Hello friends and family and other loyal supporters!
Cal and Evan here with our first blog posting. We are currently in Homa Bay, Kenya, and saw the waters of Lake Victoria for the first time yesterday! It was very exciting, yet also kind of painful considering we could not touch the water and it was 90 degrees F. For those who don't know (i.e., Cal last year when she was here studying abroad... oops) Lake Victoria has parasites in its water, which can enter through mere contact with skin. So no swimming for Cal or Evan this summer. Regardless, to have seen the water is our first landmark in this summer's journey!
We landed in Nairobi on Monday night (May 28), got a taxi and made our way to Milimani Backpacker's hostel for the night. We woke up Tuesday (May 29) extremely late, extremely jet lagged, and extremely hungry, and made our way downtown Nairobi to figure out some logistics. Nairobi is neither Evan nor my favorite cup of tea (pun entirely intended, considering how much tea we drink here), with all of the crime, traffic, car accidents, and violence. Our time in Nairobi was made volumes better when we arrived at Cal's old host family's house, and had a DELICIOUS dinner, and shared alot of hugs, tears and laughs. For those who know the background story, according to Abby, Cal no longer looks like a boy cat... so cheers!
Wednesday (May 30) we made our first video/experimented with the equipment.Check out our first video here-- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kz-WilFokgs&feature=youtu.be . We also practiced our interview skills with some people around the hostel. Thursday (May 31) we woke up early and were out of the hostel by 7 AM. We hopped on a bus and arrived in Kisii by 4 PM that evening. We saw the coolest lightning/thunderstorm that night! Amazing. Instead of bolts of lightning every few minutes, it was consistent flashes for minutes on end. For dinner this night we ate mangoes and avocado. Yum!
Friday (June 1) we jumped on our first matatu of the summer to head west to Homa Bay, right on Lake Victoria. We found a great place to stay in Homa Bay that had a balcony, its own private stairwell, lots of air flow, cheap. But we soon discovered a hornets nest accompanied by... what do you know, hornets! So we kindly requested to change rooms. It was partially successful, considering we got another room. Although despite Evan's exquisite charades, we're pretty sure that the caretaker of the hostel thought we wanted to move because of mosquitoes. Oh well. Our second room also had hornets nest, but Cal made sure they were dead by slamming Evan's didgeridoo on them.
Today Saturday (June 2) we are writing this blog! And have played cribbage for maybe three hours. As soon as we get video one uploaded we hope to dive into our first series of interviews at the fish market. So until next time!
C&E
