Africanization

Hope you all are well. Its 6pm on Thursday night, and i'm laying on the bed in the guesthouse. Im now in Kuria district, in a town called Kehancha, in the very southwest of Kenya. I got here last Friday night, and will be leaving on Saturday morning for Nairobi for a couple of days before I head north to the last village. Its thunderstorming like a sob right now, as it has every day since I arrived. This area definitely has a very different feel than the places I was at previously. The people are not nearly as friendly, and there is a lot more begging, and from the conversations I've had, a lot more corruption as well. But I visited the land on Monday to start formulating another sustainability plan anyways. The land is about 30 acres of beautiful green virgin land, on the river that separates the Kuria tribal lands from the Maasai lands - if you are not aware, the Maasai are the red robe wearing kenyan pastoralist tribe that survives mostly on a mixture of cow's blood and milk - the Kenyan government likes to promote them in tourist guides, even though they make up something like 1 percent of the population. Looking out into rift valley province, it was kind of surreal to be standing in the very fields where the two tribes historically fought battles over stolen cows, killing the enemy with primitive machetes and knives if he resisted the invaders. And when I say historically, I mean 2009. Wierd. Hence the reason for the broken barbed wire fence all around the property...the fence seemed to be in the way of the war, so they just fought through. Guess the organization will have to suck that cost up. We passed a few dudes with machetes on the tramp through the brush back to the dirt road, and I couldnt help but wonder... Tuesday we went to a school for more of the research, and Wednesday as well. We stopped at a building (i dont dare use the word bar or hotel for fear of misleading some to believe that this was a structure actually worthy of conducting a business) for a beer, but seeing as it was late afternoon, we left after one in order to catch a last matatu. we got one, squeezing 10 grownups into a toyota station wagon (two people sit under the steering wheel section - i dont know how the heck the guys drive that way, but hey, they make it work, so 4 up front, 4 in the middle, and 2 in the trunk) and we took off on the 10km drive to the next town, right on the border with tanzania...we made it about 7 km when we ran out of gas. so we started walking, and made it into town just as night was coming...a thunderstorm was coming in as well, and people were scattering..except for the 3 of us, looking like asses standing out in the oncoming hurricane in the electricity less darkness.... this was like the buildup to the climax in the movie...darkness, wind, swinging broken creaky doors all over, rain coming in....after about 10 minutes we caught the last guy going towards our town, and managed to cram in just as the sky opened up. this drive was about 45 minutes over terrible hilly, dirt roads in the dark. i was about to pee my pants when the guy came to a stop in the middle of nowhere, just one cattle trail heading off to the left, so I hopped out for a "short call" regardless of what the other passengers thought. at that point i didnt care, but upon finishing I turned to thank everyone for waiting, but saw that the driver wasnt around... then i heard the yelling, and through the rain i could see one guy dragging another one on the ground kicking and screaming back toward the taxi. I guess he didnt pay but the driver caught him. the driver was trying to get him in the car to take him to the town or the police, but seeing as that they still practice mob justice on criminals here, the guy wasnt ready to go.. he was cryign and screaming like a little girl wrestling in the rain. we are watching from inside the car...this went on for about 4 minutes probably, and only stopped when a guy showed up out of the woods and paid the guys share...the driver relented on taking him to the town because my guy here is in good with the chief of the tribe, and assured the driver that they would come get him later. all in all it was a ridiculous drive home, about 2 hours after we started...about 10 miles away as the bird flies. we showed up soaked and hungry at 830, ready to eat dinner and crash. today was chill, just worked in town with the aid of functioning electricity on excel reports for a good part of the day, and i got the hole in the soccer ball fixed. i took a break and got hustled in a game of pool this afternoon, and walked home jsut in time to miss getting drenched again. This place knows how to rain something serious. Im looking forward to Nairobi for a couple of days. I could use a real shower, and I really want to use a toilet. Functioning or not, I don't care - squatting sucks. Hopefully I make it there with my computer and am able to get something up here again. Stay thirsty my friends.

Surprise!! There is a new post!!

