Live from my homestay, here’s a crappy iPod touch photo for your viewing pleasure. For my homestay, I’m staying with a small Muslim family - just a mother, her daughter, and a cousin (we share a room, but he drives a tuk tuk - think motorized rickshaw - and only is here at night). I’ll post more about the family soon - just a glimpse of us watching the news for now!
This past week, Lamu held a celebration for the Islamic holiday of Maulidi, which celebrates the birth of Mohammad. Every year, thousands of Kenyans (and hundreds of international tourists) flock to Lamu, which holds one of the liveliest Maulidi celebrations on the East African coast. The island town raises prize money and hosts competitions for swimming, dhow (see above), and donkey races, bao tournaments, henna contests, and even a greased pole walk.
We rearranged our trip to Kiwayu in order to attend, and I gotta say, it was pretty worth it. The whole town becomes much more lively with the addition of so many more people, and the events themselves are a blast to attend. Above is a snap of the greased pole competition. It is what it sounds like - the organizers stick a log out from the main pier in Lamu, grease it up, andmen compete to grab a flag from the end of the pole. It’s hilarious to watch people wipe out (hard, sometimes) over and over again. I definitely see Olympic potential here.
Maulidi was a blast, and a great way to cap off our time in Lamu. Today is our last full day in Lamu (also, today we have our final Swahili lesson with Reuben, our freakin’ fantastic teacher) - tomorrow we head back to Mombasa for our second homestay. While it will be nice to head back to a major city, these past few weeks in Lamu have been fascinating. Lamu is one of the more unique cities I’ve visited (and I’ve visited quite a few (GTROT)), with a flavor and culture totally unique to the Swahili coast. It’s narrow alleyways and surprisingly large donkey population are pretty foreign to my Tennessee roots, but the time we spenthere honestly just makes me want to come back.
However, next time, maybe I’ll stay in a place that has hot running water.
That’s all from Lamu - I hope all is well back home!
Hallå från Kenya! (That means “Hello from Kenya!” in Swedish. Cause this is a classy blog, with different languages and stuff.)
Tuesday afternoon, we returned from our three day dhow excursion to Kiwayu, a small island just off the coast of Kenya. It was a fun little trip, really more of a vacation than anything - all we did was chill on the boat, chill on the beach, play soccer, snorkel, read, and sleep. Not a bad way to spend three days, right?
Chilling on the dhow.
I’ll dive a little deeper into what we did below. First though, here’s a link to a map I made that details our route. We sailed (and by sailed, I mean we used the motor until we ran out of gas, then we sailed) about 40 miles in total, and it was 8 hours each way. That’s right nerds smart mathematician readers, we were doing an average of 5MPH. I could have jogged and gotten there faster. No worries though - I plowed through like 200 pages of my book (I’ll be talking about that later).
Our little camping spot on the west side of the island.
After our long boat ride, we reached the island in the later afternoon, and immediately headed across the island to a massive, gorgeous, and empty white sand beach. Kiwayu has a population of just a few hundred people, so we had this huge beach all to ourselves. We swam for a bit before the girls took off on their own (for a description of that mess, check out Carly’s blog), and we pulled out the soccer ball to screw around with. Some locals showed up eventually, and we enjoyed a little pickup game (we lost 5-3, which ain’t bad for 5 tired Americans). Eventually, we headed back, rocked an awesome sunset, ate, and slept.
The next day, we woke up (too) early for a little snorkeling excursion on the east side of the island (the Indian Ocean side - BRING IT SOMALI PIRATES). We had a blast and saw some pretty sick fish, and tired ourselves out good enough to do jack-diddly for the rest of the day. I’m OK with it.
The next day, we were up early (don’t really know why - we didn’t leave for like two hours), and left the island. Eight (EIGHT) hours later, we pulled into the Lamu port, and we were all wrapped up. Gotta say, it was a very relaxing trip.
Before I go, a few logistical details. First, the shared Flickr account I wrote about a couple of weeks ago appears to have been a failed experiment - long story short, Yahoo! makes it extraordinarily hard to share an account, so we’ll have to either find a different solution or abandon our plans for shared photo awesomeness. Second, sorry my posts have been sparse over the past few weeks - I know it’s cliche for a amateur blogger to apologize for rare posts, but in this case I think it’s warranted. I know there are a lot of you who care deeply for myself and for the students I’m sharing this experience with, so I’ll do my best to keep things more up-to-date. Hopefully posting will return to normal (i.e. more than once a week) when we get back to Mombasa this weekend.
