The Newest Iddy Biddy Kenyan

One of the reasons that I try to post every day is because as soon as I take a one day break, it somehow turns into 3 days.  It’s very easy to just not post anything, to just sit on my laurels and relax and just forget about all of this Lenna Living Lightly crap.  But I stop and think of you, my dear, kind  readers (reader?) that seem to take some piece of enjoyment from this blog and I soldier on! Plus some boat was pulling into Mombasa (Kenyan coast) and apparently cut some internet line that runs along the sea floor or something even less technical than that sad explanation and it's caused extremely bad internet for the past 2 days.

Let me first start by sharing the news that my good friend Carly had a baby! After 40 grueling hours of labor – Little Eli Koinange was born at Aga Khan hospital in Nairobi.  One friend reminded me that 40 hours is the equivalent of a work week – Carly was in labor for an entire work week, yes that’s right.  If that doesn’t scare you out of having kids, I don’t know what will.  But Carly is strong like the ox and not more than 8 hours later she was on her feet changing diapers. Incredible. We brought her frozen yogurt and indian food as a trade for getting to see the new baby.  Here’s how it looked …I mean, not the birth – i was not there for that and don’t really think you want to see pictures of that anyways – I want to show you little ELI! He’s such a precious little munchichi – i get to see him again Wednesday.   

Mama and baby - about 10 hours old

Rose with Eli

Me with Eli

Proud papa and grandpa

 And since I never had time to blog about her pre-baby brunch that  we had…why don’t I just do that now! (I hope you are reading Carly – I haven’t shown you the photos yet!) Sort of backwards – I showed you the baby and now comes the pre-baby brunch…but think of it as a brain exercise: practice keeping natural order of events in your head despite what Lenna’s blog is telling you. 

9 months and waiting!

   
The brunch was at Riverside Cafe – Good cooking. And great company – there were lots of interesting friends of Carly and Karuga to talk to, some I already knew, some I didn’t. 

Okay so that is that. Now, since I think it’s too much to throw another  topic on for today…I leave you with a little humor.  So, I recently had a quick trip to Uganda for work and I had to stay in a small town called Gulu. At night, I went to check out my options for food at the small little guest house I was staying at and here’s one of the pages from the menu that I thought was a bit funny but very typical of small town Africa food descriptions in English (shit, even big town Africa).

My favorites are:
1) the Greek Salads (plural) that has carrots and mayonnaise and FRENCH dressing. If the Greeks find out about this, I’m betting that they will have worse riots than those they are currently having from the Euro crises.
2) African Tear Gas.  Do I need to say anything else? There must be some rule against naming food after riot control weaponry. And what are Threads?
3) A Flanny Avocado Salads.  It must mean something to someone. The description is painful as well.


And since I don't know what else to do with this photo – I’ll share with you pig transport in Uganda – You cannot tell but there were so so many giant pigs in that truck and the guys were just the second layer on top of them. You can see a pig arm on the left sticking out of the side– those pigs were packed so tight – that’s a lot of bacon right there! ew!

This little piggy went to the market....

bye!

Gettin paid

Not much time to blog but I wanted to drop a line so that I can achieve my goals of being consistent with my blog. 

I'm working in Uganda for just a quick few days - This specific trip is sort of a business development trip and  these trips are basically wall to wall meetings from 8am to 8pm with various ministry of health folks and malaria program people that we've been harassing to give us a few minutes of their time. When I'm not in meetings with outsiders I'm strategerizing (ala George Bush) with my own little team (3 of us here). So it's loooong days and I don't feel particularly creative ..at least no great blog material is flowing right now. In fact, here is how I'm really feeling:

bottoms up - afterall it's cheap wine

Oh you want to hear more about this day that never ended??? The trip actually started last night at 10pm when my co-worker and friend, Scott and I got dropped off by my favorite byu and husband Sergio at the airport.  Scott got bumped off the flight since he hadn't checked in online - which is incredibly common. And apparently the same thing happened to my boss - so I was the only one that made the flight - what can I say? I have my sh!t together!
I had previously confirmed like 2 times with the Serena hotel in Kampala that someone would indeed be at the airport to pick me up..but of course, just like my last trip here, my name wasn't on the airport shuttle board. So I fought it out with the shuttle driver and he took me to the  hotel - 45 minutes away. I got in around 1:30am, got my room and sure enough, despite my special request not to be in a room above the front entrance, that's exactly where I was! I try to avoid staying in rooms above front entrances of hotels - since popular hotels where international travelers stay in major African cities are prime targets for terrorism - and I figure the front entrance has high odds of being affected if anything goes down - so anyways by the time I requested a new room and moved, it was around 2:30am and I finally went to sleep - 5 good hours later I woke up to start my day of meetings.

And as a last note - one thing I don't like is having breakfast meetings or breakfast with my boss early in the morning (and yes, I have one tomorrow). Seriously - just let me have some coffee and have breakfast in peace - I'm just not ready yet to chat it up and I really don't need you to watch me gorge on the breakfast buffet because I do like to get my money's worth and it's not always pretty.