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Gazebo at the back of our place
Check out this view. Who's up for a picnic? G'day troops! Hope you're all well and not missing us too much! The title of this blog refers to my new name here - a tuk tuk driver (the driver of my new favourite tuk tuk, which is called "Awsome love of Jesus" and, yes, I know that's not how you spell awesome) thought that I said my name was 'One-and-a-half' when I told him it was Katherine. And, it seems the owner of the guesthouse was convinced my name was 'Owell. Lots of Kenyans are known by their surnames, so we thought he was referring to us both as Howell, but when he made out our receipt for payment to Owell/Brigid, we realised we were wrong...
The wet season is well and truly in force here. It has been raining at night for a couple of weeks, but the last few days this has extended to include a lot of the day as well. The only real dry time seems to be around lunch time. I've honestly never seen so much rain. The other day I thought I could chance riding to work as the sky seemed to have turned blue, but halfway there it was on again.
Villa Rita
I'm not sure who Rita is, but her place is tops. By the time I arrived at work I was a drowned rat, with no change of clothes. I think this is quite possibly the only time in this whole trip that I will curse air conditioning, but I spent the next couple of hours shivering in the lab. Rather odd. The heat also seems to have died down a bit in general, although it can still be quite muggy during the day. Sleeping at night is now so much more pleasant....
So, the news of the week is that we have a place to live. We're house sitting for a german guy who works in the lab in Kilifi for 6 months of the year, and Germany the rest. We have this place until the end of July, so will have to find somewhere else for the rest of the time. But, it's great to have somewhere of our own for now. Appropriate (ie furnished and with a cooker) accommodation is difficult to come by here, so we were lucky to get this. Has turned out to be a great deal for us - for the princely sum of $270AUD/month, we are staying in 'Villa Rita'. It's on the
Villa Rita back yard
Night time swimming is a lovely lovely thing. So is swimming at any time of the day, really. south side of the creek, right out at the ocean's edge, and an easy 20 minute ride to work (bikes are holding up, which is good!). The house is amazing - 3BR, 4 toilets (I don't know why this many), a fully functional kitchen (now that we've fixed the cooker and pending the return of electricity after the power went out overnight...), a living area, and outdoor sitting area, and - a lo-o-ovely pool. The place has a great garden too with lots of tropical plants. And, the best bit about it is that about ten metres from the back door is the cliff edge and there is a lovely little shelter with picnic table that looks out over the water. The place has 2 'staff' (read servants - the norm for all these types of places here) - a housekeeper, Anne, and a gardener, Mwakale who are there 8-5 Mon-Sat. Am more than a little uncomfortable about having people as servants, as is Brigid, so we've been doing our best to clean up after ourselves as soon as we make a mess so that they only have to do the general maintenance that they have been doing before we
got there. Additionally, you can't actually leave the washing up for very long unless you want a house full of ants... But, I have to confess we did take up Anne's offer of washing our clothes for us (which I feel bad about, but hand washing everything is such a rotten job.)... Please beat me over the head with a large stick if I start turning into a rotten colonial hoochie and slave master.
And, we have a dog. The guy who owns this place has a rottweiler puppy (a very large one) called Klein (german for small as she was the runt of the litter - I'd hate to see how big the biggest is!). She's a very friendly, excitable dog who doesn't realise her size or how sharp her nails are. We are both sporting some decent scratches and I have a large tear in my pants from her jumping up on us. Luckily, she's playful rather than aggressive. It seems to be calming down as she gets used to us, so hopefully this trend continues. I think she might have been a bit lonely before we got there and is just very excited about having someone
Villa Rita bedroom
Having slight issues with the bed being too big for my mosquito net. But, given there is netting on all the windows, I don't feel too bad that I wake up each morning having kicked the net off... to play with. She loves to chase the geckos inside the house, and to bark at whatever animals run around the garden at night. There is a big monitor lizard lying dead in the driveway in a very smelly state of decomposition, so hopefully she doesn't get at that...
Have been for a visit the last two Tuesday afternoons to the orphanage Brigid is working at. In between school and dinner they generally play games, but this idea kind of goes out the window when visitors turn up and they get distracted. Arriving by bike, you tend to get jumped on by a few of the kids, while a couple more relieve you of your bike, expertly lower the seat and then ride off on it. Others still take your sunglasses and anything else you may happen to have on you (our dinner today). My work ID badge provided endless fascination this afternoon. A lot of the girls want to hold your hand or stroke your hair or skin. Shoulder rides and tipping them upside down were big hits too, if the cries of 'Tena, tena,' ('Again, again') were anything to go by! The roads around Kilifi are turning
Tropical flowers in the garden
The garden is full of bright colour. Here's just a small bit... into a mud heap in general with the rains, but this is most apparent on the dirt road down to the orphanage where there seem to be puddles even on a dry day. It was the idea of some genius to dig up the whole road this week with a bulldozer in order to level things out and prevent dips where the puddles accumulate. All they've succeeded in doing though is turning the entire road into a big muddy mess...
