In which I am misinformed about a non-existent presidential assassination, and make a new friend

This morning, someone came running to the clinic asking if I was there. When he saw me, he told me that Obama was killed. Actually, what he said was that Americans were celebrating because Obama was killed. My head goes “What!?” and my heart skipped a beat at the shock. “The president was ASSASSINATED!? And Americans are celebrating!?!?” my brain asked itself. Before I could voice the question, he said “Obama Bin Laden was killed!” OH. The shock goes away as I realize what actually happened, laugh at the irony of the situation, then start to feel some sense of pride and accomplishment on behalf of the US for FINALLY getting Osama. I would have called my mom to get the news in full, but it was 2am in NY when I heard it. Thankfully, the flashlight I carry around with me also has a radio, and I managed to pick up a radio station from Nairobi, a re-broadcast of the BBC news. Every other station I heard was in Swahili, and though I caught the words “Osama” and “al quaida” I knew I wasn’t gonna get much info.
So there I was standing in a patch of morning sunlight furiously spinning the hand crank which powers my flashlight/radio listening to the news.
It’s really interesting feeling American or patriotic when not in America. I certainly have just about zero emotional attachment to Obama; I’m mostly ambivalent towards him. But when the BBC played the recording of his announcement, before he even got to the good part, as soon as I heard his voice I just felt this American pride, or something building up. Like…after hearing the British voices talking about it for a while, to hear an American, and to hear the US President, felt like being home. I’ve never actually been excited to hear Obama’s voice before today. When they played the recording of people outside the white house singing “Osama, Osama, hey, hey, hey, goodbye” a la Remember the Titans, I couldn’t help laughing and feeling proud of how witty we Americans are. :-P
I told a few other people around me, who were like “oh, cool” and one person who was like “I don’t know how anyone can celebrate the death of another person” and I’m like hmm…not the reactions I was looking for. :-P So when 4am EST rolled around I called mom, but though I KNOW she was awake, her cell phone wasn’t on yet. I tried again around 5 and got her, already AT the gym waiting for them to unlock the doors and let her in. So we chatted about it and “how did you hear” and bla bla, and it was just really nice to share a momentous American moment with another American. I listened to the same interviews and the same stuff over and over for almost 2 hours on that radio, trying to get every bit of information I could, because each tidbit I learned made me feel closer to home and more like I was getting to be a part of what was going on at home.

