My Town

In my town, buildings are built with beautiful stone quarried next door.

 

Those buildings might take weeks to build, or months or years, just depending on when the owners come into money.  They build when they can instead of saving.  If it's already been spent on the building, no one can ask to "borrow" it.

 

Eventually, people will come to the building to live and hand wash their laundry in buckets, then hang it on the railing to dry.

 

Most buildings have a name.  Actually, I think everything in Kenya has a name.  Some are decorated more than others.

 

In my town, people shop for groceries on the street and at Naivas.  You can find lots of wonderful things in Naivas from American Garden peanut butter (made in Iran) to fresh somasas in the bakery.  You have to ask for the machine clothes detergent because everyone else uses the hand detergent. People double park at Naivas, so it can be a tricky business.

 

In my town, children hold hands with their mom and love balloon animals, just like in your town.

 

In my town, all the children ask, "How are YOU? How are YOU? How are YOU?"

In my town, I'm quite fine, thank you.

Beyond the Walls

When we first arrived in Kenya, we would hear loud gun-shot type sounds pretty frequently throughout the day.  As no one else flinched or dropped to the ground or even made reference to the sounds, we ignored them and secretly wondered what we had gotten ourselves into.

Turns out, the land on three sides of our compound is a rock quarry and the sounds were blasts breaking out rocks.  Richard and I took a hike through the quarry yesterday as I had never seen what was on the other side of our wall.

We each took a big stick just in case.

The quarry is full of huge pits and piles of rocks and sand and scrubby brush.  We didn't hear any blasts as we walked through.  Instead we saw lots of men quarrying the rock by hand with pick axes and other tools.  Some were standing on small ledges and working their way down to the floor.

Many of the pits had clear, green pools at the bottom.  They were beautiful, because everywhere else is dusty and dirty and parched.

My shoes and socks were filled with a fine dust from walking through this.

These stones were waiting for a lorry to come by and transport them.  Again, all of these rocks were hewn by hand.

As we were leaving, several of the men congregated underneath a sprawling tree to eat ugali cooked over an open fire before going back to work.

I'm glad to know what's out there.

Our Local Slum

This is an alley in the local slum.  It's the front "yard" for houses that face in on both the left and right.

Chickens for sale - not for meat - for eggs.

Cutie-patootie.

Fish cleaned to be sold in the market later.  I use cleaned loosely.

A doorway to an apartment in the long alley.  It's probably one room big.

Please take picha!  Please take picha!

I love that even in the midst of this poverty, this is the only graffiti I saw.