A more interesting weekend than planned...

I have had a good weekend indeed! And I'm in the process of loading up some pretty cool photos to my Flickr account, so look at the photos!!!

Thursday night, to celebrate my birthday, I went out to a bar called Three Wheels with Andre, David, and Lillian, which we had gone to once before. Don't worry Grandpa, I only had one beer (but they are half liter bottles here)! Lillian is actually host-mama's sister and the mother of Gloria, but she is only 23 so she's kind of a peer. It's weird, she's so young and just like me but she's a mother, and she works all day. It's kind of confusing in my head. I've learned a lot about the culture from her though, especially the Kenyan view of romance (it's dead). But the interesting thing is that we got about ten pounds of meat. And ate it all. This is the second time I've decimated the nyama choma and I love it. Mom, you're in for such a treat when you come visit!

On Friday, we didn't have school, so David, Sarah and I went downtown to the University of Nairobi library. Going downtown is so strange, because suddenly everything is very.... Western and modern, or at least a lot more modern than what I'm normally seeing. It's almost disorienting, actually. I'm getting so much more comfortable here with the public transportation, which is good. The program really scares the crap out of us in order to keep us safe, but for a while I was too scared to take a matatu because of the threat of pick-pockets. Really all you need to do here is just keep your valuables safe, carry money in two places, don't go out after 7pm, etc... It's not that hard. Obviously it's a dangerous country, but a little knowledge will carry you pretty far. Anyway, the library was very outdated unfortunately. It didn't have anything remotely new, and was still using a card catalouge. A hand-written card catalouge, at that. But it was nice to become more familiar with downtown and to get out of my neighborhood.

Friday night we were going to go to Carnivore, a big nightclub here, for a Luuya night (2nd largest tribe in Kenya), but the plans kind of fell apart and I stayed home with my family.

Saturday, Sarah, David, and I went to Kiambu, a small town about 20 km outside of Nairobi. We went to a little place with a waterfall, some caves, a lake, ostrichs, and camels! (again, see Flickr for some crazy documentation) We all rode camels! [A note on camels: they're nasty and so much bigger than you'd expect.] And Sarah and David climbed DOWN a tree next to a cliff, but I just watched and made a video of it, because I'm kind of lame. Someone has to document, right? Anyway it was an adventurous day! It was a perfect little day trip.

There was one very embarrassing cultural mishap though, which I'm sure was bound to happen at some point. We hitched a ride into town to find a little cafe to eat at, ya know, get the "authentic" Kenyan experience (impossible when you glow like we do). So we found a place, a tiny hole in the wall, with about eight places to sit. The menu outside listed dengu, maharagwe, samosas, etc., so we figured we could all get something tasty and cheap. We sat down and of course, everyone stared and almost started laughing. We waited, assuming we'd be waited on or that someone would tell us how to order if we weren't doing it right. Eventually the woman who ran the kitchen came to us and gave us water with which to wash our hands (makes a lot of sense here, when it's the water that's hard on foreign American stomachs and immune systems). And then, without us asking for it, she brought us food. At first we just laughed awkwardly and took it, because it was chapati (a type of bread) and some other fair looking dish. At first I commented on the presence of broccoli, because I haven't seen a flowery vegetable since I arrived... But upon further inspection, it wasn't broccoli. Ohhhh no. It was something rubbery and tentacly. I thought it was maybe seafood, but the lady told us it was goat liver. I am not exaggerating when I say that it smelled exactly like how a barn smells. No lie at all, it was terrible. I took one bite and gagged and honestly none of us could choke us down.

In the US, this might not be so offensive, to leave food and to walk away. But here, where a lot of people go without good food, this is very offensive. Not to mention that some nice woman had made this food, that we had somehow goofed up, and we were now refusing her cooking. She was obviously hurt, and we felt terrible. There was really nothing to do because we really couldn't eat it, we tried but it was sooo bad. We appeared to be, and we were, ignorant and stupid Americans. We did not represent our skin color or our countries well.

That was a buzzkill, but we got a free ride back into Nairobi and cheered up a little bit. We had a very adventurous and fun day, and it was very cheap (<$10). That night my family made my favorite meal, Githerie, which is a Kikuyu dish with maize, brown beans, tomatoes, carrots, and potatoes. It's very heavy but super delicious. It was an extension of the birthday celebration which never ends here, apparently. I went to bed early!

Are you tired of hearing about my weekend yet? Steph and I today went to a very very upscale mall and I bought a tanktop for FIVE HUNDRED SHILLINGS! (That's about $7). It's pink and very cute. Now we're lounging and talking about boys in a coffee shop. No worries everyone, I haven't met any Kenyans! :)