So I’ve been getting a lot of questions regarding what I’m actually doing here. From my blog, it probably sounds like all I’ve been doing is running, studying, and partying, which is pretty much exactly what I did in Lincoln. So I’ll give a rundown of what a typical day during these last two months has looked like:

3:30 A.M.-  I hear the first roosters begin to crow. I guarantee that there is no sunlight triggering this.

5:55 A.M.- My alarm goes off. I put on something appropriate and go out to greet my host family, who is eating breakfast and about to leave for school. I wait for my host father to unlock the house so I can go outside and go to the restroom (such a generous term for hole in the ground) that I probably held since 7 P.M. the night before when the house is locked up (and yes, this causes problems sometimes in the middle of the night, but we won’t go there). I then quickly brush my teeth, put on my dust-infested athletic shoes, and go running for around 45 minutes while the sun is coming up.

7:15 A.M.- I return from my run and fetch some hot water for my bath. After a quick shower involving a bucket and a cup, I get dressed in business casual attire, eat breakfast- usually bread or some sort of roll with honey and chai- and read the morning gazette.

An quick aside about business casual in Kenya. I am not allowed to wear the following items:

Pants, Capris, Shorts, tank tops, or tight shirts. Skirts and dresses below the knee are the only things girls can wear, and bare shoulders equal prostitute here. I feel like I’m back at my all girls high school with a daily uniform.

8:00 A.M.- My teacher and two other volunteers arrive at my house (convenient, eh?) and then the Kiswahili begins. We each give a synopsis of everything we did the night before at our homes- all in Kiswahili. We then have class until noon, and although it is intense, we definitely make it fun. I’m getting pretty good at cracking jokes in Kiswahili. Hopefully I’ll still be cool when I come back to the states.

12:00 P.M.- We walk to town and meet up with the other language clusters for lunch at a hoteli of our choice. We’ve discovered this hole in the wall called Neema Café, and have continued to go there ever since because the prices are 1/3 of anywhere else in town. There are only a few catches:

-          There is no menu. You just have to ask what they have that day.

-          There are flies. Lots. But like the spiders in the houses, you just get used to it.

-          No one there speaks English, so you just have to order in Kiswahili.

-          We often have to share our tables with random locals because the place is always so packed.

-          I tend not to order the rice anymore because there is usually dirt and rocks intermixed.

-          Whenever we tell our host families we go there every day, they laugh and say they wouldn’t be caught dead there.

Do these reasons deter us? Of course not. We’re living on a budget, and plus, we’re all adventure seekers. And is the food damn good? There’s a reason we go back every day.

I usually order githeri (a beans and corn mixture), black beans and chapati, or wali special (rice, beans, cabbage), and none of these meals are over 30 shillings, which is roughly 37 cents.

Yeah.

1:30 P.M.- We meet and have public health technical training sessions for the afternoon. These range in topics from program planning, community needs assessment, and learning about the cultural norms and practices of Kenya.

5 P.M. – Class is dismissed. From here we either go to the soda dispensary to get a Fanta, to the market to get fresh fruit, to a hoteli to grab maandazi (donut- like pastries) and chai, or to the bar to hang out, watch the World Cup, and grab a cold Tusker.

6:30 P.M.- Curfew time. Loitokitok gets pitch black around 7, so we have a strictly enforced curfew time with our homestay families. Rumor has it that elephants used to roam the town at night looking for food during the drought season, which is why the curfew was first implemented, and now it has just stuck. I usually arrive home, scrub my feet from all the dirt that has accumulated on them during the day, and then study for a few hours next to my 9 year old host sister while she is doing her homework.  Precious, I know.

8 P.M.- Dinner is served. Kenyans tend to eat a lot of filler food. Filler food is something that is very cheap, has no nutritional value, and you basically eat it to just sit in your stomach. Ugali is just flour and water, and that is one of the main staples here. Kale, which is readily abundant, is called sukuma wiki, which literally translates to “pushes the week.” This is because families can buy kale if nothing else just to have something to eat. They don’t eat these things for taste. Needless to say, I’m excited to start cooking for myself.

9 P.M. I go to my room, brush my teeth in a bottle/makeshift sink, and, if I have the energy, write a few emails or watch a movie on my computer before bed.

Sleep. Repeat.

This has been my routine day in and day out for the last two months. But in a week and a half, I will be leaving this town for good. I’ll be going to a new village with a new home, new language, new weather, and new people with new cultures all by myself. Do I have any idea of what I’m going to do once I’m there? No. Does this scare the crap out of me? Yes.

But I guess I’ll have two years to figure it out. After all, that’s what I’m here for.