Thursday, January 28, 2010
Didn't pull myself out of bed until 7am today but had no early appointments, no early morning Skype dates, and no empty promises to myself that I would exercise before work so it was no problem. I started the day with my first warm shower in this apartment. 3 months was a long time to wait but that made the experience so much sweeter! I made banana pancakes for breakfast and was out the door by 8am.
I met my employer as he was rushing out the door. He was supposed to have left by 7am to make the 3.5 hour trip to Nyeri to pick up the motorcycle that ICAP had been promising to provide the organization since my arrival 3 months earlier, but was running late as usual. He left me with some hurried instructions regarding my upcoming trip to Mabanda and disappeared. I went into the office, greeted the office manager and set about giving her some tasks for the morning. The treasurer arrived at 9 on the dot and we set out to run our errand in Mabanda.
We had received a grant from the government the week prior and were tasked by Francis to deliver the revised work plan and budget. We arrived at the office with reports in hand and submitted them to the appropriate person. She looked them over as if she was looking to find fault and then decided that the whole thing would need to be resubmitted because we had titled the project "Indigenous Vegetables" and in our budget we included money for banana trees. I didn't like this lady's attitude so I asked to see the original copy of our proposal which she produced and I pointed out to her that banana seeds were listed in the original proposal which had already been approved. She seemed unwilling to budge until her colleague piped in and said that Nairobi shouldn't have a problem with it if they had already approved it in the original proposal. She seemed annoyed and set about looking for something else to pick on.
She asked for our bank form and Julius and I had no idea what she was talking about as Francis hadn't left it for us. She proceeded to try to make us feel like idiots for not knowing what it was. I don't play that game so I asked for a copy that we could fill out right then and there and she seemed taken aback. I got the sense she was used to pushing country folk around and riding her power horse all over the place. She didn't have the form so we had to sit and wait for her boss to come to work and give us the form. We waited for 40 minutes and finally received a copy of the form which had no need of a signature and required only 3 pieces of information that we had already submitted to them in our report. Fine. Whatever. We filled it out and submitted it to the boss who looked it over and tried to make the same stink about our banana plants. I tactfully pointed out the obvious again and we got the hell out of there before they found something else to nitpick.
While waiting for a matatu back to Gatura we witnessed two guys fighting just outside a bar. It was the awkward pull someone around by the foot kind of fight that you can’t even break up so they were left to their own devices. I was told the one guy was crazy but I couldn’t tell which one they were talking about as they both seemed to be acting a little crazy to me.
We made it back to the office just in time to go home for lunch. I used my new soy sauce from Nairobi and made a delicious stir fry with all the random vegetables left in my cupboard and a few cashews thrown in for some protein.
Back at the office I checked in to see what had been done since I'd been gone. It turns out not much because the electricity went out shortly after we left. Oh well, this happens at least once a week so we readjusted our schedule and got to work. We had to send out 3 reports, type up the outreach schedule for February, and prepare for a financial meeting the following day. We were cruising along pretty well when the accounts clerk stopped in and told us of her good friend who had been murdered in a car jacking the day before. We obviously had to take time to discuss and offer sympathy. Car jackings are in the paper fairly often here but I had never actually had any connection to a victim so this was a sobering wake-up call on the dangers of travelling in Kenya.
5:0pm0 rolled around and we closed up shop. Still no Francis but we figured he would be back soon. The office manager is also my language teacher so we decided to have language lessons there in the office while we waited for Francis to return with the new bike. I learned the Kikuyu words for different items in the house and we were just moving on to family members when we got a call from Francis. He had run out of fuel in Gatunyu and wanted us to go buy some fuel and bring it to him.
So we walked across town to the gas station but were told we'd have to go to the store for a jerry can to hold the gas. Back to the gas station to purchase the gas...Francis calls. He has gotten a ride to the nearest town and we should hang out on standby with the fuel in case he needs us. We headed to Martha's place to finish our language lesson and wait to hear from Francis. We made it through members of the family and I had just learned that you pronounce the word cucu (show-show) when we got a call from Francis. He was at the office, where were we?
Back across town to the office to see the new bike and give Francis his keys. It's a brand new bike and I will have to try driving it tomorrow. It's been about 6 weeks since my motorcycle lessons now so I hope I remember how!
We decided to give up on the language lesson and try again tomorrow so I made it home by 6:30 and cooked more rice to go with my lunch leftovers for dinner. By the time I finished eating it was 8pm so I had some time to read before hitting the hay around 9:30.
Tonight I will dream of driving the piki piki!
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