Yellow House

The other reason it's good to save these at home and upload them.. as you can get kicked off mid post which is very very frustrating. So take 2...

January 21, 2007

Well… it is Sunday night and I am not sure where the evening or the weekend went actually. I had planned to do so much more, but only got a little Leap work done and very little letter writing. Alas. I am going to start typing my blogs at home and then uploading them when I go into town.. I feel it will be much more efficient.

Tonight I actually ate a reasonably healthy dinner. I had a veggie burger and three beers for lunch so I was tempted to skip my evening meal entirely, but my malaria medication requires a full stomach I think. So I did boil up a potato, a carrot and snow peas and like every other meal I have eaten in this aqua house I topped it with sweet chilli sauce. Hmm. Actually.. this, salt and curry powder are the only seasonings/condiments I have to date. I have hot sauce on the list. Mum and I have also discussed the possible merits and pitfalls of un-refrigerated butter.

This afternoon I actually met up with the autism specialist who works on the same CDEP project which was useful. She is a speech therapist by training but has never done speech. Autism is another strand of the project so it has been her focus.. and fortunately for the world at large not mine. She also works with the ten sites, but sadly she leaves in April so we don’t have much of an overlap. She was originally based in Kitui but relocated to Nairobi and thinks my efforts would be best served if I focus on the Western sites. I hope to head to the Vihiga center with her Tuesday so plan to tap her brain for more specific information at that point. She also introduced me to a very delightful tucked away café which, while (relatively) expensive, actually has several vegetarian options. Although I love vegetable curry, I can appreciate a choice of meals as much as the next person.

This big event of the day… dadadada I bought a mattress. Hallelujah. The wooden bed frame and the sleeping bag wasn’t as bad as one might expect, but hot. I was not excited about the whole buying a mattress thing because I was completely unsure how the hell I was supposed to get it home. But they folded it in two! And I tucked it into a tuk-tuk. Ha. My sister did point out that most mattresses don’t actually fold in two, but oh well.. this one does (basically a slab of foam in a fancy quilted mattress looking cover!) and it beats the prior arrangement. It’s actually too small.. my bed is a 1 ½ single I think, but I will get myself a bigger mattress and put this one in the spare room at some point. It will do. I actually plan to buy a quilt.. because it would be pretty not because I need one (far too hot, though there may be cooler times in the year). There is this shack by the side of the road and they have lots of really beautiful (albeit dusty) quilts. I suspect these quilts are actually probably made somewhere in America by some well meaning craft group .. but I will check it out and let you know. I have an acute appreciation for pretty right now.

But to bed. I am sure I have to meet a plethora of people in the morning. So the name thing.. in case you were wondering.. has evolved to Veronica (the coordinator) introducing me by saying “this is Brenda, but she loves to be called Bea.” It is all so ridiculous. They can call me whatever they like. I wish she would follow that with “and she is nearly thirty, not 19.” Seriously. Veronica always says very kindly “Bea has lots of experience” and the recipient looks at me and then looks at her quizzically. I need an ‘I am 29 shirt.’