Well I was afraid this would happen sooner or later. Looks like I have malaria for a third time. Its not too bad, but they decided to treat it this time with quinine (the stuff they put in tonic water to make it bitter). The side effects may actually be worse than the malaria. It makes me really dizzy and leaves that tonic water bitter taste in my mouth. But the weirdest thing is that I feel like my ears are stuffed with cotton and they're ringing like I just left a night club. But hopefully this will be it. Quinine is apparently very effective at getting rid of malaria that is other wise drug resistant. I surely hope so!
Otherwise there's not much going on out here in Malava. Things have been quiet at St. Julie's since we got back from our Nairobi vacation. We have a staff outing and teaching Kenyans about Halloween to look forward to in October- and if anyone wants to send us candy, that would be awesome!
Friday, September 25, 2009
Sunday, September 13, 2009
I realize thats its been a while since I posted last and I want to let everyone know I did get back safely to Malava a week ago. Vacation was really nice, but it made me realize I'm so happy I wasn't placed to do my service in Nairobi. First of all, its really expensive (at least when you make as little money as we do). Secondly, there are lots of places where you can really forget you're in Kenya. One night I went to see a movie and while waiting for Tom and Michael to get out of the movie they were seeing, I sat and read my book at a nice little coffee shop in a mall. I realized that I could have been anywhere at home, doing the same thing. It was nice to get back to our little community where everything moves a little slower.
Last Saturday we went and saw my friend Lucy take her first vows as a sister of Notre Dame and celebrated with three other sisters who were celebrating their golden jubilee (50 years). The whole thing was great- full of music, dancing and great food like most Kenyan celebrations.
I was on my own this week at St. Julie's Center since Tom was still on vacation with his family. If you haven't check out his pictures from Masai Mara, you should, they're amazing. It makes me very jealous to know that I won't have a chance to go down there before I leave. Anyways, being there by myself didn't make it that much busier, but I did get the preliminary draft of a grant I've been working on done which was a big relief. If we get it, it could mean up yo $10,000 USD for our program.
We've also had a lot of visitors with us recently. There are two SND novices who are from Zimbabwe (but live in S. Africa) staying with us for a few weeks. They're been at St. Julie's center and i've been able to ask them lots of questions about what Zimbabwe and S. Africa are like. Tumaini also had two British volunteers last week who stopped by St. Julie's to see what it was all about. Finally, Katie's sister Amy has been with us for almost three weeks and heads back to the US this Wed. Its been so nice to have Amy here and I hope she's enjoyed having a chance to visit all our service sites. She's going with Michael to school tomorrow to test out her English teaching skills.
The rest of this month will be filled with grad school applications and making bookings for Kate's big visit in December. It's strange to think that I'll be back in the US three short months from Thursday.
Last Saturday we went and saw my friend Lucy take her first vows as a sister of Notre Dame and celebrated with three other sisters who were celebrating their golden jubilee (50 years). The whole thing was great- full of music, dancing and great food like most Kenyan celebrations.
I was on my own this week at St. Julie's Center since Tom was still on vacation with his family. If you haven't check out his pictures from Masai Mara, you should, they're amazing. It makes me very jealous to know that I won't have a chance to go down there before I leave. Anyways, being there by myself didn't make it that much busier, but I did get the preliminary draft of a grant I've been working on done which was a big relief. If we get it, it could mean up yo $10,000 USD for our program.
We've also had a lot of visitors with us recently. There are two SND novices who are from Zimbabwe (but live in S. Africa) staying with us for a few weeks. They're been at St. Julie's center and i've been able to ask them lots of questions about what Zimbabwe and S. Africa are like. Tumaini also had two British volunteers last week who stopped by St. Julie's to see what it was all about. Finally, Katie's sister Amy has been with us for almost three weeks and heads back to the US this Wed. Its been so nice to have Amy here and I hope she's enjoyed having a chance to visit all our service sites. She's going with Michael to school tomorrow to test out her English teaching skills.
The rest of this month will be filled with grad school applications and making bookings for Kate's big visit in December. It's strange to think that I'll be back in the US three short months from Thursday.
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Vacation in Nairobi has been more adventure packed than I thought it could be.
