I Saw Hippos

I've been having a lot of fun the past few days.

First off, here's that cricket I mentioned. Here it is alive.

Here it is dead.

Also, to get all the pictures of dead stuff out of the way, here are a bunch of dead fish that served as bait, a dead mouse, and a dead lizard.

Oh, and speaking of dead stuff, here's the guy that told me you die if you swallow the sugar cane fibers.
Friday (Sept. 29) most of my team took the day off sine they were working consecutive Saturdays, but I went out with Blasto and Esther. We went to a secondary school, and while they were each interviewing respondents I read the school library's HIV/AIDS literature for kicks. Here's what I found.

In addition to the Sugar Daddies thing being a "wow, this is not the rich white people world I'm used to" moment, it also saddened me that the literature had absolutely no mention of condoms. Then we went to a primary school out in the sticks. The roads are getting worse thanks to it being the short rainy season, so I was about to puke by the time we got there, but it was lunch-time, so while Esther interviewed the one girl we were looking for, I played barefoot soccer with a bunch of kids using a ball made of grocery bags and rope.

Once lunch was over, the class 8 teacher had me come and introduce myself. My usual impromptu brilliance failed me, so I told them that California was in the western part of the US and Americans called football soccer. This is what their school looked like.

For some reason I was fascinated that they used an old wheel as the school bell.

Then I went to Kisumu for the weekend. It's Kenya's 3rd biggest city, on Lake Victoria, and a little over 2 hours away by matatu. I registered for the Nairobi marathon, went to Hippo Point in Dunga, saw a bunch of hippos, took a nap, and paid a dude to take me out in a boat and show me the birds. I also walked around the city's port and saw a bunch of rusty boats that've practically become beached thanks to an invasive exotic hyacinth and another hippo.

The boat
Kingfishers

African Fish Eagles

Gears on the Dock

Stream Flowing to the Lake

Hippo

I closed out the weekend by catching the last few minutes of church. The tall dude totally reminds me of a black, not-creepy Michael Jackson.

Finally, this is the view out my front door at the crapper and one of the two abandoned vehicles in the yard during the typical afternoon drenching. Sometime it's fun to run during it, sometimes the hail is too painful.

Peace,

Garret