Hope all is well. I have been reminded recently that I have not been updating the blog too often. So here goes. I am in Mbakalo, the first town I originally came to after leaving Nairobi, and have been here for one week, since last Tuesday. The last week in Ugenya I visited a school on Monday and Tuesday to complete evaluations, and spent a lot of time generally doing nothing, since my entire reason for staying the extra week was so that I’d be able to watch the superbowl. I spent some time in the town almost everyday; it was only about a kilometer down the road from the hotel. I would pass the time walking through the market, and one day I decided I would count how many storefronts I could find advertising ready-made coffins. I counted three workshops in 200 meters on the main road. Then I got bored or something. The superbowl was ok… some other mizungus came to the hotel to watch, and we partook in several bottles of cheap Kenyan liquor. Somehow during this time I figured out how to make my cellphone call America, so for those of you on the receiving end I apologize for the ridiculousness, but feel special, because it means you are one of the few whose numbers I remembered. On Tuesday I made the return trip to Mbakalo, and this time it only took 2.5 hours. I told you that the way we came 2 weeks earlier seemed rather indirect…I knew it! 2 points of interest on this trip….the first, I was sitting in the front seat of a bus type thing…its like the home city ice truck that deeps flipped, but the back is converted into seating…anyway, I got to sit up front due to my large muscular build, and got a front row seat to the standoff between our 7000 pound truck…and a guy with 10 feet of sugarcane strapped across his bicycle. For about 5 minutes they argued who should back up and use the other 20 feet of this particular road’s width. For some reason this side of the dirt road we both were using seemed better than the other. The whole time I was thinking back to sixth grade history class when they told us how the flatboats on the canals would have the captains fight to see which boat would have to back up to the lock so they could pass. I was absolutely ready to put 100 bucks on the guy with the bike. Going face to face with a 25 passenger bus takes a real pair when all you have is a huffy. The only other interesting part of the trip was the sign I saw painted in large, crisp letters over the office door of the apparent second in charge of the city…. “ASS CHIEF’S OFFICE” I’m not exactly sure what the hell that guy does, but it sounds like a pretty good job.
Ive been here in Mbakalo for a week now. Most days start with a biscuit, a shower from the pan of water on the floor of the outhouse, and a leisurely stroll to the medical clinic. Ive been meeting with the womens groups that received microfinance loans this year, splicing extension cords, visiting some of the water/well/latrine infrastructure projects that were put in through a grant from the lake Victoria water protection board or( something like that), and writing a plan with the head leadership to make the programs they have here sustainable, since right now programming is inconsistent due to variations in grant funding and funding from donors to the headquarters back in the states.

Most nights we head back around 5 or so, and play football with the neighborhood kids until it gets dark at 630 or so. After that its pitch black outside, and inside, except for the one lightbulb in the dining room that runs off of a solar panel. We get a dinner around 8, then its bedtime, since there is nothing else to do in the dark. There is another intern here now, who arrived here the same day I did, and we have been going back and forth on the idea of going down to hike Kilimanjaro before I leave. By the way, is this the most amount of snow ever in the states? The only time I see the news I see everyone getting dumped on. That sucks. It actually rained again today. That’s the second time in a month and a half. Stay warm my friends.

afriCAN

Well Happy Groundhog Day everyone! Thanks for taking time out of the busy day to check in here.

New paragraph…it looks like I got 2 sentences done yesterday. I am not doing so well at the blog writing. But I am doing well with the journal, which I have never been able to do, so that is super. Today is Wednesday, and Im sitting on the balcony at the Camunya hotel. In the last several days, I haven’t done a lot of anything crazy… One of my jobs while here was to finish up a research project on the efficacy of the hiv/aids prevention curriculum. The previous intern started the project with 3 rounds of questioning last summer, and I am following up with the 6 month later evaluation. It is not difficult, just entails traveling to the school and giving them a survey to fill out, probably 2 to 3 hours from the time we leave until we return. We have to do the surveys at recess time, however, so we can only do one school a day. There are 12 schools in total, but now that the 4 in Ugenya are done I happily on my way with that. No more for at least 3 weeks until I move to Kuria, south of here and south of Lake Victoria, after I head back up north to Mbakalo for a week or so.

