Leah’s Travel Page

Sorry everyone! I’ve been entirely neglecting my blogging duties because, a) I spent a considerable time away from internet (and electricity, and running water, and showers, and general hygiene), and b) frantically finishing up ridiculous amounts of school work that I had had no choice but to procrastinate upon before because, heck, I’m in Africa. But basically my infrequent interneting has been simply to monitor incredibly urgent matters, such as where the Canucks and Habs are in the standings (hangin’ in there for now, eh, boys?), and whether or not Roy Halladay will be able to start the season for the Blue Jays… You see, these are the thoughts with which I am consumed, and I’m sure you can all understand therefore why I gave the appearance of having fallen off the earth.

So I guess I have an insane amount of catching up to do, what with my month-long disappearance. So I’ll just give a synopsis of the best parts (that’s really all you wanted anyway, isn’t it?).

First off, I NEED to talk about the amazing opportunity I had to do a homestay with a traditional Maasai family near Elangata Wuas in the heart of Maasailand. I was paired up with another girl on the trip, and a local interpreter named Paul, and we stayed with the Kibunga family. The other girl’s name is Aliya. My name is Leah. Think about explaining that one to a group of people who only speak Maa. We walked to their home, which was about 45 minutes from the nearest village, through incredibly dusty savanna and acacia land, across huge dried up riverbeds with makeshift wells dug into them during this drought period, past a few carcasses of cows that had already succumed to the intensely dry conditions (enroute we also saw some camel, ostrich and dik-dik…all in a day’s walk). The Kibunga shamba (a kind of enclosure containing 4 or 5 buildings), had four houses (for all the various family members – it’s a very biiiig family) and a cow/goat enclosure in it, fenced by thorny bushes. The houses were small, maybe the size of my kitchen at home; the walls were made of sticks and cow dung (it didn’t smell…or maybe I was just used to it), and inside was incredibly smoky, as the cooking was done in the adjacent room. The walls were so thin that you could be speaking at virtually a whisper and someone in the next room would resond – not much privacy, eh? The bed that Aliya and I slept on (normally the father’s bed) was a slightly raised platform built of more sticks, cardboard and covered with a cowhide. The roof was covered in tin and plastic sheeting – it actually rained a tiny bit that night, and the sound was like rice falling slowly into a can. The Kibungas had no electricity or running water (given the location, it’s almost a preposterous notion)…To go to the bathroom (referred to locally as taking a “short call” or a “long call”) involved finding a patch of bushes where there were as few children running around within eyesight as possible!

The family family was great. We spent most of our time with the father, his three wives, and some of his sons and daughters (he has 17 children in all – some of whom have already left home). We went with two of the wives to go collect water from the well and firewood, although these two little old ladies were able to carry way more than us on their shoulders. We also milked some goats, although there was very little because it’s in the middle of such a hard drought and they produce very little. The family also has several cows, but they were off with other family members being herded in some distant area that wasn’t completely dried up. There was a little puppy that was running around the shamba – we asked if it had a name and the response was that they call him “Dog”. So we asked if we could name it, and we chose “Hanson” – then we tried to teach the whole family the song “MmmBop”, but that was a highly unsuccessful venture. In the evening (or shall I say, once the sun went down, because there really is no evening), everyone sat indoors by candlelight, drank tea and listened to the radio…and yes, a little Celine Dion came on. One of the sons also asked us if we listened to Sean Paul….what???!!! If only these artists could imagine where their music was being listened to.

For supper we ate cabbage and ugali, which is an extremely dense starch made from maize that is the absolute staple in this part of East Africa. We ate with our fingers, even though we knew they had spoons, but apparently they feel more comfortable without. They fed Aliya and I such massive portions that it was absolutely impossible to finish what they gave us…and yet we had to eat it all because it’s very rude not too! They kept on laughing at me in particular for how slowly I eat. And then of course, the next morning at breakfast, they fed us the exact same meal in the exact same gigantic quantities (Although they normally only eat one meal per day, a big dinner – it was just that they had guests, and that we had brought food for them, that they made so much on this occasion). The morning we awoke to find the entire family already up and about – at 6:30am, we had clearly overslept! Not my lifestyle, I tell ya. It was Saturday, which is the major market day at Mile 46 (the name of the village). So we all walked back to the village and wandered around the market before saying goodbye to our family and connecting back up with the McGill group. I wish I could think of more details to tell you about the experience, but there are so many that it’s hard to sort through…I’ll definitely add more as I think of them.

Well, that was a lot of writing. I’ll take a break now before doing the summary of my last few weeks on the program.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 28th, 2006 at 10:56 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.