BLOGI ya tatu

Hello friends and followers of our BLOG. We haven't had very much free time at all, not to mention electricity, running water, or toilet seats for the past 10 days so needless to say, our BLOG has suffered. Right now we are at a stray internet cafe in Malindi blending in with the mangy cats that roam the streets. We've come up with a list of important topics that we feel you should know about.

1. Things that wake us up in the middle of the night.

2. Traffic.

3. Number of bubbling sunburns.

4. The Taita hills, safari, and Malindi.

5. Time.



In the things that wake us up category we have screaming cats, barfing dogs, yelling mosques, yodelling roosters, and MOSQUITOS. It's been real.



Traffic. LET US. TELL YOU. It's a miracle what with Molly's deafness and Elan's blindness that we have managed to survive crossing the streets thus far. The main forms of transportation here are Matatus and Tuktuks. Matatus are basically rusting vans crammed full of people with a man hanging out the door yelling at you to GET IN THE CAR in swahili. They drive approximately 100000 miles per hour and often feature pictures of david beckham and random english sayings such as, "Let it rain", or "Three words". Tuktuks are slightly more user friendly and they are our personal favorite. They kind of look like pedicabs but they're motorized and glorious. Most of the time on the highway we have resorted to covering our eyes and praying, especially when the driver decides it's a good idea to pass a semi truck going around a blind corner on the edge of a cliff.

Enough about traffic. We are currently keeping a running tally of the number of bubbling sunburns we (specifically Elan) have received. The score stands: Molly 1, Elan 5. It also is worthy to note that there are now literally sheets of Elan's albino flesh floating in the Indian Ocean. But that is neither here nor there.

Time. How do you even say this? Time is meaningless here. Everyone is always at least a half hour if not a full hour late, and it's perfectly culturally acceptable to set up a meeting with someone and never show up. Ever. For creatures of habit like ourselves, this doesn't really always work out, but we are trying to adapt.

So, for the past two weeks we have been in Taita, Tsavo, and now, Malindi. Taita was our rural homestay, and it was interesting to say the least. Molly had three siblings: Stanley age 23, Lydia 17, and Willikister 15. For the record, that's pronounced Will- a- keester. Elan had three siblings as well: Mavu 19, notorious womanizer, Hendry 17, also notorious womanizer, and Imelda 12. Every morning we would have breakfast with our families featuring staring contests with Stanley, butter sandwiches, and the best goddamn chai this side of the mississippi. Then we would work with the townfolk building a community library. We were valuable assets to the team when they would actually let us hold a tool for more than thirty seconds. The women of the community really put us to shame when they would work for four hours with infants on their backs. After manual labor, we went to Swahili class and lunch at the Palace until about 5, when we would maybe play a little soccer and then head home for the night. The evenings featured Willikister performing hours upon hours of solo dancing and singing, awkward tv shows such as the Bold and the Beautiful, and dinner. Eating is a whole different type of sport in Taita. You eat until you feel immense amounts of pain, and then you eat some more. Elan's family attempted to bond by putting on every American dvd they owned which consisted of: "Extravagant Grace: Women of Faith", Van Damme movies, and the Teletubbies episode in which the teletubbies eat tubby custard and lala does her secret dance... five times. Needless to say, after watching that episode of Teletubbies at least three times, Elan wants the Teletubbies to feel more pain than Van Damme's victims. One of our favorite quotes of the trip thus far was when Molly was in another room and a little neighbor girl asked her family in English and I quote: "Where the white girl at?" After being told that she was sleeping, the girl responded, "THEY SLEEP?" But as the gas station attendant said, "all you white people look the same." Cultural exchange complete. The people in Taita were really great, our families were amazing and the village was incredible and one of the most beautiful places we have ever seen. We left on Sunday, and true to form, our advisor was four hours late to pick us up because they "had cooking to do."

After Taita, we drove to Tsavo, a national park the size of Israel. Our driver stayed at a steady speed of about 90 miles an hour the whole way there on dirt roads while talking on his radio. We went on safari for two days and saw elephants, water buffalo, lions, giraffes, a cheetah, ostriches, dickdicks, elands, antelopes, zebras and many birds and baboons. The one night we stayed there, was potentially one of the more eventful nights of our lives. It started with an episode straight out of the Discovery Channel. When we got there there was a dying water buffalo that had been attacked by lions the night before stuck in a watering hole. That night, about ten lions came to the watering hole to finish the deed. However, they were suprised, as were we, when the water buffalo fought back, bum leg and all. While this was going down, all of a sudden out of nowhere, a Lion King style stampede of about 200 water buffalo came to rescue their comrade. Surprise number two occurred when they decided to cut the mission short, drink some water, bellow some bellows, and peace. The highlight of the trip was later that night drinking gin and tonics and Tusker in the pool while watching the greatest lion on lion showdown we have personally ever witnessed. Tsavo was great. Amen.

En route to Malindi, we got a flat tire and decided to do some group push ups on the highway. Our goal is 20 real push ups by the end of the trip. The score stands thus: Molly 7, Elan 4. Malindi is a touristy town right on teh coast of Kenya. It has a large Italian population, and there is actually a Little Italy (bizarre, yes?) where all the vendors yell at us in Italian. In Malindi, we visited the Gede ruins of a Swahili town, and went snorkelling yesterday where Elan desposited her flesh sheets by accident. Elan also received her fifth bubbling sunburn yesterday. She actually DID apply sunscreeen, believe it or not. Albino no mo. Red fo sho. We had another drop off today, however it was entirely...something.
We are never going to take this long to update our BLOG ever again because this was painfully long.

XOXO,
Gossip mangy cat