day six

Today was a day of many firsts...

• My first matatu ride -  A matatu is a mini-van that has been fitted with seats and is shoved full of people until bursting which shuttles people from one "stage" (stop) to another. I was lucky enough to be squeezed into the front seat of the van with another woman and the driver for the 45 minute drive from Iguhu to Kakamega. The road from Iguhu to Kakamega is sealed for about 60% of the drive, the rest is unsealed with many, many potholes.
  
• My first desire to escape this heat - Whilst out buying some coffee and airtime (credit for my phone), I discovered that Tusky's (one of the supermarkets) has airconditioning... to which I wandered around for several minutes with no real purpose just so I could enjoy being out of the heat. It's not actually that hot here, average of 30C, but it is constant. It does cool down a bit at night so you can sleep peacefully under your mosquito net.
  
• My first power outage lasting longer than a minute - occurred today at 7pm-ish, just as it has gotten dark. Luckily my host family is well prepared and we had plenty of torches to use, which is how we were able to see our dinner of chapati and lentils. Everyone had warned me of such occurrences, but before today they were only less than a minute.
  
• My first mandazi breakfast - oh I like Kenyan breakfast! Mandazi are balls of dough that are fried, i.e. kinda like a tough doughnut, but not overly sugary. yum, yum, yum.
  
• My first time of catching a chicken -  My host family lives in a compound with a bunch of cows, ducks, geese, chickens, roosters and a dog. This afternoon when I returned from work the women were sitting outside taking tea, so I joined with them, and the chickens were running all about us, so the women grabbed them and invited me to do the same... never thought I would be able to say I caught a chicken, but I did. 

Here are some pictures of the animals within the compound. The other day the chickens were running around the lounge room, and one of them did a poop on the floor... hahahaha