The Weekend in Kisumu

Fabrice and I spent the weekend down in Kisumu. Stated to be the third biggest city in Kenya behind Nairobi and Mombasa, but you wouldn't know it from looking at it. We got a much longer, more in depth view than our brief stop-over here last weekend to get the Land Cruiser services on the way to Nakuru last weekend.

Kenya is interesting in so many ways. No matter what you read in a guide book, no matter how surprising it is to read, you will still be amazed when you actually see it. After we arrived in town we passed through the city center with Fred and James(two of the Kenyans that work on the PAZ project with us). On the outskirts of the city center lies the Kisumu Market. A place where they sell everything from avocados to sunglasses and bootleg DVDs to mattresses. While driving along the edge of the market we noticed a large, rather rowdy crowd massing and walking past us on the other side of the road. Walking away from them in front was a young man, terribly bloodied and stripped down to his underwear... Sudden introduction to mob justice for a thief or pickpocket. Sadly in a country where a nominal bribe to a police officer is often enough to avoid a date with the justice system, the mob mentality frequently takes over and this sort of sight is apparently not an unusual happening (I read in the local paper last week where a local thug was hung after he was caught breaking into a business by a mob...). I guess I was just most amazed that 100 yards down the road we passed a police officer... and how people watched but no one seemed concerned or even interested...

So.... We searched around for a decent hotel. And discovered that a decent hotel in Kisumu did not necessarily come with a decent price tag! We visited three places and were pretty well surprised how expensive they each were. We finally settled on the middle of the three places (called Kisumu Hotel), as it seemed be best (perhaps only) balance between the cost and what you actually got for the cost. Luckily for us, James happened to know the Manager of the place from some work he did with the Red Cross some years back and was able to arrange for a little bit of a lower nightly rate for our stay!

After settling in, it was off to dinner for Fabrice and I. James and Fred left us to met up with their families, so we set course for basically the only place we knew in Kisumu in search of a decent meal... The Mon Ami... Ended up having the same butterfish and chips that I did the week before. Nothing beats a decent fried fish and french fries... (with the possible exception of whatever I eat in two weeks when I get home!) But all joking aside it was a pretty good meal and if you happen to pass through Kisumu sometime (which will be increasingly possible when the new international airport is completed) I would definitely recommend the place.

We came to find out, as we had assumed that Mon Ami was a pretty hip hangout for whatever mzungus happen to be around the Kisumu area. There is a HUGE campus set up and run by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) located just outside Kisumu and its also a base for several church/outreach organizations. So mzungus while still not too common, aren't as surprising of a sighting as they are most other places. Its funny. In the field, I have found myself to be almost as inquisitive as the kids I mentioned a couple weeks ago, when I see white people. What are they doing here? Who are they with? What kind of white people are they? That last question I think I am pretty good at accurately guessing. I nailed it this past weekend, calling a group of Brits, two Americans and a German couple. The closer to their 20s people are, the easier it is to do correctly.

Anyways, we ended up hanging out there after dinner when they clear away most of the tables and turn the floor over to dancing and loud music. It wasn't all that much different than a dancehall anywhere in the world, I guess. The music was similar or in some cases, the same and when I woke up my ears were ringing just as all the other.

The next morning I discovered that there were only 6 channels on the TV. Two were in Swahili, one was showing the local Saturday morning rip-off bootleg cartoons, one was Al Jazeera (which didn't actually seem as terrible as I thought it would be) and two that were WALL-TO-WALL World Cup Coverage. It was my saving grace, as Fabrice had a long night the night before and unlike me, wasn't up for answering the bell at 6am...

That afternoon we met up with Fred for a little adventure on Lake Victoria. Fabrice was in search of the infamous Nile Perch that in habit the lake, and Fred happens to own a little boat. So away we went around 3pm to drive to Fred's family's home near Kisumu to embark. There we were greeted by Otis and George(pictured above with Fred and myself) who rent Fred's boat during the week to fish while he is in Busia working. In spite of Fabrice not catching any Nile Perch and his only 'bite' being a tangle with a net, it was a fun trip. Normally this type of boat would throw up a little sail and power itself that way, but in the late afternoon the breeze on Lake Victoria has a tendency to die down. Saturday afternoon was no exception. So it was up to Otis and George to power us around for the nearly three hours we spent out on the lake. I wasn't paddling and I was tired, so I could only imagine how it was for them! But they seemed none the worse for wear, as I think our little jaunt around the lake wasn't near their daily journey in search of Tilapia and whatever other harvest they find on the lake.

From there we moved back into Kisumu with Fred as our 'guide.' Fabrice wanted some good live local music and I wanted to try to catch the World Cup Third Place match. Fred was able to guide us to a favorite place of his, that had set up a tent outside for showing the WC matches so that it could continue to play music inside. There was also an assortment of 'caterers' outside the place that served the local dish ugali(basically a cornmash dough) and roasted goat... Having not really eaten much meat since I have been in Kenya, I was ALL over the goat. The sauce it was bathed in was great and the goat itself was delicious (disclaimer: shoe leather may have been delicious too after 5 weeks without meat). I got to watch yet another team which I thought would win, fall victim to the curse of my confidence... It was early to bed after the match so we could walk the town the next day.

Not much happening in Kisumu on a Sunday morning, so we just strolled about and I took a couple pictures. We weren't really all that hungry after breakfast at the hotel, so we never managed to find any other places to eat in the area. I watched some more World Cup coverage and then we picked up the Fred and James in the afternoon and headed back towards Busia.