A long and eventful few weeks…

Taking a 15-hour plane trip to a place eight hours ahead of the time zone you call home has an interesting way of disorienting you. It feels like no time at all, yet it also feels like an eternity has elapsed. The hours jump ahead as you just watch.

It’s hard to believe over three weeks have passed since I stepped off the plane. A combination of the lack of free time and the lack of easily-accessible internet have contributed to me taking this long to give an update.

But I am doing well. After three days in Nairobi, a group of current volunteers took us trainees to the food court of a nearby mall. The selection was surprisingly American. Can someone really miss food that much? Indeed. I had pizza. A little bit of it fell off my plate as I was eating, and I looked at it longingly. Should I go ahead and eat it? Megan, one of my fellow trainees, was sitting across from me. She noticed my dilemma.

“Whatever man, TIA.”

And of course, I ate it. Who knew when I would get pizza again? In the next two years, I will probably consume things much more daunting than table-contaminated pizza.

So back to TIA.

TIA: This is Africa. A phrase I’ve been waiting to say after I heard Leonardo DiCaprio first utter the phrase in the movie “Blood Diamond” and I found out I’d be coming to Africa. Yeah, Megan reminded me. And now I’m going to be throwing it around every chance I get.

We weren’t in Nairobi for long. The Saturday after we arrived in Kenya, we boarded a bus for Loitokitok. The road to the town had recently been paved, cutting what I was told was a six-hour trip down to four hours.

The view from the road was stereotypically African. Acacia trees dotted the landscape. But I grew tired of looking at them, and I was tired in general. I told my seatmate, Lauren, to wake me up if we passed anything interesting. I nodded off. Maybe some 20 minutes later, I awoke to Lauren hitting me in the arm and yelling “Giraffe, giraffe, giraffe!!!” Sure enough, I looked out the window and saw the lanky creatures lazily making their way across the savannah. The first of what I hoped would be many animal sightings. (A side note — I’ve been to Nairobi and back since then for a very minor orthodontic problem. On the way back, I saw a zebra and an ostrich. Awesome.)

Training in Loitokitok has kept us very busy. We learned KiSwahili for a week and a half, and then many of us switched to tribal languages. Now I have been learning KiLuhya. It is the language I will speak in my village — where I will go in July and serve for the next two years.

I’m headed to Western Kenya — a village near the town of Busia. I will be close to Lake Victoria and very near the border with Uganda.

I am settling into a routine with my host family. I have a big family — I am living with a Mama, Baba (father), an aunt, a host brother (12) and two host cousins (12 and 7). My host mama and baba’s other son will be home this week from boarding school. He’s 14.

The family is attempting to teach me the Kenyan way of life. I have learned to make many traditional Kenya foods, including ugali, chipati and githeri. All Kenyan foods have one thing in common: heavy amounts of fat. Yum!

Although my family has never hosted a volunteer before, they are extremely patient. I am very grateful.

Well I will update later. I have so much more to say but it is nearly 6 p.m. and I have to be home by dark. I also have a lot to do. Unlike in America, the laundry won’t do itself!