The weekend was exciting though. On Saturday I spent the day with Calvin going over the goals of the organization here and creating a plan to create income with a poultry farm in order to reach those objectives. The organization has 4 acres of land, and a building, and has planted bananas that are producing, but because no comprehensive plan has yet been put together no one really had an idea what the money that should have been coming in from the bananas would be used for. ( there is no money coming in because the lack of a plan means that there is no caretaker, and thus, the neighbors are all getting fat off of the 2.5 acres of free bananas.) The local organization had no specific goal… aids is a problem, and poverty is a problem, but no one yet has decided how the organization is approaching it…and like they say, it is hard to get where you are going if you don’t know where you want to be…, so all the donations and land grants going towards the building , and fencing, and planting, and fertilizing…has yet to produce any fruit (pun intended). It was so frustrating to me to see so many plans and status reports for the bananas and for the building that have been coming in from the local coordinator and all of the interns that have come here since 2006….when nothing has been done, except for planting the bananas, because no one put the separate aspects of developing an income generating asset and then targeting the financial needs of that nonprofit if it wanted to be totally self sustainable. Hope that made sense. Anyways, with some tough questions, and a realistic look at what is really needed here, versus what is a waste, essentially I think we did in about 5 hours what hadn’t been done in 4 years. I will be putting the final report down and getting it off to headquarters in the coming days. All in all it looks as if a loan of about $5,500 dollars, which I have planned to be repaid in three years, will allow the organization to become totally self sustainable, creating 3 full time jobs, operating a daycare for 50 young children of child headed households (due to both parents dying from aids) which will allow the older children to complete their educations, and also provide total educational sponsorship for 2 more children at a time. (this includes books, uniforms, food for the family at home, shoes, uniforms, school fees – primary is free, but secondary costs- a major barrier to many children getting an education in developing countries- and medical care. Right now the organization has 38 sponsored children, but the problem is that it is not sustainable – they are totally dependent on a sponsor from the us sending the money each year, which can easily change, and thus is not the best way to attack the situation, in my opinion. This project will enable the organization to add 2 more children to the list of those who will complete an education, and do it in a sustainable way. Its amazing what such a small loan to those with no collateral can do – the wonders of microfinance. I just finished reading three cups of tea, and am excited to start Banker to the Poor by Mohammed Yunus. Besides that, I have just been working out, playing soccer, watching soccer, and trying to put up with the terribly repetitive music that blares from the market all day. How was groundhog day? i still don’t know the outcome…the sun was too bright for me to see the computer screen!! Stay warm my friends.

One in a million

I just waited 2.5 hours on the hotel patio for the friendly staff to cook the bowl of tropical beans that was supposed to serve as my dinner. I literally put in the order at 6 pm sharp...it was 8 27 when the beans came....(luckily I had my computer to pass the time)... Just as I was about to dig in, one of the many bats flying around came in for a low approach at my head, and as I ducked, i saw a tiny splash in the bowl of beans just as the bat passed inches over the top of the bowl....be it a regurgitated bug or a bat turd, it was a hell of a shot. As a result, I will be passing on the beans tonight.... I just had to laugh, because you can't make this stuff up. Welcome to Africa.

Tuesday, Jan 26th

Hope you all are doing well. It has been awhile since my last post, and for that I apologize. It was almost a week ago, when I was in Mbakalo, and since that night a lot has happened. Last Thursday and Friday were spent meeting with the leadership of the community up there, and trying to work out an action plan for the year. Mbakalo community currently doesnt even have electricity, but I think because of that it is also a region of the country that attracts a lot of development/aid attention. Right now in the community soteni has several projects going on in collaboration with other aid groups, ranging from installing water pumps to door to door aids doctors. When i head back there in a couple of weeks i will be working on getting a new structure built for the medical clinic since the current location will need to be vacated because the school that is donating the space is turning into a boarding school and needs the rooms for dorms. On Saturday morning Randi and I jumped on the picky picky (its a 150cc motorcycle...in laymans terms that means its about as powerful as my left pinky )for the first leg of our journey down to Ugunja where we are now. Including the motorcycles, we also had a ride in a bus with 10 passengers and about 100 mattresses, and 6 matatus.... which are essentially hell on wheels. its a toyota minivan that originally would fit 8...but when its a matatu, i at one point counted 23 human beings, only two of which were babies, and a few chickens, and a lady coming home from the market with a grocery bag of hot dead fish. and because the roads are dust pits with occasional interruptions of blacktop, everyone keeps the windows closed so they can breathe....which turns the damn thing into a greenhouse, which being on the equator, means that it is about 700 degrees....now go back to the fact that 20 people are stuffed inside, only two of those who are wearing deodorant, and fish and poultry are usually involved..... and im 6 foot 1 and have 9 inches between the rows of seats...and you get the picture..... So anyways, i was happy to arrive here. as the crow flies I think it must not be more than 200 kilometers...it took us 7.5 hours. Anyway, we got here to ugunja on sat evening, to the beautiful camunya hotel. it is by far the nicest building i have seen since i left nairobi, and quite a change from mbakalo...even though there we stayed with mama ann, who owns one of the few non mud huts, there still was no shower and the bathroom facilities consisted of a hole in the ground...so the camunya is quite a change... a hot shower, flushing toilet, and electricity...im not sure how this place stays in business. its just kind of randomly out here off of the highway, and there cant be more than 25 rooms, but it is secure, and has a big screen tv that attracts the locals to watch soccer everynight and drink a beer. i ve decided that ii will stay here for two weeks...because i am a man, and i must watch the superbowl before i head back to mbakalo. on sunday we drove around to visit and check up on about 8 of the sponsored children; they were so far apart, and so rural, that at one point i had to help push the car over the bumps in the hilly cattle trails that we were driving on. it was good to see the children doing well, but i have mixed feelings about sponsorship programs. i will get into that in another blog. we just chilled and watched soccer sunday night. yesterday we drove out to the land where soteni has the banana farm, and discovered why the bananas werent producing so well...because the neighbors had been stealing all of the bananas. we also went and met with the leader of another local organization and talked about some of the initiatives that they have going on and possibilities for combining operations. in the evening edward and marion arrived from nairobi, and the five of us went over a budget for an approved grant that they will be putting into action here in a couple of months. ok, breakfast is over, and time to head off for the day. take care.

