The Weekend

Ninaandika tena (I am writing again), shocking I know, and after such a short time!

This weekend was really fun, so I thought I would share. On Friday night I went with a group of people from the University of Manitoba and John’s Hopkins to see an art show for a Tanzanian art form called Tingatinga. It is gorgeous art and the show was held at this cute little restaurant close by. They had wine and champagne and appetizers set out, couches and chairs to sit in, and really cool lighting. The artwork was amazing! I really like how the tingatinga art form displays animals and probably would have bought a painting if I had brought enough money along with me (thankfully I didn’t, because they are also expensive). The most interesting part of the show was the art pieces that showed different public health HIV prevention messages. For example, there was a picture split in half where one side showed a man going into a bee-hive without any protective gear on and getting attacked by a swarm of bees, and a picture on the other side of a man climbing into bed with a woman. The caption on the photo said “You wouldn’t get honey from a bee hive without protection so why would you have sex without using a condom.” There were many others as well with similar HIV prevention messages. I thought it was really amazing that public health messages had infiltrated this form of art. After the art show we went to an Indian restaurant in this complex that has flashing lights surrounding it and giant light-up palm trees on the tops of the buildings. It was a very interesting place, but the food was amazing! I have discovered that I love Indian food and can’t wait to explore more Indian restaurants when I come back home.

Anne, Damian and I spent Saturday afternoon exploring this huge Western style mall that’s located in Nairobi close the US embassy in the very wealthy part of town. It was really fun to step into the mall and feel like you were outside of Nairobi. For those of you know what it is, the mall even has a Mango! It was a Mango outlet, so of course, I was all excited about the bargain prices. I didn’t stay very long, but that’s probably a good since that also meant I didn’t spend as much money.

On Saturday evening I went to a concert that was put on to support stopping gender violence. The main singer was Oliver Mtukudzi from Zimbabwe, who is apparently really famous. I’ve never heard of him but I guess he plays concerts all over the world, including in the states. It was a great show and he was very entertaining. I didn’t understand all the songs, since they weren’t in English, but I did buy the CD so that I can learn more of his music. I guess he’s been singing and touring since 1977, so it was also impressive just to this older man dancing around all over the stage all night. It was also amazing to watch all the Kenyans dancing, they are so good and everyone has rhythm. It was much more lively than most concerts I’ve gone to in Seattle or the NW. Before the main artist, we got to watch a few other bands play and one of the bands reminded me a lot of Jamaican music. We also heard two famous Kenyan poets recite poems about women empowerment and the life of women living in Kenya. It was great poetry, but the itinerary for the night wasn’t well organized because it had the poets following the introductory bands and people were too excited after dancing around to the first groups to really pay attention. Overall, it was probably my favorite night in Nairobi so far!


This morning I went to a great church that I really enjoyed. The service was in English and has a Kenyan leading worship and an American (I think?) pastor. It was a great community and I stayed for a picnic lunch that they had afterwards to meet and talk with different people about various church small groups that meet all throughout Nairobi. There is one group that meets fairly close to my place and has more younger people than some of the other groups, so I think I am going to try going to it this week. I also joined the gym this week and am really excited because they have a class called Afro Step! It’s on Tuesdays, and I’m planning to go to that as well this week (or at least sometime in the near future).

Well, I think that’s it from the weekend!

The bugs

Hi everyone,
So sorry, I know it has been a seriously long time since I posted anything. I think blogging is not really my strong suit but I’ll definitely try to post once a week from here on out. I had been planning to post about our trip to the coast, but then Brandon beat me to it! I think he did a great job describing everything., probably better than I could have done. However, he did forget to mention how he and Damian left Anne and me the task of killing the 20 large cockroaches in the bathroom while they went to watch a dog dig up crabs on the beach. That’s right, they left the women to take care of the nasty giant cockroaches while they went out to play. I used the only weapon available at the time (an empty beer bottle) and went for it! It was my first experience killing cockroaches and after witnessing my skills with the empty beer bottle weapon, Anne says she wouldn’t want to make me mad if there is an empty bottle close by. Apparently I was a little aggressive towards the cockroaches, but they were giant and nasty and freaked me out!

