Tired as a dog...

And after last night might end up acting like one and try to kill the project house's cat!!

So Sunday night I wake up in the middle of the night to find something biting my toes through the bed sheet. Somehow I didn't swiftly kick whatever it was in the side of the head then stomp on it... Good news for Bucati, the project house's cat. At some point in the evening he must have stolen in through the open window (6ft above the ground outside) and managed to work his way under/around the mosquito net and onto my bed... I really feel like he used up one of his nine lives by coming into my bed that night cause I was milliseconds away from not recognizing the black patch of fur he has on his face and walloping him one good...

You would think that a cat which lives in an area of the world which is known for its many poisonous snakes would want to conserve as many of its lives as possible... but not little Bucati... Last night, he decided to hop onto the window sill and CRY and MEOW and SCREAM til his little heart was content (aka- from 3am til 6am...). I know most people would say 'well, why didn't you do something about it rather than being lazy and just laying in bed?' Well you have to understand that I am in a 10ft by 10ft room with two twin beds and luggage on the floor and must negotiate all that plus two big frames for the mosquito nets before I could even get to the window, which doesn't open all the way (just enough for him to sneak in and out), to access where he was sitting... And if I had decided to use an outside route to him, I would have had to stumble through the room, down the hallway, through the living room, find the keys, unlock the house lock(trying every key on the key ring), sneak past the dog, unlock the porch lock (again trying every key on the key ring) and walk all the way around the house without disturbing the several chickens that roost in the bushes around the house before I could have gotten to him... I told him how I felt about him this morning but my Swahili isn't good, so I am not sure if he got it. Then again its a cat, so even if it did understand, it wouldn't care!

In other news, the plans for my last weekend in Kenya are up in the air at the moment... There had been discussion about a weekend trip to Mount Elgon (perhaps known best for the elephant caves and the Marburg Virus, a close relative of the Ebola, that traced back to those caves), which I am pretty keen on, but the grad student I am here working with has too much stuff going on right now to head out for the weekend. So it could still happen with just myself, Fabrice and the other summer student... Or I could end up sticking around Busia to get some work done too... I had kind of wanted to go over the border to Uganda to a town called Jinga, which is the 'source' for the Nile River. It would just be a little day trip as its pretty close to here, but a visa for an American to enter Uganda, even if just for a day, is $50USD... Its a steep charge for what would only be a day trip... Interestingly enough, Irish citizens get a complimentary visa in Uganda...

Who knows... this time next week I will again be a mix of emotions counting down the hours til I head back to the US of A!! Miss you all!