Birthdays and the Bush

A bunch of different things have happened since the last time I wrote, so we'll go for the quick overview method (and then hope that I get better at updating).

We've done two birthday parties for friends (both on birthdays that we made up), one who is a missionary just outside of town, and the other for a friend from one of the Muslim tribes in the area. Both of them were born out in the bush (one into the Masai tribe and the other into the Somali tribe) so they don't have any record of the date they were born.

Birthdays aren't really a huge thing in Kenya -- mainly because so many people don't even know the day -- unless a bunch of crazy white people insist on them, but our friends had fun celebrating anyhow.

They may not really do birthdays, but Kenyans are pretty much okay with any excuse to get people together for a party. Lol.

We went to a game reserve just outside of town to take pictures of giraffes -- twiga in Kiswahili, pronounced like the English word "twig" -- and have an American style picnic that our site supervisors had prepared for us (it was definitely NOT ugali and sukuma wiki. :D ).

It was kind of odd to be standing there beside these huge giraffes and realize that we weren't in a zoo. There were no fences. It was just bush. It was just where the giraffes lived.

I don't think I've ever seen a giraffe run before, but they look really funny. Their knees bend funky ways like a camel's, so they have a very awkward, swaying gait when they run. I don't really know how to describe it, but I'm sure that there are pictures up on YouTube or somewhere.

We visited a village that is about 28 km out in the bush where, even ten years ago, there was no school, almost no one spoke Kiswahili (the national language), and the kids were told that even allowing a Christian to touch you could make it so that you weren't a Muslim any more (effectively sending you to hell) and that white people ate babies.

Things have changed a lot. There is a primary school (1st through 8th grade) in a village where, in the past, the most educated person had only gone through class five (fifth grade). Everyone speaks at least a little Kiswahili, and the kids are learning both English and Kiswahili in school. There have been Christian missionaries in the village for the last ten years (running the school and medical clinic and trying to plant a church), and the adults are almost as comfortable with white people as anyone in town.

Although...the only game we could get the kids to play with us was "run away, screaming and giggling, while the muzungu girls chase you across the village"...and they were facinated by the paleness of our skin...lol.

I think that me and Ashley met half the village by the time we were done chasing the kids down paths and around huts and past groups of very amused adults. :)