So, kwa heri for now - I’ll post soon about Mawlid, a major Islamic holiday that Lamunians go crazy for. Hope all is well stateside!
P.S. Here’s a link to a gallery of photos from our time in Lamu/Kiwayu: Flickr Set
Hello from Lamu!
Again, sorry for the lack of posts (Carly’s grandparents…), but I thought I’d throw a quick up a quick post to update y’all on our status. We’ve been living the life over here in Lamu, enjoying the fantastic weather, rocking some serious Swahili lessons, and downing some delicious (and totally varied) rice and chicken based meals.
Tomorrow morning (at 6AM - ugh) we’ll be departing for a three day dhow excursion to some remote Kenyan islands. As such, no posts for the next few days! But we should have an awesome time sailing and enjoying the sun - don’t you worry about us.
In the mean time, hope all is well in America - will post some awesome photos when we get back (if it can get more awesome than me riding a DONKEY).
Hamjambo!
We’ve spent the past few days getting settled into a routine here in Lamu. Things have been pretty busy, (hence the lack of any new posts since we left Voi), but I do think we’re all enjoying this town quite a bit.
Lamu is a small island just off the eastern coast of Kenya, one that has been a center for Swahili trade and cultural interaction for centuries. The town itself is made up of a complex maze of alleyways and stone buildings, all of which are too narrow for any car to pass through. So, instead of cars, the people of Lamu (Lamunicans?) have employed the use of hundreds of donkeys to transport goods and such around the island.
I really like Lamu. The maze of alleyways I mentioned above gives it a real old world vibe, and as you duck between broad stone porches and narrow street gutters on your way to the lively waterfront, you get a sort of sensation that I’ve only ever felt in places like Venice, Italy.
So, Lamu is awesome. What have we been doing here? Well, for much of our three week stay, we’ll be intensive Swahili lessons - every morning from 7am to roughly 1pm we’re learning or drilling the language (don’t worry mom, we get a break for breakfast), and then, in the afternoons, we’ve been meeting with a native Lamunican (I don’t care if that isn’t the right term, because it’s obviously better than anything else), mainly just to hang out and practice the language.
My tutor is a man named Ali. He lives with his family near the end of the waterfront, about 10 minutes away from our guest house. I’ve really been enjoying our meetings together, mainly because we’ve spent much of it playing a game called Boa. Boa is a traditional East African game similar to Mankala, but quite a bit more complicated. There are four rows on the board (two for each opponent), each with eight places to put stones or seeds. The object of the game is to clear out your opponents first row by systematically picking up and dropping seeds along each row. It may sound simple, but it has my head spinning - the strategy lies in calculating (with math and stuff) what moves you will make, as well as what you want your opponent to do. To me, it’s like an complex form of mathy-chess. I suck, but it’s fun.
Well, I think I’ve rambled on long enough. Needless to say, I’m quite comfortable here in Lamu for the time being - I hope all is well back in the states!
Kwa Heri!
P.S. Because it’s been a while since my last post, I’d love to field some questions - leave them in the comments and I’ll respond as I see them! Also, all of these photos should be on flickr soon. Also, sorry for the weird way this text is aligned, the photos make it wonky.
Hamjambo from Lamu!
Here’s some quick news about photos. All of us over here have cameras (some of them quite nice), and between the eight of us, we’re photographing the snot out of this semester. So, we figured, why not share the love with everybody?
We made a shared account on Flickr (a photo sharing site) where we all plan on posting our favorite shots from the trip. It will be, hopefully, a definitive photo history of our spring abroad. The account name is SITMombasa2011, and here is a link to our photostream. Each photo should be tagged with the name the person who snapped the photo (if you know what that means), so keep an eye out for new photos, and enjoy!
Hamjambo! Sorry for the radio silence over the past few days - we’ve been quite busy.
