Kenyan Weekend

I spent the last weekend in Kenya before heading off to Sudan. The majority of the time I was just resting & relaxing in the Diocese of El Obeid in Nairobi. The time change (8hrs ahead) began taking a toll. The area around the diocese is beautiful, as is the diocese compound itself. My neighbor was an 86 yr old Italian priest who kept trying to make me eat bread sticks.  He thought I just didn't like the large bread sticks and insisted that maybe the smaller diameter bread sticks would be more appealing to me. Clearly my efforts of explaining glutardation were not fully comprehended. After 3 nights in Nairobi I traveled to Lokichoggio in Northern Kenya. I stayed at a small "camp." Loki was quite different from Nairobi and definitely made me feel like I was getting closer to my remote destination.

I came to the realization in Loki that living in Africa I will need to get over my entomophobia. Back home in the states I have been known to run away from bees and hop onto a chair if I see a cockroach. In Africa, all of the insects seem to be on steroids.  I spent the better half of the afternoon in Loki trying to get a hummingbird size "bee" out of the cabin. In addition to being bombarded by insects, I also had a rodent friend in the middle of the night. I heard some animal crawl into my window and scrape down my curtains around 2:30AM.  I then saw it scamper behind a bureau.  I stayed up the rest of the night under my mosquito net with my flashlight pointed in the direction of every noise it made. To top it off, I decided to make my own animal noises to scare the animal from coming near me.  That should be a nice visual for everyone- me wide awake under a mosquito net with white knuckles, holding a flashlight, imitating the sounds I would expect a larger rodent to make.  I found out the next morning it was an "African rat." I think that living in Africa for a year should be considered the ultimate immersion therapy for all my phobias.

Pictures will come as soon as my last bags arrive with my USB cord!