Mbakalo

Gonna have to make this a short post since im working on battery power. I got to Mbakalo yesterday, which is about an 8-9 hour trip northwest of Nairobi. The scenery along the way was beautiful, a landscape of lush green forests interspersed with cleared fields for the cattle. A good portion of the trip we spent paralleling the edge of the great rift valley, which i always pictured as brown and dry. thank god i was wrong. steep green edges, miles across and with small mountains and lakes on occasion rising up out of the flat green bottom. I kept thinking of hemingways book green hills of africa; now i know what he was talking about. but leaving the high rises of nairobi also brought another change in scenery. no matter how many times you see it, the true poverty of developing nations still hits you inside. sporadically along the route, shanty towns of mud huts mixed in with rusted corrugated tin dwellings advertised the extreme lack of opportunity offered to the people here, many of whom could be seen gathered by the roadside in bunches watching the rich people on the buses pass by, while their bony cattle grazed in the discarded piles of trash alongside of the highway. eventually we got into mbakalo, which is more of a region than an actual village. we stopped by the medical clinic and met some of the workers, and arrived at mama ann's for the night. today we met with all of the workers of the clinic, about 6, to discuss how we could improve the operation to better serve the needs of the community. i also was able to visit the first IGA, income generating asset for the community, a field of passion fruit that was planted with the help of UKs equivalent of USAID. the grant also provided for a rubber lined pit to collect rainwater for watering the plants. i believe the whole grant was less than 5,000 dollars, but after 6 months the profits from those fruits will be able to pay the salaries of some of the nurses into the foreseeable future, which is essential because they currently are on salary from a grant which will soon end. in a place like mbakalo, where so few children will ever have access to see a doctor, its amazing what such a small amount of money can do to improve the lives of so many people. economic development is a necessary, but not sufficient, component of helping the poor improve all facets of their lives. economic growth must come first before health and disease rates can be changed, corruption and government issues can be tackled, and human rights issues can be addressed. when you are in absolute poverty, the idea of eating today trumps any thoughts of working towards the future. to focus on other issues in the developing world, without addressing economic growth, is putting the cart before the horse. speaking of which, i actually saw one of those today.. actually it was two cows, pulling the cart, but the cattle were in the front of the operation, and it was working fine, so im assuming that statement must be true. tomorrow we will be going to look at some of the other IGA projects put in place in the area. its time to go to bed, the mosquitos are killing me. hopefully i have saved enough battery for another post in a couple of days. stay warm back in the states!! i am absolutely sunburned :)

