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Published: April 26th 2007
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Beach
The very lovely beach we went to on Sunday... Yo homies,
Sup in Oz? I heard it rained the other day. It’s either super hot or bucketing down over here. I wish I could send some of the rain your way. I have attached a couple of pictures so you can see how much there is. I had to wade through some enormous puddles to get to the orphanage yesterday because the whole street was flooded.
Well I have been hanging out at the orphanage this week (if anyone is interested, I think the website is www.upendo.co.uk or something along those lines. There are plenty of pictures on this site). The kids are great and I am having a really good time so far. I am getting used to kicking or throwing balls, while two or three kids are hanging off me and another half a dozen are trying to do my hair. They also like to touch my skin and clean my feet when they get filthy from playing soccer in the dirt. The kids range from about 5-15 years old and come to the orphanage everyday except Sunday. They all have guardians, so don’t sleep at the orphanage. Yesterday we did running races and even the
Beach
Beach again teachers and cooks got involved. It was very amusing to see 60+ year old women racing the kids. They could run pretty fast too!!
On a completely different note, I was walking home the other day and I passed a couple of girls, one of whom said to me, ‘Jambo! You are very smart!’ (I was very tempted to reply with, ‘damn right I am!’) I thought this was a bizarre comment from someone I’d never met, but clearly I look very intelligent 😉 so I was happy to accept the compliment.
We seem to be quite an attraction to the locals who welcome us over and over again. They also think we will buy everything they offer us and therefore try to lure us into their shops or tempt us to ‘taste the fruits of Kenya’.
On the topic of food, we have great breakfasts over here, although Katherine doesn’t seem to appreciate them as much as me. They are enormous, and consist of eggs, toast, sausage, a plate of fruit (watermelon, pineapple, mango, banana, etc.), juice and tea. Breakfast is also accompanied by some lovely music, usually Bob Marley or various African artists, who sing very amusing love
Alex
One of the alexes songs. The choruses to two of my favourites so far go as follows:
-You are my African queen, the girl of my dreams, you are my African queen, you make my heart ding-a-ling-a-ling-a-ling-a-ling. (Katherine, being as deaf as she is, thought it was ‘you are my African peach!’)
And:
-It makes me so happy to get very close to you.
Sticking with the musical theme, Katherine and I decided we’d have an outing at the beach last Sunday (very beautiful beach, see attached pictures) and ended up hanging out in the water with a group of boys aged 9-15. They were all brothers from another mother…They really were, I’m not just saying that because I like that expression - there were seven of them and they had two mothers, but the same father. Oddly enough, two of them were called Alex. I’m not sure what their mothers were thinking! But anyway, point of the story was that they loved rap music and one of them in particular did lots of rapping for us. For some reason, all of these raps ended in ‘I love you’. I’m not sure if that was part of the song, or he just really liked
The boys
The boys at the beach...look out for the fish necklace us. Anyway, their favourite artists were r.kelly, 50 cent, nelly and snoop dogg. They didn’t, however, know of MC Hammer, much to our disappointment, but we did a quick rendition of ‘U Can’t Touch This’, more for our benefit than theirs. One of the boys, called Friday, was catching fish and stringing them onto some reed to make a fish necklace. You might be able to see it in the photos.
Here are some interesting facts which I have observed so far:
-All Kenyan babies seem to be forced to wear enormous beanies on their heads, despite the fact that it is four hundred degrees. I’m not sure of the reason behind this, but will endeavour to find out.
-1 litre of beer costs us less than $3 Australian…cheers!
-On our way to the beach the other day we passed a very amusing sign in the driveway to one house. It read: Dogville. Population 18 (see attached photo).
-Little three-wheeled vehicles called tuk tuks (they are basically very cheap taxis) are one of the main forms of transport. They are named funny things like Anastasia II and 100% 4 U.
-Soap operas are exactly the same all over the world.
The boys
Boys again Sometimes, when we have our dinner in the restaurant attached to our accommodation, we watch a South African soap opera which you could be excused for thinking was Bold and the Beautiful. The characters look exactly the same and I think they’re stolen all the plotlines. My favourite character in this show is one who looks like Voldemort out of Harry Potter, he’s mildly scary looking!! They also have some of the same ads on South African TV as on Australian: Brand Power, helping you buy better, for example.
-Nobody over here believes I am 21 years old. The youngest I have been told I look is 10, while the oldest is 17. About 15 seems to be the general consensus.
-Just had our first swahili lesson. we have a really good teacher, so hopefully I'll start picking up some of it soon! Now about to go for a run with some Kenyans, so if you don't hear from me again, it's probably because i died trying to keep up with them.
Ok, that’s about it from me. Hope this has kept you amused for a few minutes. Please let me know of any news…That means you, Elise. And
Dogville
The name probably speaks for itself... anyone else who has any interesting gossip.
Peace out…
Love,
Brig.
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Justin
non-member comment
Nice work on the blogs
Keep them coming Brigid. Although I am getting both sides of most stories, it is interesting to see that you could infact be funnier than Katherine. (Notice I said "could" just to keep things neutral) I hope you are having a great time. Justin.