Last Week

Yeah, I know its a lame post title, but I couldn't think of anything better to name it. 

I Fixed a Computer

Pretty self explanatory. Small victory, but it was a great feeling nonetheless. So the primary school down the

“street” that my “mayi” (luhya for mama) teaches at has four computers. Exactly none of them worked. So after a couple days tooling around with them, I found out they all have different problems. So from four broken computers I was able to put together 1 working one. For those who speak nerd, I took the RAM from one, used the tower and motherboard from another, and the hard drive from another. This was the first time I felt like I left a noticeable impact on my community. I mean its rare we get do things that we can measure. Like Sipala Primary before Jason: 0 working computers. After: 1 working computer. The teachers are happy because now instead of having to record all the grades by hand they can do it on the computer.

Generosity

While sitting around with my family the other night watching TV there was a very funny exchange worth noting. So my family was watching “Tusker Project Fame” which is essentially American Idol in East Africa (so it was very similar to the scene back home of my American family sitting around watching). There was a rather large lady dancing on the screen, and my sister Faith goes “God was very generous to the African when giving body.” And then my Papa goes “Especially with the bottom.” Which is very very true. Of course, during this conversation I'm trying to hard not to giggle to loudly in the corner.

Highway Robbery

First real brush with crime yesterday. While heading to town via matatu the guy next to me tried to pickpocket me. I noticed him shuffling around and a little later I checked my pocket and surprise surprise my wallet is MIA. I start looking around to see if it fell out and eventually turn to this guy and am like have you seen a wallet? And in my head, I'm not sure how to approach this, because there is now way in hell I'm letting this guy off without checking him for my wallet. After a little bit of panicking he lifts up his leg like he was just innocently looking with me, and low and behold there it is. So pretty sure he gave up on the idea of stealing it. Especially, since all I would have to do would be call him a thief and he would have been beaten to death. So win-win for both of us is he gives it back and we both smile and act like it was a big accident. He doesn't want to die, and I don't want to be responsible for him dying (or at least being beaten severely). And I'm not exaggerating, other PCVs here have witnessed mob justice in action, it ain't pretty.

Cooking

I'm getting damn good at cooking out here. Well Brian and I are getting good. On Thursday, we made an amazing meat lover's pizza. Completely from scratch, amazing crust, delicious sauce, ok cheese and italian salami, bacon, and beef. I'll post pictures sometime, it was amazing. Then on Friday, Brian, I and our PCV friend Elizabeth had a Mexican fiesta. We made flour tortillas from scratch and some damn good beef faijita mix. We also made corn tortillas and then fried them for chips. These delicious chips were accompanied by an equally good mango salsa. I can't wait to get back home into a real kitchen and have some fun.