First off, we left Taita early yesterday morning. It was sad to leave our homestay families behind, but, let’s be honest, I think we were all a little relieved to get back to the land of running water. We rode down the mountains from Taita to Voi, a town situated on the entrance to Tsavo National Park (a wildlife reserve roughly the size of Israel). We stayed at a fairly swanky safari lodge (above-ground pool, check) and went on a little drive through the park yesterday afternoon. We had a nice dinner outside, then a few of us headed into town for a drink. Solid night.
We had another early morning today, getting up and riding (for some four hours) through the park on our way to Malindi, a small beach town on the coast of Kenya. We grabbed some food and headed right to the beach, where we got to snorkel a bit and check out the fish living in a coral reef just off the shore. Not a bad way to spend an afternoon.
We (read: the guys) played a little soccer with some other locals on the beach before heading back to the inn, where I currently find myself exhausted (lack of sleep + sleepless car ride + snorkeling + soccer = tired Worth - who knew?).
So, anyway, that’s a little catch-up for you. I hope all is well in your lives - more to come soon!
Kwa heri!
Hamjambo from Taita!
It’s our last night up here in the mountains - I’m currently packing furiously so I don’t go to bed too late. We’re leaving for Tsavo National Park tomorrow at 6am, which is super early (for me).
This has been a week I won’t soon forget. The people of Taita have uncommonly warm to us eight student-visitors, and I think we’re all extremely grateful for their hospitality. Taita is a beautiful place - it’s warm and breezy nearly all the time, and refreshingly cool in the shadows. Waking up every morning and seeing the sun shine over the mountains that surround the village has been a wonderful treat, and one that I’ll miss sorely.
As we leave this place for our next destination, we leave with memories that will stick with us, memories of both the joys and the strains of adapting to a new culture. Opportunities like this are both rare and unique, and I hope that we took full advantage.
So, on to a small safari/beach vacation before some intense Swahili lessons in Lamu. I’ll keep you updated!
Thanks for reading. Lala salama (sleep peacefully)!!!
So it’s getting late, I’m the last awake in my house, and all of the bugs are starting to get attracted to my light, so this post will have to be brief! Above, you’ll see some crazy white dude surrounded by crazy excited Kenyan kids. Why are they so excited? Well, mainly because all African kids are required to be obsessed with cameras. But, secondarily, because I just kicked some serious tail during a maths lesson.
Me and a fellow SIT student, Marissa, were charged with teaching at the Mwongea Primary school in Taita today, and it went pretty well. We both taught English and math to two different grades, and despite some weird schedule miscues, it went pretty well! Well, I didn’t embarrass myself, and the kids were knocking down some pretty complex multiplication problems, so I’d call it a success.
The rest of the day was pretty boring, so I worked on some loooong blog posts that I’m prepping (one about my upcoming independent study project, and another whiny post) - look out for those soon (hopefully). We only have a couple of days left in Taita, which is crazy.
Ok, the insane moth battle happening around my light bulb means it’s time for me to get under the mosquito net. But thanks for reading and commenting everyone - please, if you have any specific questions, just throw them out in the comments section, I’d love to answer them!
Lala salama!
Mambo!
Today was a pretty straightforward day - I woke up, waited for about five minutes for the SuperBowl score to load on ESPN.com (seriously, Steelers?), munched on some chapati my host mother made (think pancakes, but made with bread dough - delicious), and headed down to the school. We moved bricks and rocks to the library site before getting to some sledgehammer work (which I couldn’t participate in, so I played with the school kids for a bit - they never tire of being tossed up in the air by a white dude).
We worked for a couple of hours, then headed up to the palace (basically, it’s a house for the region’s member of Parliament, when he visits) for Swahili lessons and lunch, which lasted until the late afternoon. Pretty basic, pretty good.
So, in light of a chill day, I decided to try and upload a video over my creaky cell internet connection. I’ll apologize in advance for the quality - like pictures, it has to be compressed pretty far for YouTube to have any hope out here. But hopefully you can make out the view from the top of the mountain we hiked yesterday - enjoy my informative commentary.
So, anyway, bedtime for me. I hope these recent posts haven’t been too mundane - I’ve got a more introspective post in the oven, so stay tuned!
Lala salama (sleep peacefully)!!!
P.S. If you want something really good to read, check out this New Yorker article regarding the effect of solitary confinement on humans. I read it last night, and haven’t stopped thinking about it since, and probably will write about it soon: The New Yorker
