Some Pictures of the University Libary

 Margaret Thatcher Memorial Library, Moi University

The Moi University library is actually quite nice, so I thought I would post a couple of pictures of it.  It is called the Margaret Thatcher Memorial Library, and the British helped build it a few years ago.  Anyway, it's a nice building.  They apparently spent all of their money on the building, though, and really had very little for books.

It's hard to see because of all the trees, but it is quite nice.

Here is the plaza in the front.

 Here is the entrance.  This is one of the greener places on the campus, with some nice landscaping.

Nyama Choma

That is the swahili word for grilled meat, or even a barbeque, and we went on Saturday with the fourth year geography students for a nyama choma.  We had boiled lamb/sheep and ugalli.  We went to the Nandi Escarpement, where there was a beautiful waterfall and a deep cave, as you will see from the pictures.  The cave was particularly interesting to me, just to imagine that hominids may have been in that cave hundreds of thousands if not millions of years ago.  It really makes you think.  The day was long but great fun, and the students couldn't have been nicer.  Here are some pictures from the day.

This is a view from the escarpement where we were, into the valley below.

Another view of the valley.  Very green and beautiful.

Well, this is me, proudly wearing my NSU shirt.

This is Evan with the valley behind him.

This is Evan in the cave.  There were bats rustling around all over, a bit creepy but neat.

This is Evan at the back of the cave.  It was a very interesting place, and is WAY off the usual tourist maps.

This is a common sight in Kenya, kind of what a traditional farm would look like in the highlands.

Another view of a traditional farm in Kenya.

Evan in front of the smaller part of the falls.  The bigger part didn't come out like I had hoped.

Slaughtering a sheep.  Nuff said.

You know the meat was fresh, since the poor sheep was right there....

Cooking ugalli.

This is most of the group at the base of the waterfall.

Evan posing with one of the most fun girls in the class.

Most of the group at a viewing platform overlooking the valley.  It was a great day, and they really made us feel welcome.

Moi University

I thought I would post some pictures of the Moi University campus, and give people a feel for how it looks, and what we see every day.

This is the main administrative building at Moi.  It is where all the big wigs work.  A very nice structure, though if you look closely it needs a coat of paint, as does pretty much everything here.

This is kind of a cool monument that we walk by every day on the way to school.

This is where my office is, which actually reminds me a lot of Kyser Hall at NSU!

This is something you don't see every day, even in Louisiana, but it's a pretty common sight here at Moi.

This is a matatu, the kind of vehicle we take to town.  These are EVERYWHERE in Kenya, some safer than others.  But they are cheap, basically 100 shillings to town, which is about a dollar.

This is the entrance to our Walmart.  Dusty, dirty, a little filthy, with sheep running around.

This is Evan in front of our house.  It is actually pretty nice on the outside, and is getting better on the inside.

Evan under the mosquito net.  More later!

Trying some pictures

This is an attempt to post a few pictures.

These are from Nairobi.  This was our first hotel room

This is Evan in the hotel.

This is downtown Nairobi.

Me looking fat and old and Evan looking pretty happy.

This was at the Nairobi National Park, Evan making his first friend in Africa.  I took a lot of pictures at this, the animal orphanage, but the animals are behind fencing, and it wasn't the best place for photos.  There were lions and other animals, but this one had slipped out of his cage.

We are still here

It has been a while since my last post, but I wanted the interested parties to know that we are still alive.  Last weekend we took a very interesting drive to the Nandi Hills region of Kenya.  It is one of the major tea producing areas in the country, and it was quite pretty.  Tea grows very low to the ground, so picking it must just be hell on the back.  And there were huge expanses of tea plantations throughout the hills, apparently most still owned by whites living outside Kenya.  We also visited a tea factory, which would make for a very interesting Food Channel show, if they haven't already done one.  It's a very complicated process that involves airing and drying, cutting, and several other things.  There have been some issues in the tea industry, and of the seven factories in the region, only a couple are open right now.  I don't know if this means that soon tea prices will be going up, but there are clearly some problems.  The dry season, which we are in, has apparently been drier than usual, and at night the temperatures have fallen to where there is light frost on the tea.  That has cut into production.

After that we took an incredibly long right over the worst road either one of us had ever been on, all the way to Kisumu, which is pretty far.  I was so turned around I thought we were heading back to Eldoret.  In fact, we were heading in the opposite direction.  Some geographer.  We got back to town at around 8:30, and this in a place where everyone is saying "do NOT go outside at night."  There we were, thirty miles from the Shack on main campus.  Luckily we got a ride to town.  It was dark and felt incredibly long after being in a bus for nearly twelve hours.  I don't think we will be doing that this weekend.  Still, Nandi Hills, very pretty scenery.

Language

Now that things have settled into a sort of routine, I wanted to give some thoughts on the languages of Kenya.  Officially, the teaching language is English, which is why I thought I could come here and teach.  And in fact, English IS the language spoken in the classroom.  What is interesting, however, is that English is NEVER heard on the street.  There are many "native" languages spoken here, and Swahili is spoken all over.  What this means, I think, is that English as a language, though still the language of instruction, has probably gotten worse over the past twenty years, rather than improved.  At Evan's school, for instance, the language of instruction is also English, but according to Evan the teachers move back and forth between English and Swahili, which probably doesn't do much to improve the English capabilities of the students.

Please note that I'm NOT saying they should be speaking English rather than local languages.  What I AM saying is the there is a pretense that English is part of the larger culture, but in fact, in terms of speaking on the street, there is probably much less English spoken than there was twenty or thirty years ago.  And some of you may be wondering why I didn't learn Swahili before we came.  Well, I bought the CDs, but never listened to them.  And to be blunt, given how rapid fire the language is, I doubt they would have helped much.

Finally, the little school children have to learn English, and it is interesting that they have all learned by heart one little piece of dialog:  "Hello, how are you?"  "I am fine, how are you?"  "I am fine."  We are part of that conversation all day long.  It must be something they learn early on, that that is how Americans and Europeans greet each other.  This is a strange and interesting place!