Played soccer with some of the local girls last Wednesday. A few of the expat girls from the lab go down there each week to play with 30 or so local girls ranging in age from 7-16ish. The local girls are amazingly good. They run around a pot-holed, stone covered, half-grassed field barefoot without any sign of discomfort. I have joined the other expat girls in the ranks of 'shithouse mzungu who is a hindrance to the game' while, on the other hand, the locals were very impressed with Brigid's skill.
On Sunday we went for a bike ride down to Mnarani ruins, which is the ruins of some mosques from Arab traders here in the 13th-16th centuries,
Welcome Lei
Anne, the housekeeper, made us these lovely leis as a welcome gift. The flowers smelled beautiful. This one is slightly mangled thanks to Klein. in a forested area down by the creek. To get there you have to ride through a village (to the almost constant strains of 'Jambo, jambo, jambo' from the local kids) and down a hill to the creek. A local guy (who is doing a tourism degree) acts as a guide, showing people up the 104 steps (which are described in fantastic English as 'mystic' in the brochure advertising the place) to the ruins, and then around the site. There are 2 mosques, large and small, some tombs and some more buildings that are yet to be excavated deeper within the scrub (thought to have been houses). A lot of the excavated things were taken to Fort Jesus in Mombasa where they are on display, but there is enough here to make a worthwhile outing.
The swahili lessons are coming on very well. Our repertoire is growing significantly, and we can now say such pearls as 'he's dreaming' (I have to get Reuben to teach us command forms of verbs so that I can start properly quoting the Castle...), 'your mumma's a X' and 'Brigid is cooking dinner tonight'. We did try to get some locals to teach us
Klein
This is our maniac (but rapidly becoming lovely) puppy... She wouldn't sit still that day for a good photo. some colloquialisms the other day, but all we could get from them re what the Kenyan version of 'my homies' is translates as 'my lovelies'. Hardly the same thing. But, our command of english is going to get sillier and sillier if we keep listening to the music here. We heard a song the other day that repeated over and over, 'what's the matter with men today? there's so many roses and nobody to plant them!'. Oh, and a beanie is not a beanie in Kenyan english. It's a marvin. This is important. All the babies are dressed in thick woollen marvins. Especially on the really hot days....
Got some great news today that Dad and Liam are planning a trip over in July. Woo hoo!!! Brigid and I are very excited. There's lots of planning to be done about places to go and things to see while they are over. I won't be able to take the time off as we've already planned for other holidays, but will definitely factor in a long weekend or two and a fair bit of hanging time in between. Also, seeing as we've seen pretty much all there is to see in
Kilifi now, are going to start venturing out for some of the weekends. We've got a few planned so far. This weekend is going to involve a trip to Mombasa to finally have a look around (we've been there 3 times but not really seen any of it), and also to do a massive shop at the supermarket there on the way back. Choices are somewhat limited in Kilifi, so it will be the largest shop of all time. The following weekend, we're going north to the Gede Ruins and to Arubuko Sokoke Forest Reserve (which deserves a few trips, so we'll probably go back another time to camp in the treetop huts there) with Cleo, one of the girls from the lab. And, the weekend after that, we're going to Lamu. Lamu is an island off the coast of Kenya, famed for its swahili history and culture. It's described as being like Zanzibar but without all the tourists. Should be great. There are so many other interesting places to go in Kenya and Tanzania (both locally and further adrift), so we're having great fun dreaming up options for weekends away etc. What a shame there's some work to be
Slightly gross...
Dead monitor lizard in our driveway. It's now much flatter. And, its head's gone that way... This one only about a foot long. We've seen some live ones around the town that are twice the size... done here too....
Ok, better finish up here. Tutasafiri taxi nyumbani (we're going to get a taxi home) as the weather is not currently bicycle friendly. Gore-tex has made an appearance.... Having a great time, but am missing you all. Lots of love, K x
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Katherine Howell
Chook
Word to dada yangu (my sister)...
Hey, for those of you who haven't, just to get the other side of the story, you should check out Brigid's blog. It's at www.travelblog.org/bloggers/weena. I think. K x PS tempting any of you to visit??