Giraffes in my backyard; the most beautiful murky, muddy, parasite-infested bodies of water; waking up to the sunrise every morning; falling asleep under millions of stars every night; saying supa and ipa almost constantly; science classes about why it's important to poop and pee in a toilet or latrine; red, dust-covered skin; missing teeth, elongated ears, beads all over, and clothing that consists of just blankets and a belt; meals cooked outside; the most painful but wonderful boda boda rides of my life; communicating with nothing but smiles and pointing; herds of cows and goats all over; hundreds of aunts, uncles and cousins; the most beautiful mama Maggie I could have asked for. This is my life. TIA man, TIA.

Fact: I am Maasai. I've only spent two days in Saikeri but oh man, it's home. I've never felt this good before. The Maasai are incredible people...indescribable. My host mom, Maggie, is the nicest most accepting person I've met here. She doesn't speak ill of anyone and tries to find the beauty in everyone. And the landscape, and the stars at night, and the animals, and the people, and the way they dress and act and sing and dance...I'm in love. I could stay here forever. My room has no electricity, although the living room and Maggie's room do so that's no big deal. Our toilet is a hole in the ground with four walls around it (but at night if you have to pee it's way more beautiful and convenient to just step outside and pee under the stars). My school is literally right next door so my morning commute is about 2 minutes, and we can come home for tea breaks and for lunch. My class 2 kids are adorable. On Friday they started the day out by doing traditional dances to traditional songs- it was AWESOME. Seriously, I was supposed to be born Maasai. I just got put in the wrong body.

My face has hardened over my few short weeks here. When I walk down the streets my jaw is clenched tight, my eyes unforgiving. Even at home it takes a lot more effort to get a smile out of me than it did four weeks ago. Being a mzungu in Kibera you naturally draw everyone's attention. I constantly feel the stares on me- some gentle and welcoming, most are not. In four short weeks I've grown to anticipate the looks, the grabs, the handshakes, the calls, and I've learned to give back nothing. No facial or verbal acknowledgement of how I feel because it doesn't matter. Whether I want the attention or not it's going to come. Even the children aren't guaranteed a response anymore. That I don't like. I don't like that I've become this hard shell of a person. I don't like that I came here thinking I could so easily love everyone and give my heart to them all when in reality, I can't. I don't like that when I walk alone I don't feel like I can even give a smile without becoming even more of a target.
I leave for Maasai land tomorrow. I've heard tat the Maasai are the most kind-hearted, welcoming, gentle, beautiful souls out there. My biggest hope is that they'll break me. That they'll re-teach me how to openly trust my neighbors, how to let my guard down, how to smile freely.
My life is beautiful, and I am living my dream, I just didn't realize how much I would learn and change in the process.

best day ever

I met this woman today who is a friend of an uncle of a friend (I guess now I could just call her my friend) and she works for MSF (doctors without borders). Super awesome. So my friend and I met up with her and her adorable son for lunch at Java House to just talk to her about her job and pretty much just shoot the shit and that was great but then my friend got sick so she had to come home. So this woman, Sandra, still invited me to her house after to hang out and I went because duh, you don't pass up awesome opportunities like this. So I got to see the house that MSF put her and her family in for their mission, which was sick by the way. I played with her son and then Sandra and I drank tea and talked for hours. She's so cool. This is kind of a pointless story because I'm not going to type out our whole conversation but everyone should know that this woman is great and she cemented my future plans and I can't wait to live my life (meaning I can't wait for this minute and the next and the next hour and day and week and month and year and forever because my life is and will keep being so awesome). I'm so glad I met her and I'm so glad today happened and I'm so glad people like her exist and I'm so glad I somehow meet the most inspiring, wonderful people everywhere I go. My faith in humanity is once again restored.

Sorry I haven't updated in a while, our internet ran out and then this past weekend i went to Uganda so I was too busy. Life is still incredible over here. Last Thursday four other volunteers and I took a 17 hour bus ride to Kampala, Uganda, which I thought was the most atrocious bus ride ever until we rode the bus back to Nairobi. That turned out to be wayyy worse. Uganda is so beautiful. Everything is the purest, most luscious green you can imagine. The roads are lined with sugar cane fields, tea fields, mud huts in little village clusters and huge forests. I immediately fell in love. The roads are a deep red that after about 2 minutes walking around, you're covered in. There are police and security guards everywhere who carry huge guns, and sometimes they hopped on our bus. At first they were a little intimidating because of the guns but then I got used to them and they made me feel safer because I knew they were only there to help. Kampala sucked. I don't advise anyone to go there ever because its probably the scariest city I've ever been in. As a mzungu, you can't walk 10 metres without being approached in some sort of negative way. People were not that comfortable there. So we left pretty quickly and went out to Jinja for an extra night. That city I highly suggest people visit. Instead of taking taxis and matatus everywhere there, you take boda-bodas which are motorcycles. They're so much fun and may look really unsafe (and maybe in reality they are) but when you ride them, you feel so secure. It's fabulous. Saturday we went to Ghandi's temple and rode a boat out to the source of the Nile, which is this one part of water where Lake Victoria and the Nile meet. Water bubbles up from the bottom of the river/lake area and then flows down the Nile for 3 months until it reaches Egypt. After the boat ride, Atazia and I went bungee jumping!! WOOOOO HOOOOOO!!! That was so much fun. I jumped first, and while I was standing on the edge of the platform my adrenaline was rushing so hard that my entire body was shaking as was the entire platform. Such a great feeling. We met this woman who's a painter down in one of the villages. She was so nice! We're basically best friends now. Sunday three of us walked around the painter's village (not with her though, she was busy painting) and met some kids who took us around to meet all their parents, see all their houses, and just show us everything. We got to see avocado trees, orange trees, passionfruit trees, jackfruit trees (which are super bizarre), coffee trees, and a bunch of other cool things. The kids were great. I didn't want to leave, and the bus ride home was completely awful but that's ok because the whole trip was incredible overall.

Yesterday I went to my school to hang with the kids and teacher Violet basically told me her entire life story. I was about to cry in class while she was talking to me because it's so unfair. She works from 5:30am-7pm every day at the school and gets paid the equivalent of $100/month. She still has to live with her guardians because that's not enough money to sustain her, and she pays her guardians $50/month to help with all the bills. It's customary for grandchildren to help support their grandparents so she sends her grandparents money every other month, and she's the oldest of all her siblings so she has to help pay for their high school and uni as well. Since the extra $50 isn't enough to cover all that she took on some private tutoring jobs from 7-9pm every night to get her about $20 extra every month. So every night she collapses from exhaustion at about midnight after doing her lesson plans for the following day. She's the most approachable teacher in the school, so all the girls go to her to ask for pads when it's their time of the month, so every time she buys some for herself she buys extras for the girls. She was telling me that most people are excited for pay day but she's in tears every single time because it's so stressful to think of all the money she owes everyone. She never has enough money to pay for her hair to get done, or a new dress or new shoes but she perseveres every day because she loves those kids and some of them are worse off than she is. She doesn't want to show them her frustration or her exhaustion because she wants them to know that they too can persevere. She's an amazing woman.