Kilifi, Kenya, Africa!

We’re here, we’re here and we never want to leave!
We’re finally in Kenya and it is gorgeous. Every few minutes I look around me and think, Why would any one ever want to live somewhere that isn’t Kenya? I’m sure I’ll find out but for now we just love it.
The sky is blue and bright and everywhere there are thick fields of grass, pineapple, and even corn. There are jungles with trees LITERALLY the size of a house that are reminiscent of Fern Gully.
We drove through Mobasa on our way to Kilifi and our driver was the best driver ever. Some parts of the road were thronged with cars going the wrong way, children trying to sell us sugar cane through the window and lots of goats and some parts were washed out or filled with potholes. But our driver cleared it all with ease, sometimes even with Cher blasting out the raido WHILE he’s on the phone.
The city was the most interesting to me, there were dozens of little internet cafes, pubs, and a little tin shack that had Beyonce Café spray painted on the side. It’s a real pity I couldn’t get a picture of it. And in the middle of all the chaos there are groups of beautiful barefoot children running footraces and playing soccer, and trying to get the white girl (ME) in the fancy car wave at them.
Every child I see is so breath-takingly adorable that I want to stop and hug them, take their picture and give them a hundred dollars. But I‘m pretty sure that’s something I shouldn’t do.
Everyone here is very, VERY helpful. A little too helpful, you know. Since they’ll rush over to grab your bags and pack them into the car for you then say “You have a little something for me?” And if you try to give them coins or a few British pounds they say “American notes are fine, American notes.” Okay Fine. We can spare two dollars.
Our house might be the best thing of all. We’re staying in a mansion-sized ex-pat Beach House with three other Americans. We have geckos on the walls, and ants of our keyboards while we try to type (Beat little bugs!) Then we have a huge big yard filled with trees filled with MONKEYS! We have a private pool and three dogs that apparently kind-of live here with us. We’re a five minute walk from the Indian Ocean, which is warm and turquoise. The beach is spongey, springy, deep and blinding white. There was a boat of fishermen a few hundred yards out in the water, and six or seven kids playing down by the beach, but it was otherwise deserted.
Surely we can’t be enjoying this perfection ourselves?
I’m sitting on our bed, which is surrounded by mosquito netting. Clinging to the outside are three or four grasshoppers the size of my longest finger, a few June-Bug like beetles and many moths and ants.
It’s weird how quickly you can adjust to these things. It just seems perfectly natural that we’re surrounded by monkeys, dogs, geckos and gigantic bugs. Any one of those things would lead me to complaint in the USA but here… I love it.
My Dad kept warning me to mentally prepare myself and after the culture shock I went through in China, who can blame him?
But I have yet to see anything that seemed “wrong” or “bad.” Everything just seems perfect. And if people live differently here, then that’s because its so different here. But different-good, you know. Different-awesome.
Tomorrow we’ll start working, but how can it be called working? We’re going to be meeting farmers, seeing their land and learning about what they do.
BEST JOB EVER.
I love here. For real.
Hopefully pictures will come soon.