Last couple of days in Nairobi

Just a quick update for you all tonight. I apologize in advance if it doesnt make sense; if that is the case then you can blame in on the Tusker... ah yes, I discovered the local banana beer of Kenya, which sports none other than an elephant on the label. the beer is pretty good, but the origin of the name is even better. in 1922, the head of the East Africa brewing company got killed by an elephant. so in his honor, they renamed the beer Tusker. today we met in the java for a brief meeting with the safari guys to talk about options for a trip for me later on during my time here; hopefully you all dont end up having to rename a beer for me. we are headed out to the first village tomorrow. i guess its about an 8 hour bus trip. there is no electricity there, except a generator, so we will see about internet access! i now have a modem, so maybe if i have enough battery on the comp i can get on once and give an update. im still trying to figure out the picture situation however, because my sd card reader isnt working and my camera doesnt have a cord to download directly to the computer. i will keep trying though. Yesterday and today werent very eventful, but yesterday (sunday) i did walk a good portion of the city center with one of the employees. we went to the August 7 Memorial, which was pretty powerful. for those of you who dont remember, the memorial stands on the site of the former us embassy that was bombed by bin ladens guys in 1998, killing 218 people. today it is a fenced park with a small museum with pictures and remnants of that day. time to get some sleep. ive got to be to the bus station by 7. take care!

Did I get off the plane in the wrong country?

ITS Saturday now, as you can see. Yesterday we went to the Marble Arch Hotel for our conference with all of the directors of each of the 4 villages the NGO works in, the employees from the nairobi office, and the 2 of us from the states. (im interning, and the director of the organization.) I think there were about 10 of us in total. We spent all day apparently doing everything we could to not follow the nice colored, printed schedule that took 2 hours to make the day before. I cant say that i didnt see that coming. But anyways, the substance of the meeting was encouraging overall, just to hear about some of the sustainable development projects going on, like banana farms, as well as hearing some of the issues that non profit ngos face. I had pages of notes, mostly consisting of problems that I could already recognize and tons more questions that will need to be answered. The next couple of months should be a good challenge.
My note taking was interrupted in the afternoon by a few seconds of AK 47 fire coming through the window. it was obviously pretty close to our location, and the surprise of it shook me up for a minute since it came out of nowhere. apparently it was just the cops controlling traffic. a few hours later we decided we would walk back to the hotel since it was a nice evening, and i was looking forward to it since i really hadnt seen any of the city yet. ive got a really, really, good 6th sense when it comes to security and what not in questionable areas, the same thing that you can only develop from lots of experiences with lots of different people in lots of different places over several years. that may sound a little cocky, but thats the way i see it. Im not afraid to go anywhere, but im smart enough and man enough to G.T.F.O. when i start seeing that something bad is going to happen. no need to take a knife to the neck when it can easily be avoided. so anyways, we are not even a minute into the walk, and things just didnt seem right. and remember, id gotten in at 4 am the day before and had no clue yet of the layout of the city and where we were in location to the office, where we were heading. the people we were passing on the street didnt seem to be looking at me and my group thinking hey this white guy is new and has no clue where he is, but more like what are you guys doing.yet the threat sense in my head was still rising, and when we turned a second corner i figured out why. up ahead there was a mob in the street, chanting and screaming, some people closer to our distance were standing on the light posts watching. the street was littered in broken glass and rocks, but our guy in front kept walking, talking on his phone, but we were able to get him to turn down an alleyway since the mob was a couple blocks away but looking increasingly rowdy. we hustled down the first alleywayto the right, where i almost stepped in a massive pool of blood, and was quick enough to avoid the rest as we moved. it hit real quick that this shit was no joke. as we got to the next street and our view opened up again, we saw more of the mob of the muslim brotherhood doing its thing about a block away on the left, but moving our direction, and all the non involved people running and cars peeling away. we decided real quick that those two cabs with the screaming drivers in front of us were the only option at this point, and as we sprinted across the street the entire mob was closing in on us. im not even sure the doors were closed on the taxi before our driver gunned it out of there. im not a small guy, and ive seen some stuff, robberies at knife point, had a gun pulled on me (twice actually), been in a war, but im telling you that last night in Nairobi was one of the most intimidating moments of my life. the fresh blood, the dishdashas (man dresses), and the masses of obviously pissed off violent people allah akbar, the smoky air, and no body armor or weapon, put my mind in a place i didnt want to be. Needless to say, i was a little irritated later on that I had been the one to direct all of us (me being the youngest, and only one of two foreigners) to GTFO against the insistence of some that the path was fine. I felt a little validated when we saw on the news shortly after that 4 people indeed were killed in the riots, including one of the police men, and hundreds more injured during the hours long clash with the police. Sometimes, like yesterday, I wonder why i dont just stay in the states in the nice suburbs, with flushing toilets, internet that works on command, restaurants regulated by health standards, non corrupt police, no starving dogs running through the streets, and a level of safety that few in the world enjoy. i have yet to come up with an answer, but think that if i wouldnt have to ask the question then i probably wouldnt be having any fun.

