Walking water

       Today is 1 more day that me and my family hope to survive. My mother and I must go fetch water to keep my family alive one more day. This is my life. In my small village, we all struggle for survival. After a long walk that is nothing but burden for all of us, we reach the well of nothing more than a hole with enough pressure to send water up a small pipe. The significance of today, however, which is the reason for writing this notice, is that the pipe broke and was spitting water. As I watched in awe of the disaster, people rushed to it and plunged their faces into the ground, sucking as much as they could. On the walk home, everybody talked more than usual, trying to fill the awkward silence. Today might be a little harder to survive than the others with four gallons of the usual five.

MY VISIT WITH DEJAN DAY 6

      Today is my sixth day with dejan. Today we toured Miami in a seaplane! We saw EVERYTHING! Even a HUGE ocean liner! It must have had 2000 PEOPLE! It was THAT BIG! The view was great from up there, and we even saw his house! The city looks like Legos from up here. It is kind of surprising how much we have in common, especially our sense of fun.

MY VISIT WITH DEJAN DAY 5

      Today is the fifth day of my visit with Dejan. Today, we went SKYDIVING!  It was really fun. First we got into a propeller plane that was pretty big, and when we reached 12,500 feet, we leveled off and DOVE! It was so fun!
I was screaming the whole time though.

MY VISIT WITH DEJAN ENTRY 4

      Today is the fourth day of my visit with Dejan. We decided to go to South Beach, and see the sights. One of the cool things I saw was the New World Symphony, which is a place that has performances like UCSB's Campbell Hall. There are lots of performances with weird new age instruments that make all sorts of noises, in fact one is just to do elephant calls (weirdest noises ever) ! We also visited Bongos Cuban Cafe, which has REALLY good soup! It is the perfect  blend of spicy, but not too spicy. It's also got a good sauce, which sounds weird, because you may say "soup with sauce??," but there is a good sauce and some kind of really big shrimp that is very good.

MY VISIT WITH DEJAN ENTRY 3

      Today is the third day of my visit with Dejan, and we are going to go to go out someplace to eat. We decided to go to a sushi place. He suggests the Shiniju Japanese Buffet. So, once it is dinnertime (we ate something for lunch and breakfast, of course), we go to the buffet, and it is pretty good. I had the California roll, which is good, except that the rice is hard, and let him try one. He got the "white tuna" which I had read in a review was really good. As a souvenir, we got a Japanese waving cat toy, since Dejan likes cats for good luck in business.

MY VISIT WITH KIMANI MARUGE last day :(

      Today is the last day :( of my visit with Kimani Maruge. I will miss him, but I have been missing my dog, so I guess it's time for me to leave for home. On the plane, after customs (the Transportation Security Annoyance's jobs that you do before getting on a plane), I was thinking about how fun it was to explore Maruge's village, and to meet all the nice people like those two kids that wanted us to take pictures of them, and shopping for the wooden toy.

And the time that we visited the farm was also fun.It's a shame that I have to leave.

MY VISIT WITH KIMANI MARUGE DAY 6

Today is the 6'th day of my visit with Kimani, and I just realized that his first name is Kimani, not Maruge. Today we got a souvenir of my trip. First, we went to the village market, which looks a lot like the Santa Barbara Farmer's Market. We found a lot of fruits and vegetables, some bracelets, and some sort of smoothies that smelled like beans. It was very loud there with all the bargaining and chomping of buyers and sellers. Since the stuff we saw wasn't souvenir-worthy to us, we looked around for a different place. We found a shop eventually that was an old-looking place and had a lot of books in the window. We found a very smoothly carved wooden toy that looked like a horse, or maybe a gazelle, with wheels, and it cost 416 Kenyan shillings, or 5 US dollars. We decided that it was good enough to be a souvenir, and so we bought it, and I'm going to take it home. This was a pretty good day. Since I couldn't get the marketplace video to work, here is a link: http://www.our-africa.org/kenya/local-market-and-cafe. It shows all the excitement of a Kenyan market.

MY VISIT WITH DEJAN

MY VISIT WITH DEJAN DAY 2

      Today is the second day of my visit with Dejan. We were talking about currency exchange, and how we were glad that we didn't loose anything over currency exchange, since we were both in America, and speak English. He needs a bigger fleet of trucks for his company, and he is dreaming BIG!

