Hyacinth and guard trouble

Maybe its the pesky mosquitos buzzing outside my net, or the several feral dog fights that occur nightly, or maybe it’s the random Muslim mosque prayers beginning at 4:30 in the morning, or our new guard that marches around the compound in full riot gear and TB mask, whatever the reason, I have not been able to sleep all that well at night. It’s not too bad because I discovered as part of this “Kenyan clock” concept, the employees in my office either sleep on their desks for 2-3 hours (“this Kisumu heat is terrible, we just need to sleep it off after lunch”), and luckily for me my house is around the corner so I have been “going home for lunch” and taking naps.

We got a new guard because our old one resigned, all we know is he left when his wife became ill during childbirth. We don’t know anything besides he is no longer a guard for the security company. We got another guard George who was about 18 years old and thought he had life good guarding the mzungu girls. Understanding that we fed our guards a good meal, he began to take advantage of us. We didn’t like his behaviour (cutting down our garden, taking his clothes off and working in his underwear on hot nights, and asking for money from us) we requested a new guard. This one wears full riot gear and a TB mask. He literally salutes us as we enter the compound, and marches around “on patrol” around the wall. One night I woke up when I heard crunching leaves behind my house right outside my window, then a heard a series of farts. That fool took a dump right outside of my window. It freaked me out, so needless to say, I went with some guys from the office to request yet another guard. We will see what happens with this new one tonight…

This past weekend, we celebrated Moi Day – Moi was also a previous president. There were basketball and football (soccer) tournaments all weekend at the Jomo Kenyatta sportsground. Ben, a piki piki driver that I have come to rely on for transport, took me there with his family on Saturday. We spent all day sipping sodas and watching so really good matches between the various East African university sports teams.

He also took me down to the Lake to see the hyacinth phenomenon. Just Friday, the crazy overtaking hyacinth blew in with the winds and completely covered the Kisumu side of the lake. What used to look like a lake now looks like a field. I tried to ask where hyacinth comes from, whether it grows on the bottom of the lake and rises up, or what but all they tell me is that “it comes with the wind”. It is quite strange, but the worst part is it disrupts fishing and water treatment activities, and is killing off all the native vegetation and animal life. The hippos get stuck in it when they try to come on shore to eat.. I heard that the government has introduced a type of fish that feed on in, or something to try and control it, maybe that will save Kisumu!

I haven’t had much to do as far as work goes. I still have not distributed the manual, since the person with the final say in the finished product will be in London for another week. I have spent the last two work days on developing an excel spreadsheet to collect data and analyze it. Now I just wait for the data to come in. I am not sure what to do in the meantime since my supervisor is not in the office this week either. It’s going to be a boring week for me., but I am looking forward to watching more DVD’s on my laptop and catching up on some reading.
I discovered a new restaurant which has pretty good food, but the only people who go to it are Indian and Chinese men who are resentful that they even have to live here, they are living and working here on business and really could care less. But I get to practice my Chinese, which I never thought I would do in Africa. I was actually translating (very little) Swahili into Chinese so this man could understand.

More later, I gotta catch my ride to Nakuru