a human machete attack. It gave you a pure sense of joy to see these larger than life animals just running around and interacting with all the people. The people who run the orphanage told us that each elephant has a designated caretaker 24 hours a day, as the elephants are lacking nutrients and need to be fed milk every three hours. One of my favourite things about this part of the day was our drive from the orphanage to the main road where monkeys and baboons were everywhere. Monkeys are my most favourite animal and I was in love the moment I saw them :)

From the elephant orphanage we headed to the Giraffe Park which we have all been eagerly waiting to see after having heard about it almost 8 months before. Nikita almost died when she saw the giraffes which are her favourite animals. You pay less than $3 Canadian dollars to get in but the experience was worth much, much more. The giraffes literally come over your shoulder and grab food from your hand. You can also put food in your mouth and they will come and give you a big giraffe kiss while grabbing the food from your mouth. You can help but laugh even though there is copious amounts of giraffe slobber all over your lips!

After the giraffe park we went to the Crocodile and Ostrich Park (although we only saw one ostrich). The workers are actually crazy and jump into the pit of crocodiles and aggravate them in order to put on a better show for the crowd. We got to hold baby alligators, luckily with all of us making it out alive ;) There were also turtles nearby and I immediately thought of my friend Kelly who had frolicked with turtles a couple of weeks back ;) We also got to ride a camel and made our driver for the day our paparazzi so we could get some good shots! There were over 1000 school kids at the park and it got a little awkward after a while as throughout our 10-minute camel ride we had 5-year olds pointing and shouting "muzungu, muzungu"!

I'll try and get some pictures up, but it's 2am here and we have to catch a 9-hour bus ride to Homa Bay in 5 hours! Nairobi has been tons of fun, but all three of us know that our real adventure begins now :)

Thanks for letting me ramble!

Love,

Shahla