Last Friday we hired a car to drive us from Malava to Nairobi for our retreat with Sr. Jane. Probably something I won't do again, considering the guy nickel and dimed us until the drive here cost as much as it would have been to fly. The retreat over last weekend was fairly uneventful, but Fr. Gene (we're staying at a retreat center that is also the home of Carmelite Fathers) gave us some interesting food for thought. Staying out in the Karen area of town has given us a chance to explore parts of Nairobi we haven't been to yet, including stumbling on a bronze foundry with some truly amazing artwork (Tom has pictures up on his blog).
Vacation really began for me Monday afternoon. In an effort to start my Master's program next fall, I've been working on applications here, which meant taking my GRE in Nairobi on Monday morning. It went as well as I had hoped, so to celebrate I met Katie, her sister Amy (our first American visitor!), Tom and Michael at the famous Carnivore restaurant. Named one of the top 50 restaurants in the world, the offer more than 10 kinds of meat that waiters bring on swords to your table until you signal that you're through. I honestly can't even remember everything I ate, but I know it include some delicious spare ribs, crocodile and ostrich. Monday I also finally got to see the 6th Harry Potter movie.
Tuesday I wondering around central Nairobi with Tom and Michael. We tried to find a modern art museum that we just couldn't locate, ate at an American like fast food restaurant and went to Nairobi's national museum. The museum is highly rated in the guide books, but I thought it was pretty disappointing. There was an interesting photography exhibit and an area displaying the pre human skeletons found by Dr. Leakey up by Lake Turkana. But for all the historical things this country has to offer, the museum glosses over most of them. I will admit that the space and the land surround the museum are beautiful and it was a nice place to spend the afternoon.
Yesterday we got up bright and early and Tom, Michael and I hit the road in our rental car. We planned to climb Mt. Longonot (a recently extinct volcano offering amazing views of the Rift Valley) and then drive around Hell's Gate National Park in hopes of seeing more animals in the wild. We got to Mt. Longonot around 9 and I'm so happy we decided to climb it in the morning. The whole climb was very steep and challenging, and I don't think I would have made it to the top if it had been hotter. Mostly the climb was challenging b/c with out the rain, the path had the consistency of kitty litter mixed with sand. Think about hiking up a mountain in sand from the beach, and thats kind of what it was like. Despite the physical challenges, the view from the top was worth the pain. Check out my picasa page or Tom's blog for photos. After climbing back down, we headed to Hell's Gate. Thee park is beautiful, with tons of wild life and a staggering gorge of reddish cliffs. I saw ostriches and warthogs in the wild for the first time. I think game viewing for the day included ostriches and warthogs, zebras, giraffes, Buffalo and tons of birds. There might be more, I can't remember. We drove around Hell's Gate, snapping photos and looking for animals until I got the car stuck in deep sand at the top of a hill. The boys pushed the car out, only to get stuck again in a ditch when turning around. This time, all the pushing could not get the car to budge. We tried everything thing we could think of. We put rocks under the wheel hoping it would grab on to those. We tried prying it out of the sand with logs. We tried everything we could think of for two hours with no luck. At this point we were about 10 kms from the ranger station and only had about 3 hours until it got dark. We tried calling all the numbers we could find for the warder at Hell's Gate, but b/c Kenya has been rationing electricity, none of the phones were working. Finally, while I was trying to explain our situation to Kenya Wildlife Services, we decided to start walking to the main gate, hoping it wouldn't take more than a few hours. Unfortunately, each of us had only brought a liter of water for the day, and while the morning was nice and cool, the afternoon had become very sunny, very hot, and we had already drank all the water we had. So the prospect of walking 10kms in the sun with no water didn't sound like much fun. Michael drank a half full water bottle he found on the side of the trail. Luckily, after walking for only about 20 minutes I got connected to the cell phone of the warden for the park. She arranged for one of the rangers to come out with a big truck and pull us out of the sand. We made it safely back to the main gate and headed back to Nairobi after buying several large bottles of water. But, as luck would have it, less than 5 kms out of the park, we got a flat tire and found out that the jack we had in the back of the car didn't work very well. A helpful matatu driver stopped and changed the tire for us in the time it would have taken be just the get the jack in the right place. We finally made it back to Nairobi, covered head to toe in dust and dirt and exhausted.
Today and tomorrow we have sometime to do more laid back touristy things around the city and on Saturday Michael and I will go to the first vows of our friend Lucy who up until this weekend was an SND Novice. Saturday night, Michael and I head back to Malava (Tom and Katie will be on vacation still with their families) and its back to work next week!
