Zoo

I have arrived in my new home town, Kemondo Bay. Although you can find it on Google earth, it's nothing really. A fishing harbour, 3 mosques, lots of little huts in a market place, even more noisy people and me in my house. My first week was full of new impressions. I got to know lots of locals, know which stall sells spaghetti, have bought my first fresh fish and am already sick of eating the bananas that are grown here and everyone offers me as a present. My Kiswahili is getting a little better now that I'm forced to try and speak it a lot, the children in town all know where the Mzungu (Obruni) lives and stare through my windows a lot, and my living room often is the place to meet other locals although I never told people this is the new community centre. This weekend I drove to the nearest town on my pikipiki (moto) and bought some necessary food stuff that is not available in my village. The road going to the town is good and goes over hills full with banana trees, coffee plants and sometimes allows a great view on Lake Victoria. There is hardly any traffic on the road. Every now and than a minibus (too) full with people who also want to shop in town, children walk aroundwith goats, some pikipiki riders are trying the maximum speed of their bikes and in the fiels adults and children are busy planting potatoes. The rainy season has started and it's nice and cool with every day some or a lot of rain.

My house is being baptised: 'Zoo'. At the beginning of this week I woke up by the noise of a bat that appeared to be my room mate. The bloody animals was screaming and flying around with a speed I thought was dangerous is this tiny dodgy 'room' of mine. I chose to be the weakest, blew some air in my inflateble mattress and slept together with 50 musquitos in my living area. Because I didn't dare to go back into the room to get my mozzy-net, I woke up with a couple of bites of these new friends. A colleage came to the house the next day and managed to find the bat and chased it away. Two days later I heard the voice of this former room mate again and am wondering how long it will take him/her to find the entrance to my room again. I hardly survived the first shock of house mates and found another friend in my living area the next day: Mr Rat. It was walking through my room as if it was not used to doing anything else and didn't seemed to be bothered by my presence. I had enough by that time, left the house and slept in the house of a another volunteer the next night. I have asked VSO and the employer to solve my living situation by finding me a proper house. Whether the rat and/or bat are still around? I will soon find out. Perhaps they have fallen in love and have decided to move to their own place to create their family. I just hope they did and that they will happily live ever after.