A short visit to Kisumu

A belated Happy birthday to my Dad! Happy birthday Daddy, I hope you had a great day!

Tuk tuk!

So, Jean and I went to Kisumu this weekend to see a city for a little while and just generally relax. Friday afternoon all four of us (Michael, Tom, Jean and myself) all got in a Matatu and headed to Kakamega for our Friday afternoon chicken and chips lunch. Jean and I hopped on another Matatu and spent the next two very bumpy hours checking out the new scenery, chatting with the driver on the history of the area and listening to 98 degrees on Kenyan radio. Seriously, they though one of their songs was so good, they played it twice in a row. We finally got there and I was def a little shell shocked. We’ve been out in the country for a while now, and Kisumu is the third largest city in Kenya, certainly bigger than Kakamega. So, since we hadn’t made reservations anywhere, we wandered around town looking for a clean and cheap place to stay. We had to look at 6 hotels, but we finally found one right as the sun was about to set. Hotel Palmers was a little more than we wanted to spend (a whopping 2500 KSH for a double…about $35 for you yanks) but it was gloriously luxurious with big beds, mosquito beds, fluffy white towels, hot water, views of Lake Victoria and (TA DA) a TV. So we caved and spent a little extra money to stay there. After long hot showers and making ourselves pretty we headed down the street to the much nicer Imperial hotel for dinner. We had a nice dinner pools side with beers at the hotel, then went to a local bar called Mon Ami for drinks. It’s really the strangest bar I’ve been to. It’s really a sports bar. There are soccer jerseys all over the walls and huge TVs with soccer games. But apparently at night time it turns into part club, complete with a disco ball and wonderfully bad American music. I think that night is the most fun I’ve had in Kenya so far. We danced the night away with new Kenyan friends.

Boats in the fishing village of Dunga

We finally headed back to the hotel, covered in sweat around and extremely happy. The best thing about being in a city was being about to take a new and better form of public transportation. The bigger cities in Kenya have Tuk tuks, three wheel vehicles- imagine a golf cart with a plastic top and three wheels. They’re much better than the bike taxis and way less sketchy than the actual taxis that are unmarked and have very tinted windows. So anyways, we took a tuk tuk back to our hotel, and made the driver pose for pictures with us and then wait while we took pictures with the vehicle itself. We watched some bad American show and fell aslep.

View of Lake Victoria from Hippos Point

A little boy fishing in Lake Victoria

Saturday, after breakfast, we checked out of the Palmers and headed for the New Victoria Hotel. We had tried the day before, but they were all full. They had a double open on Saturday and it was lovely. It was little small, but with hot water, a TV and best of all- a balcony. After we checked in, we went to go find a man to take us out on a boat in Lake Victoria. We took a tuk tuk out to this place called hippo point, but since we couldn’t see any hippos, we walk a further 3 km (in the blistering sun and heat) to a small fishing village called Dunga. We met two young Kenyan men along the way, Daniel and Martin, and they promised to help get us a good deal for a boat. They ended up staying with us all day. I expected them to ask us for money for guiding us around, but they didn’t. It was nice to have them. We also met some other Americans volunteering in Dunga at a clinic. Its really neat to run into other young Americans who are volunteering here. So we get to the place where the boats are and after some negotiating, we took off out on the lake to find some hippos. We finally did, after about an hour of looking and BOY are those things big. We didn’t get very close, but I really didn’t want to get any closer than we did. Hippos kill more people in African every year than any other animal combined. But the whole trip was really nice, seeing people fishing in the Lake and being out on a boat. After the boat ride, we walked almost all the way back into town (by this time it must have been almost 100 degrees in the sun and we had already walked about 6 km that day) and virtually collapsed poolside at a place called the Nyanza club (kind of like a Kenyan country club/ hotel) until it was time for dinner. We found a place in town that was advertising itself as a pizzeria and pub, but I ended up having some of the best Indian food I’ve ever had and watch the Arsenal soccer match. Kenyans love their football, but I just can’t seem to get into it. We were both so tired after a big day that we went back to our hotel, bought some yummy cake from the bakery downstairs, showered and watched poorly dubbed Spanish and Kenyan soap opera until we both fell asleep.

Hippos!

Sunday Jean got up bright and early to go to church, but I had a leisurely breakfast at the hotel and then wandered around the city until I found a nice park to read in. When Jean was done with church, we went to the Kisumu hotel (very nice) for lunch and a little time by the pool. It’s so nice that all these nice hotels let people who aren’t guests use their facilities for a low fee. We would have never been able to afford the hotels whose pools we used. We met two other American girls there, one who was a teacher there for a year living with a host family and another girl working for a non profit in Kenya organizing sports leagues and living with her Kenyan boyfriend. They were both friendly and chatty. It’s amazing how nice it is to talk to Americans. It’s so easy, compared with Kenyan’s English, which can be really formal.
After several very bumpy hours squeezed into the back of a matatu, we made it home in one peice. We took a boda boda back to the house when we finally got off in Malava, but my guy was so old, he didn’t make it all the way to the house. He stopped before we’d even gotten half way, breathing hard. Rather than make him suffer any more, I paid him the full fare, thanked him and walked the rest of the way home since it wasn’t all the way dark yet.
Not everything is Kisumu was all that nice. You could still tell that the town had taken a lot of damage from the violence last year. The matatu, boda boda and tuk tuk men are much more pushy, actually coming up and grabbing our arms to see if we needed a ride, and the street kids there made me really sad. Often they just sit in the shade of a tree with an empty pint bottle of liquor that they’ve filled with glue. They sit and sniff it until they’re high, then track down tourists to ask them for money. Some are sad and plead with you, some are mean and try to intimidate you. Either way, you really have to resist giving them money. It most cases, they’re just going to use it to buy more glue. It was the hardest part about this weekend. The poverty in Kenya continues to astound me. I can not wrap my head around how this country can have starving children and kids living in parks, but doesn’t tax their Ministers of Parliament. That’s right, the ministers don’t pay taxes…can you believe that. Its hard to know there’s really nothing I can do as a foreigner…that reform really needs to come from the inside.