      Even though he speaks English, I thought I might want to know his original language, Croatian, which sounds a lot like Russian.
So, here are a few words that I found:

1. hi : bok
2. where is the bathroom : Gdje je zahod
3. how are you? : kako ste?
4. my name is... : moje ime ja...
5. my : moje
6. trucks : kamioni
7. drive : voziti
8. speak : govoriti
9. croatia : Hrvatska
10. peace on earth : mir na zemlji

MY VISIT WITH KIMANI MARUGE DAY 5

      Today is the fifth day of my visit with Kimani Maruge. Today, I will be touring his village. The first thing that I notice is the big farm, filled with stuff like cabbage, lettuce, beans, and corn. After that, we pass some kids playing volleyball, but it is a little different from our way, because it is less organized, without teams and rules. It actually seems kind of fun.

        It is very hot in Kenya, I'd say about 79 degrees, but I'm not quite sure how hot, since there are no thermometers. It is very humid, so hard to beat the heat. I'd also say that it looks kind of like it may rain tomorrow, which will be good for the crops, I guess.

The dirt roads, though, yikes! I'd hate to fall down...

    

       There are lots of houses in small clusters, but no electricity! The one thing that I like most is that the houses are a mix of palm fronds and plaster, with modern tools on the shelves, along with 100 year old pots. It is pretty shady, but there aren't too many places to sit in the shade. What a nice place to be, but what would I do without my computer, Mini-Max-the-Mac?

The kids around here are very playful (without video games) and have never even seen a camera! So when I took a picture of one of them, and showed him, there was a mob scene of kids that wanted their picture taken. Today was very fun. The kids were very friendly, and made me feel great.

MY VISIT WITH DEJAN

      Today, I am going to visit my Kiva fundee, Dejan, from Croatia who lives in Miami, Florida. I am taking United to MIA, which is Miami International Airport. It will be very crowded there, since it is an international airport. and I will be there tomorrow, the 17'th.

MY VISIT WITH KIMANI MARUGE DAY 1

Today, I flew to Eldoret, Kenya to visit Kimani Maruge from the movie The First Grader. During the ride, as I looked out the window, I noticed that the houses were getting smaller and more run-down by the mile, with a small group of houses that I had assumed were a town, but how would I know? I also saw a few cars (not very many).

          Once I landed, it was very dry and hot, so I took a very old taxi that smelled.... um... well-used to where Maruge was and I could hear some sort of ceremony- is a celebrity in Maruge's village? I thought; but NO, they were welcoming ME! After the ceremony, there was a HUGE feast, with thousands of foods that tasted great, although now I only remember the Ugali (rice) and the Mendazi (donuts) specifically. What a warm welcome!

MY VISIT WITH KIMANI MARUGE DAY 4

Today, I slept in until lunch, when I smelled the chicken stew that Maruge was cooking. I woke up to see that nobody was there, so I went to check the neighborhood's shared kitchen, which was close enough to the window for me to smell it by my bed, and I found Maruge tending to a big clay pot over a fire, full of vegetables that he had grown on his garden. I could hear the fire crackling, and smell the chicken, which afterwards tasted a little salty, with a bit of onion. One thing that was hard for me was that I had to eat with my hands. Since he gave me food, it means that he is a caring man.

MY VISIT WITH KIMANI MARUGE DAY 3

      Today is the third day of my visit with Maruge. I was at his school, where the kids sit at benches that all face the board. Everyone must value school, because they all wore the same well-groomed blue and grey uniforms, were polite to the teachers, paid attention (as opposed to good old USA), and brought all their materials. Maruge fit in with the uniform and behavior, although he was a little big, and an adult. It smelled very dusty, and the teacher spoke in some weird emotionless tone, but I was just thinking about getting back to this blog.

     Now I see that he is not lonely, although he still sits by himself during recess, and has many friends at school, like most of the students and the teachers. He is a special friend with the student that he helped write the number five.

    Even though some of the kids still think he is an oddball, he is happy to be at school, because he is learning to read.

MY VISIT WITH KIMANI MARUGE DAY 2

Today, I visited Maruge, from The First Grader. He seems like a nice guy from his smile lines, so I'll stay with him for about 7 days. He is kind of elderly now, but not the "you kids get off mah lawn!" kind, he is the kind that is very kind, has a kind of hoarse voice, and walks with a slow hobbling step. He is now "the second grader"(get it? he he he) and knows simple math.

         He offered me some sweet milk that tasted really good, and some food. He seems lonely, since he has no wife or kids. I wonder how someone so lonely can be so nice. I wonder how many (if any) friends he has.

MY STOP IN ELDORET, KENYA

On my way home from south sudan, I stopped in kenya. I was invited to the village of Eldoret.