It's Hitting me

I've been living here for five days now and slowly its sinking in that I'm living in a third world country. The novelty hasn't really worn off yet. I've gotten used to being sweaty all the time. The first thing that really hit me about Kenya is how the complete chaos that is everyday life here is somehow amazingly cohesive. All of the videos you see on youtube of people driving in India etc. pretty much illustrate perfectly how driving here is. Chaos - total and complete chaos. Everyone here (or at least the ones that can afford it) ride in "Matatus"(pronounced with long u sounds and the a is like the o in hot). Imagine 1980's Toyota minivans that are completely stripped then re outfitted with new seats. they have 9 seats in them and I've seen over 15 people packed into cars smaller than a Honda odyssey. pictures will follow... I promise.
This is me in a semi full Matatu

Everywhere we go we are a minority. Its interesting to see how different members of our group respond to that. Some people act like royalty trying to please the peasants by their benevolent kindness. It comes off extremely condescending as they speak louder and slower to the black native English speakers than to the white ones. Other people take a much more liberal "hey we're all people" approach. I hope I'm more the latter than the prior. People here always expect that you're rich and you just have to keep a close watch on your change at stores. A lot of merchants just assume you won't tell them when they've tried to give you less than adequate change. Its been my experience that they do this too the locals too. but its worse with us. What fun right?


Our office is nice. The politics that go into choosing and assigning offices are much different than the US as it turns out. We have a corner office on the top floor with the MOST amazing view. Check out this picture.

This is the view out of our office. Rough life eh?