23-24JAN2007 "Settling in: buying a car, girls football...and more bugs!"

On Tuesday, we stayed super late at KEMRI trying to work out the funds transfer for our car purchase. The whole car searching process itself was moderately painful. Luckily the head of the KEMRI garage, David Kalachu, was very helpful and coached me through the process, but much like everything in Kenya you learn on your own as you go along because it is always different than you are told the first time! In the end, we wound up paying nearly 6,000 USD for a 13 year old Subaru station wagon and we got a great deal. Can you imagine? That is more than 6 years salary for a well paid cook or housekeeper. All cars in Kenya come from Japan when they are 7 years old - you do not want to know what these 'new' cars cost off the boat!

Just before we went to bed tonight I (Patrick) heard the standard “come quick – bring the camera!” Just beside the dining room table was the biggest stick bug that I had ever seen. The bug’s body was ~10” long and its legs were equally long. Suddenly there was a flurry and it was gone. I followed it out to near the front door, where I saw it was missing one of its legs, but where I also discovered that stick bugs (at least those in Kenya) have huge, beautiful wings! Its wings were almost as wide as its body was long – quite impressive to say the least. Who knows what else we are sharing our new digs with!













On Wednesday, Caroline (a post-doc at KEMRI) invited me (Wendy) to play soccer with a few KEMRI folk and the local schoolgirls. The event is organized by “Moving the Goalposts” - a small non-profit that aims to promote women’s education and reduce teenage pregnancy and HIV infection through peer education. Their main medium for interacting with the girls and teaching them leadership and life skills is through soccer. The girls ranged in age from 8 to 18, they were all barefoot, and most of them were wearing skirts. Even so, they ran circles around the mzungus (especially me). The soccer pitch was dusty, red earth down the middle, calf-high grass on the edges and decorated everywhere with cow pies. It is very humbling to be outrun by an eight year old with no shoes or out-defended by an 18-year old dressed to the nines that isn’t even breaking a sweat, but it was great fun.

We realize that we are so spoiled here. Almost every morning we get up and go for a run on the beach or swim in the ocean. The beach across the street from our house is spectacular—white sand & clear blue water – just like a postcard. The only thing that can ruin the scenery is the occasional leathery Italian in a speedo or overweight German grandma in a bikini. In fact, the average age of the mzungu population around here is probably 60 years old. If you take out the KEMRI folk, it is certainly higher…reminds us of Florida. After awhile you really start to notice that every time you see a white person, they also have white hair.