A Weekend Off

So this past weekend was my one weekend hanging around the farm during my stay at ICODEI. We used the opportunity to visit the home of one of the staff members who gave us a wonderful lunch. Her husband works for about the only big business in the area, Mumias Sugar, as a manager in their factory so they had a very nice home compared to most people. They even had power and a TV so we watched The Gods Must Be Crazy, which is a great and entertaining film on its own (If you haven't seen it, go watch it!) but has a whole new level of amusement now that were are living it. Our vehicles are in even worse shape than the one in that movie and we spend a significant amount of time, especially recently, pushing them to get them started or occasionally unstuck from ditches or potholes.

The night before we'd been out and of course I don't drink at all but everyone else was feeling pretty rough. The funny part though was the bar had played a couple of Shania songs, which we took as an opportunity to tease one Emily (the other MDP volunteer) who insists that Canada has the worst contributions to musical culture. After our movie, our host then put on a DVD of...yup, Celine Dion videos. This was pushing it even for me but one of the other Canadians even knew the words and of course we couldn't waste the opportunity to further harass Emily.

In the evening we came back and had a bonfire at the farm, complete with a bastardized version of Smores (a Canadian campfile classic of chocolate and marshmallow melted between Graham crackers). Since we couldn't get marshmallows or Graham crackers, we had chocolate on gingersnaps. (You do what you can.)

Now although ICODEI is a non-secular organization, the director is an Episcopalian minister. He has about 21 churches that he visits on a rotational basis and Sunday he just happened to be preaching at the one near us. So we all got dressed up and did our best to partake (given our range of beliefs). They did what they could to preach a bit in English so we could understand. It was even interesting, particularly when politics entered into the sermon. (The Agriculture minister got caught in a big scam that bled more than 7 Billion KSh (over $100M CAD) from the public funds - and who kept his job because they made a deal with the opposition who had also had a minister caught in a scam.) The coolest part was the singing though, complete with 2 drums (played very well by a couple of guys in the congregation) and two old ladies ululating. The kids even danced in a out through the center of the church a couple of times and then did 2 special songs at the end, something they'd been learning as part of Sunday School.