Sleep in

I wake up this morning with the sun in my eyes - a first of the past two weeks. Normally I'm up around six, just as the sky starts to get light. I prop a pillow up against the window to block the rays from my eyes and sleep for another half hour until I hear the roosters in the compound crow. Salima is awake and making chai, so I pour myself a cup. I love chai. It's the Swahili word for tea, but they make it differently than back home. She boils equal parts of milk and water until it bubbles. Then throws in a spoonful of loose Kenyan black tea leaves (back home, this is the type that we would call Chai Tea) and lets it simmer. Sometimes, she will throw in a bit of ginger. After a few minutes, its ready to go. She pours the steaming liquid into a large thermos through a strainer. I fix myself a cup with a spoonful of sugar and head to the living room with a banana and a bowl of yogurt & muesli and do my usual morning checks on the internet; email, facebook, news, etc. We finally have internet inside the house, so I don't have to go sit on the concrete in the back.

Around 10:45, six of us head up the road toward the matatu stage to head to Nairobi. The hill out of the compound seems much more difficult today as pains shoot up my leg to my bad knee, a sign of our two-day hiatus. I'm starting to enjoy matatu rides. With the exception of the occasional brush with death and the stuffy heat while in a traffic jam, I like to sit back and enjoy the ride down Mombasa Road and into Nairobi with music playing in my ears.

We book our bus tickets for Friday night to take us 7 hours away to Mombasa, where we will catch a matatu to the east coast; Diani Beach on the Indian Ocean. Its almost 1pm by the time we get the tickets, so we head back to Tacos for lunch. After eating, Josh and I split up from the group since we were the only two heading back to Mlolongo. We make a pitstop so I can get the passport photos I need for my Indian tourist visa. I need to go back into Nairobi later this week to drop off my application at the Indian Embassy.

I'm starting to get a pretty good feel of Nairobi, at least the streets that I need to know. I still don't enjoy being there. It's just another big city, except it's really hot and the people walk incredibly slow. Unlike many of the other major cities I've been to, Kenyans don't like to bump or push. They carefully walk around each other, avoiding contact. Should they happen to slip and knock a passerby's shoulder, an apology immediately follows. Kenyan also like to apologize for everything. If I were standing on the sidewalk with an ice cream cone in my hand and the ice cream fell off, someone would surely say sorry. Today I tripped over a piece of styrofoam while walking through Mlolongo and a trucker called out from his parked semi, "Sorry, sorry!" It's actually quite amusing and its becoming a joke between us in the house.

Salima's making chapati and lentils for dinner tonight.