Last Friday we hired a car to drive us from Malava to Nairobi for our retreat with Sr. Jane. Probably something I won't do again, considering the guy nickel and dimed us until the drive here cost as much as it would have been to fly. The retreat over last weekend was fairly uneventful, but Fr. Gene (we're staying at a retreat center that is also the home of Carmelite Fathers) gave us some interesting food for thought. Staying out in the Karen area of town has given us a chance to explore parts of Nairobi we haven't been to yet, including stumbling on a bronze foundry with some truly amazing artwork (Tom has pictures up on his blog).
Vacation really began for me Monday afternoon. In an effort to start my Master's program next fall, I've been working on applications here, which meant taking my GRE in Nairobi on Monday morning. It went as well as I had hoped, so to celebrate I met Katie, her sister Amy (our first American visitor!), Tom and Michael at the famous Carnivore restaurant. Named one of the top 50 restaurants in the world, the offer more than 10 kinds of meat that waiters bring on swords to your table until you signal that you're through. I honestly can't even remember everything I ate, but I know it include some delicious spare ribs, crocodile and ostrich. Monday I also finally got to see the 6th Harry Potter movie.
Tuesday I wondering around central Nairobi with Tom and Michael. We tried to find a modern art museum that we just couldn't locate, ate at an American like fast food restaurant and went to Nairobi's national museum. The museum is highly rated in the guide books, but I thought it was pretty disappointing. There was an interesting photography exhibit and an area displaying the pre human skeletons found by Dr. Leakey up by Lake Turkana. But for all the historical things this country has to offer, the museum glosses over most of them. I will admit that the space and the land surround the museum are beautiful and it was a nice place to spend the afternoon.
Yesterday we got up bright and early and Tom, Michael and I hit the road in our rental car. We planned to climb Mt. Longonot (a recently extinct volcano offering amazing views of the Rift Valley) and then drive around Hell's Gate National Park in hopes of seeing more animals in the wild. We got to Mt. Longonot around 9 and I'm so happy we decided to climb it in the morning. The whole climb was very steep and challenging, and I don't think I would have made it to the top if it had been hotter. Mostly the climb was challenging b/c with out the rain, the path had the consistency of kitty litter mixed with sand. Think about hiking up a mountain in sand from the beach, and thats kind of what it was like. Despite the physical challenges, the view from the top was worth the pain. Check out my picasa page or Tom's blog for photos. After climbing back down, we headed to Hell's Gate. Thee park is beautiful, with tons of wild life and a staggering gorge of reddish cliffs. I saw ostriches and warthogs in the wild for the first time. I think game viewing for the day included ostriches and warthogs, zebras, giraffes, Buffalo and tons of birds. There might be more, I can't remember. We drove around Hell's Gate, snapping photos and looking for animals until I got the car stuck in deep sand at the top of a hill. The boys pushed the car out, only to get stuck again in a ditch when turning around. This time, all the pushing could not get the car to budge. We tried everything thing we could think of. We put rocks under the wheel hoping it would grab on to those. We tried prying it out of the sand with logs. We tried everything we could think of for two hours with no luck. At this point we were about 10 kms from the ranger station and only had about 3 hours until it got dark. We tried calling all the numbers we could find for the warder at Hell's Gate, but b/c Kenya has been rationing electricity, none of the phones were working. Finally, while I was trying to explain our situation to Kenya Wildlife Services, we decided to start walking to the main gate, hoping it wouldn't take more than a few hours. Unfortunately, each of us had only brought a liter of water for the day, and while the morning was nice and cool, the afternoon had become very sunny, very hot, and we had already drank all the water we had. So the prospect of walking 10kms in the sun with no water didn't sound like much fun. Michael drank a half full water bottle he found on the side of the trail. Luckily, after walking for only about 20 minutes I got connected to the cell phone of the warden for the park. She arranged for one of the rangers to come out with a big truck and pull us out of the sand. We made it safely back to the main gate and headed back to Nairobi after buying several large bottles of water. But, as luck would have it, less than 5 kms out of the park, we got a flat tire and found out that the jack we had in the back of the car didn't work very well. A helpful matatu driver stopped and changed the tire for us in the time it would have taken be just the get the jack in the right place. We finally made it back to Nairobi, covered head to toe in dust and dirt and exhausted.
Today and tomorrow we have sometime to do more laid back touristy things around the city and on Saturday Michael and I will go to the first vows of our friend Lucy who up until this weekend was an SND Novice. Saturday night, Michael and I head back to Malava (Tom and Katie will be on vacation still with their families) and its back to work next week!
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