Big Shopping Day in Kisumu

All In A Day's Work

We ordered breakfast the night before, to be ready at 6:00 am. It was a great breakfast and Raphael got it (almost) all right. We were out the door and at the school by 7:00am. Our taxi driver, scheduled for 7:00 am, arrived at 7:30 am and we were on our way to Kisumu at 8:00 am. Right on schedule (by African-time)!

It was a wonderful drive. The highway was a little more “pot-holey” than I remembered. Apparently, this is due to the post-election violence wherein protestors lit tires on fire on the highway, causing the pavement to burn and degrade into potholes.

We arrived into the bustling city of Kisumu, at around 10 am in the morning. Mondays are market days and are particularly busy. I had a shopping list a mile long. We started downtown at the Mega Plaza district and the Forex to cash some traveller’s cheques and make a DHL shipment of important business papers to Cristelle. We then visited the local wholesale pharmacy distributor and discussed a long list of items with them. They promised to get an order together for us by the late afternoon. Then we went to the local Sarit Center to acquire educational materials. The negotiations were tough but I finally ended up with %15 off everything. This was fun, and we literally bought boxes of chalk, scribblers, pencils, erasers, record books, teacher’s tools, dictionaries, and much more. Our next stop took us to the local Nakumatt store (a combination of the “variety” of Walmart with the “name” of Sears) where I was able to negotiate another discount on some mattresses and equipment for the volunteer centre. This was really the last straw, though, and Heather and Jennifer were really starting to wear down by this time. Little did they know that I had several hours of negotiating left (known in Canada as “shopping”) before I was finished for the day. Several trips back and forth to the medical centre, many random trips to the Safaricom store at the Mega Plaza, and it basically crashed the girls before we could leave town. It was so much to encounter in one trip, and they really had a moment of “overload”. I know we can all imagine that. But they really recovered quickly and I must say that they are two very hardy travelers.

At one point, I ended up on a side street waiting for our group to meet up with me. I had just secured several boxes full of prime medical supplies, although my compatriots were delayed in getting out of the downtown area to meet me. The interim allowed me time to park myself on the sidewalk and engage in random solicitations by a variety of beggars, young men with bottles of glue attached to their hands, and all other sorts of wayward souls. Finally, I hiked up the street and managed to connect again with my group. It was definitely time to head back to Bumala!

It was a quiet ride home, for some portion of the trip. Because we got a late start home (it was 5:00pm, on a 1.45 hour trip home, and the sun sets at 6:40pm) we drove a little extra fast,…..which turned out to be quite a pleasure for everyone to experience things moving a little faster (the speed limit on all roads in Kenya is 80 kilometers, we got up to almost 95-100 at times….then down to 5-10 to go through the potholes).

We dropped the girls off at the hotel on the way into Bumala. I stayed with the driver and Charles to safeguard our investments all the way to the school. We arrived at the school and unloaded all of the supplies into a secure building.

I might add a little side note here. Charles has gone to great lengths to provide security at the school. First, we are closely attached to what can only be described as the “chief of security” in the region. His name is also Charles and he patrols all the roads and pathways in the district. This already gives our school a reputation of being under the “wing” of the local security force. We also have a very good security detail at the school. Upon our late arrival in the dark to Bumala, I had the fortunate opportunity to meet with our paid security staff at the school grounds. The head security guard was a man of some years, and enormous integrity. He greeted me with a salute (the first in my life) and assured me of the safety of our site. I also saw our assistant guards who brandished bows with poisoned tipped arrows slung over their backs. I aim to investigate this further and I would love to sit down and have a deeper discussion with these men about their trade. We are considering sleeping overnight for the first time at the school on Wednesday night, so perhaps I will get a chance to speak with them then after the sun goes down. I think I want to see an actual poison-tipped arrow…..wouldn’t you?

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