First Day!

Thanks for coming back! Hope that story wasnt too in depth for you; however, I can't make any promises for future withholding either. Read on at your own risk. But that said, I appreciate the both of you, or hundreds of you who are out there reading - I will try to update whenever I can, and will do my best to keep it lively. But this blog, my first, is more for me that for you. In all the crazy things Ive been through (or better put, gotten myself into) in my life, my biggest failure is that I have never written them down. And now in my 27 year old,post-blast concussed brain, I am already forgetting some of the great stories that have made me who i am today; keeping this blog, and thus having the pressure to write for others sake, is how Im actually writing for my own.

And now, a caveat to post number one. please do not think that Im afraid of, disgusted by, or otherwise snobbish to the conditions I found in the hotel, or any other situation i will write about. I would not be here if i didnt know the wonders of developing countries, and definitely would not have chosen the career path I did if i lived a way in which i needed everything to always be kosher. ill be writing accurate descriptions not to make comparisons or judge, but to convey what I am experiencing for those of you out there who may never have been lucky enough to enjoy the adventure and excitement that traveling outside of the disneyfied tourist zones brings.

OK. thursday morning. So I was up at 8, after three unsatisfactory hours of sleep, when I got my first real taste of africa time. We headed for the office, about 4 blocks away, and i met some of the employees of the ngo where Ill be working for the next several months. really nice people. we promptly got to work, writing a schedule for the annual update meeting that would be taking place tomorrow and saturday. there were 12 items on fridays schedule, 3 of which included the words break for tea or break for lunch. No s#*^, we were almost finished finalizing the schedule a mere two hours later. I wanted to shoot myself. after a short lunch, we returned for the afternoon work. i was going to put together a quick briefing on how to write effective grants. i pulled a couple of pages off the web and began cutting and pasting some key points. i was joined by an employee, and after an hour plus of us getting the wording and examples all tailored exactly to our organization, he offered for me to now compare this new document to a powerpoint he had saved on the same comp, which had been given to the organization by a professional grant writer when she had come to speak at the organization last year. i wanted to punch my face through the concrete wall. i knew it before i left, but the message was still slapping me in my extremely jetlagged face: efficiency, apparently, was not going to be the name of the game while in africa. time to sit back and enjoy the ride.

Welcome to Kenya

I will type on this one. Sorry! So as you may or may not know, I am now in Nairobi, Kenya. I left the Dayton airport at 12 pm on tuesday, and after some serious flight time and a couple of delays I eventually arrived in Nairobi at 4am local time. Right now its an 8 hour difference, so it was 8 pm Wed Ohio time. I cant sleep on a plane for the life of me, unless im on morphine, so needless to say I was ready to crash. The director of the NGO ill be working with met me at the airport, along with her regular taxi Charles. Apparently they had been there since 11pm, so Im guessing she paid a good amount for his services that night! He dropped us off at the Hotel Embassy, a classy hostel type of place with all of the furnishings anyone living in 1973 could desire. It was the Ritz to me at that point given how tired I was, so i hauled my stuffed backpack and 115. 2 lbs of duffel bags (this is an exact measurement, I have the overweight payment receipt from the friendly lady at the airport to prove it) up the 3 flights of stairs, got into my room, and went to take care of a badly needed number 2. As I did my business, I noticed the lack of a shower....oh, there was a shower head alright, complete with hot and cold knobs, that was almost directly above my head as I sat, but nothing else. confident with my assessment of the shower situation, my thoughts turned to the only other adornment the room provided... a beaten up, apparently formerly baby blue 5 gallon bucket on the floor. as hard as I tried, only one good possibility for its existence in the bathroom jumped out at me. upon termination of the previously mentioned activity, I flushed, and much do my dismay, learned that my guess had been right. I had taken the browns all the way to the superbowl, but seeing how long they had waited to get there, I guess they didnt want to leave. after a desperate jiggle, jiggle, jiggle, and still no reponse, i tried using the bucket to make it flush, but with no luck. Exhausted, I closed the door and went to sleep. It was 4 30am, and that 730 wakeup was coming soon. Welcome to Kenya!

First Post!

Lets see if this works. This is my first attempt at a blog!