If I were naming different sections of my trip, I would label these past couple weeks the bug weeks. We had the cockroaches in our bathroom at Tiwi, bed bugs in our beds at the resort in Diani, found a giant centipede creature the size of a hand crawling around, and exterminated the 70 large ants that had made a home in our bathroom sink in Nairobi. Although they seem less harmful than other bugs, I think that ants have become my least favorite bug and the ant extermination process in our bathroom was pretty funny. I’d been finding these ants around every night since I arrived; just about 2 or 3 in the bathroom sink area each night. Then, last weekend, I went into the bathroom around 2am and found about 10 of them crawling on the sink. The winged ones had even come out, which I hadn’t seen before. They have super strong bug killer here in the stores (probably with some illegal chemicals banned in the US) and we had previously bought some to try to take care of the ants but hadn’t really used it yet. I had also been trying to figure out where they were hiding out. That night I saw them crawl into this little hole on the bottom of the sink and decided to spray into the hole. Immediately following the ants started pouring out and I was madly spraying the bug spray at them while they were starting to cover the bathroom floor. We finished the extermination around 3am and the floor was covered in at least 70 dead ants. But, the good news is I haven’t seen another ant in the bathroom since! In general, I feel that I’ve definitely had my share of bug experiences for the moment and am ready for a break!

As far as life in Kenya is concerned, I think I have finally started to settle into a routine here. I spend Mondays in the lab working on various aspects of different projects right now and will soon start generating some DNA that will be used for part of my dissertation. I spend Tuesdays and Fridays working on data analysis and will also start using that time to develop my dissertation proposal. I spend Wednesdays working on another project related to pediatric HIV medication adherence and Thursdays in the pediatric HIV clinic. I really enjoy my time in the clinic, although I’m not always sure how helpful I am. It definitely gives me a new perspective on the research process and the logistical aspects that go into international research.

I am also in the process of learning Kiswahili and have tutoring sessions twice a week. So far the sessions have been going really well and I feel that I am learning a lot. I’m hoping to become fluent by the time that I leave, although sooner rather than later would be nice. All of the women in the clinic speak Kiswahili, so the more I know, the more I am able to communicate with them and the toddlers. The clinic staff is having a great time helping me learn the language too, and they think it is really funny telling me sentences and then trying to get me to pronounce them correctly. I have learned that I am much better at learning other languages when I can see how the words are spelled and am not a very auditory learner. I can hear the word many times but it won’t stick in my head until I see it written down.

It was so great to have Brandon here for the past couple weeks and it was really hard for me to say good-bye to him on Monday when he left! It really makes me wish he had been able to come for the entire time, but I know that that wasn’t necessarily the right decision for him (or us in the long run). But, I am really going to miss him and I can’t believe that he doesn’t come back until December. That seems like such a long time away from now. Thankfully, Kiea will be here soon to visit, so I have something else to look forward to that can help keep my mind off missing Brandon.

Anyway, not much exciting going on here this week, but hopefully I’ll have more exciting stories to tell after the weekend.
Kwaheri for now!

Brandon's Post

Jambo!

My trip to Kenya has been amazing thus far. The flights went well and I had no issues with lost baggage or delays. I brought a box from UW with supplies for the hospital marked "Dr. Brandon Sofie" so I expected a few questions, but nothing came up. Kristin met me at the airport in a taxi and we headed back to her apartment in Nairobi. Her place is nice and comfortable, with all necessary appliances, dishes, furniture and has a small deck that looks out on a courtyard filled with trees, flowers, and plants. She has two roommates, a married couple, named Anne and Damian who will be staying here through the end of her stay. We have spent a lot of time with them exploring Nairobi. We have gone out to local restaurants to try the food and went into town to check out the Sunday market where you can buy hand crafted wood carvings, bowls, baskets, etc. after bargaining quite a bit to reduce the cost. They like to say "I give you good price, Kenyan price" but you still have to undercut that amount to make it reasonable. Kristin and I checked out the national museum where they have the skulls of early humans that were discovered in northern Kenya. We also have gone to the local market and the Nakumatt( African wal-mart) to pick up our groceries, water, beer, and other supplies for the week. We have a consistent driver that we trust named Peter who picked me up from the airport and takes us to the store or to areas that are too far to walk to. The Fairview Hotel is down the street where we can get lunch and sit in the courtyard, but we have cooked most of our meals since I arrived. This has ranged from eggs and toast in the morning to chili or phad thai for dinner.