Back to the regularly scheduled programming.
Saturday was awesome. It was a series of mini-adventures that added up to a pretty exciting day. I started out at the clinic, but was soon informed that Pastor Simon and 2 of the orphans were going into Limuru to the market to get food and he wanted me to come. I’m always up for going to markets, for some reason I just LOVE them, and I also love the idea of doing something besides “work on Saturday. :-P So 1.5 hours after I was informed “we’re going now”, we left. :-P
We went into Limuru and after stopping to greet every 3^rd person we saw on the street, made it to the market. We wandered around for a little, I got a pair of sandals that would have cost about $15 in the US for $5, and we stopped at one fruit stand to get enough food for about 16 people for a week and a half. You can imagine the large amount of food that was. All the fruits and vegetables (the starches I guess they already had) weighed probably about 40lbs, and cost about Ksh1000 = $12.50. Can you imaine paying $12.50 for avocados, zucchini, tomatoes, onions, carrots, lettuce, cilantro, bananas, watermelon, peppers, and on and on for 16 people for over a week? Yeah, no.
Then we went back home and I spent the afternoon taking a nap on the exam table in the clinic, since we didn’t have any patients in the 2 hours from when we got back until 4, when we closed. When I got back to the house, they asked if I wanted to go with the kids to “prepare maize at pastor’s house”. I ahd no idea what that might entail, but I said sure! When I got there, there was a huge tarp on the ground, about 20x30ft, covered in dried maize-on-the-cob, already husked. Our job was to sit and pick the kernels off the maize. I LOVE peeling, picking, and all things mindless and systematic, so it was great fun for me until I got blisters deep under my skin. :-P When it started getting shady as the sun went behind the house, we packed all the still-kerneled maize back into a bunch of giant tarp bags (why it was all out in the first place is unknown to me) and went inside, where a few of us continued de-kerneling maize while watching a random soccer game on TV. After a while it was “time to go” so we went. When we got back to the house, we basically just left again- me and 3 of the girls. They wanted to get baking powder to make a cake for one of their birthdays/the high school kids are all leaving today or tomorrow. Unfortunately, the baking shop was closed, so we tried 8-ish different general shops in the local downtown (we’re on the outskirts of Limuru, about 10 minutes drive from that downtown) but none of them had it. The whole time we were walking the kids were doing the usual point-and-yell thing, only here they are all Kikuyu, so they yell “mothongo” instead of “mzungu”. One time we came around a corner and these two 8-or-9 yr old kids stopped DEAD in their tracks when they saw me.
When we got home I checked my email and when I came out of my room, the same guy who told me Obama/Osama was dead this morning said he was going to milk a cow. I asked if I could come watch, so I got the job of flashlight-holder. Turns out he’d already milked the cows except this one, who was getting over an infection in 2 of her teats. So he washed and massaged the udder with hot water, then milked her a little…the 2 infected ones produced green pus, basically, but the other 2 made perfectly nice-looking milk. I was told the pus was because of the antibiotic injections she’d gotten the past couple days, but I don’t understand how antibiotics make pus. We’ll chalk it up to a communication issue rather than bad science. :-P
That evening we sat and watched as MamaAlice helped Tracy (I finally figured out her name) put chemical relaxer in her hair while Isaac, the Maasai guard, tried to get me to agree with him that it was wrong for women to want straight hair because God gave them curly hair and it was a waste of time and money. I refused to agree with him and told him it was her time and her money, I didn’t see anything wrong with her wanting straight hair and I thought she could do that if she wanted, she isn’t putting chemicals in your hair so don’t worry about it. :-P

Sunday was church, where I was paraded around the kids’ Sunday school like a freak show freak…I guess it’s a cultural thing where they are honoring you by introducing you to everyone and wanting you to speak and publicly introduce yourself everywhere, but I can’t help feeling like a big part of it is just “look, we have a new toy, come see it!” Sooo I introduced myself in front of the church- in Swahili- which shocked everyone, haha. Pastor asked someone to come translate and I said no, I’ll do it in Swahili- the first sentence out of my mouth the congregation cheered. Everyone here tells me that I have to learn Swahili, and they’re always shocked when I actually do know it.
After church was a baptism service, but apparently the nearest body of water was a 20-minute drive away, so they rented some matatus and I drove with Pastor…I was one of 5 people in the backseat, 2 of which were very large grandmas, one of them was the grandson, but he didn’t even get a seat. It was quite the uncomfortable ride. We got to this lake, and 2 of the pastors put on rubber boots and climbed in. They got a big stick for the people being baptized to use to help themselves down into the water, some women started banging the goatskin drums and singing, and they got started. About halfway through, it started raining, and then it started raining hard. Most of the women covered their heads with lesos but a few pulled out plastic bags and put them on their heads. So I took pictures. :-P
It stopped raining about the time the baptisms finished and then we went to a “hotel” owned by 2 sisters from the church (hotel = very TINY restaurant that serves usually chai and a few different foods) for chai. We were 10 people and filled the place to maximum capacity. So we had tea and buttered bread, hung out for a little, then went home.

When I got back a few more of the girls had returned from holiday, so I spent some time chatting with them in their room. We were all given a cob of boiled and salted maize on the cob- yum, and then a small miracle happened. 5-yr old Austin, who refused to say a word to me for the first 5½ days I was here, just sat down on the bed across from me and started talking to me while eating his maize. I don’t know WHAT happened with him, but all of a sudden now we’re friends. He calls me “mzungu” and doesn’t run away from me anymore, and this morning while I was eating breakfast he showed me this 2-inch long rhinoceros beetle he somehow managed to trap in the empty battery compartment of a toy car. I win.