During last week I walked with Kristin to work a few times and visited the office at the hospital where she works. The streets are filled with people, cars, matatus (buses/vans) crammed full of passengers, motorcycles, men pulling carts, etc. Every road you look down has many people. It has been very dry here so the sidewalks, mostly dirt with rocks, are very dusty and your shoes are usually covered by the time you reach your destination. There is a strong smell of exhaust and diesel fumes as you walk down busy roads, as well as the smell of burning garbage, waste, and BO. They could definitely use some rain to clean the streets a bit. It’s not uncomfortable to walk, but it is a completely foreign environment. The people are generally very nice to talk to and will greet you when spoken to, but I have definitely been called a few things during my time here. Overall, I like this city and could get used to living here, but I welcomed an opportunity to get out of town and see the coast.

All four of us packed our things and boarded a plane last Thursday night for Mombasa, which is on an island on the eastern coast of Kenya. Kristin was very nervous for the flight because it was a small prop plane with about 30 seats and we flew with 540 Airlines “Kenya’s low cost airline” Overall, the flight was fine and we had no issues getting into town. We stayed at the Castle Royal Hotel on one of the main roads of Mombasa. They had a small live band and we sat outside at the restaurant in at the front of the hotel and listened to Kenyan covers of Bruce Springsteen and other American artists. The next morning we took a taxi to the Sand Island Beach Cottages on Tiwi beach. We stopped at the store on the way and stocked up on food, beer and water for our stay. The drive to Tiwi was very interesting with a ferry ride and a constant view of roadside shops filled with everything from fruits to crafts, houses, goats crossing the road in front of our speeding car, cows, children playing soccer, and matatus passing into oncoming traffic as they honked and flashed their lights. We finally reached the entrance to the cottages and took a long dirt road past many small brick houses with thatched roofs, coconut trees. We finally arrived at the cottages and were greeted by an amazing view of the Indian Ocean. The cottages sit at the top of a small slope that looks over a grassy area with palm trees with the beach just steps away. The resort got its name from the “sand island” that appears in front of the beach when the tide is out.We waded out to the island shortly after arriving and sat in the shallow water warmed by the hot sand and drank Tusker beer. We bought fish from the local fisherman and cooked it with the vegetables and rice we picked up on the way. We had adventures with catching crab on the beach and Kristin killing cockroaches in the bathroom on the first night that kept us entertained. There is a large reef that runs along the coast just east of the beach which provides an amazing place for snorkeling. On the second day one of the local fishermen took us to a small pool shaped like Africa where we saw many kinds of tropical fish, and to another location where we swam into caves where the water was cool and there were bats hanging over head. In this pool we found tons of lion fish, parrot fish, and sea urchins. We cooked fresh local prawns for our second dinner and relaxed on the front patio with cold beers.

The following day we had a tough time leaving the cottages, but looked forward to the Papilon resort in Diani. This was a bit of a change being an all inclusive hotel, but we wanted to see a few different areas during our trip.
We mostly relaxed by the pool and enjoyed the sun, with a few trips over to the poolside buffet to grab some food. The resort was inhabited by a large family of Vervet monkeys who would run past you to steal food, cups of beer, or anything small left unattended on a lawnchair. This was entertaining, but they could be annoying at times. I played a game of water polo against team Africa (the staff called the animation team) as a member of the European team, because I was the only American, which was fun and a good workout.

We spend the night watching African dancers and listening to clubbing music which coaxed no one to dance. Then came time for bed where we encountered bed bugs, and two infested rooms later finally got a place to “sleep”. Other than the bug incident we had a great time at the resort. We reluctantly caught a taxi back to the airport in Mombasa and flew back to Nairobi last night. This week we will head out to another local restaurant to celebrate my birthday, and possibly travel out of the city for a camping trip next weekend before I head back to Seattle.