Already one week in Kenya.

I have already seen and experienced so many things that I have the feeling that I´ve been around much longer. This is also my third day in Kibwezi and I´m loving it more and more as time goes by. Kibwesi is a district in the Eastern province of Kenya, it is one of the two study areas in our study. This is the 4th year in a row that they do not receive enough rains, so that is really affecting the food security of the people and therefore their nutrition. Nevertheless the people in it seems happy, they always wave at you on the street and greet you with a smile in their face, they kids run after you and want to shake your hand, or scream from their house “How are you?”. These are definitively nice and sane people, they might have very little, but they seem to have peace of heart. I´m really thinking about the role of money in our lifes, how important it is to cover our basic needs and accomplish many things; but as the famous refrain says: Money doesn´t necessarily bring happiness!, and I can see in the faces of these people that they are content with what they have, they are thankful for what they receive.

Not very long ago I read something that I wrote in a visible place for me to remember, it reads: “Let us complain less, and give more”. I really liked it, I think that is one of the essences of live, to give and feel the joy of giving and serving. I should also learn to be more long-suffered (is it an English word? Please, native speakers correct me if I´m wrong!), and complain less about the setbacks we face. We should accept the season of our life, as we have always accepted the seasons that pass over our fields.
Then we would watch with serenity through the winters of our grief. Joy and pain are necessary for growth, and unfortunately is through periods of trial when we learn the most.

So here I am, ready to receive whatever is put on my plate. I look at the future with optimism and I my hands are prepared to do whatever I have to!!!

As for the project, it´s going a bit slower than we planned. It takes time to get all the permissions needed and set up everything, but we are working on it and in the end it will be all right!. I am lucky I am working with a fantastic supervisor and another student from which I am learning a lot. It is nice to walk with them the dirty roads of the town while having a nice chat under the burning sun of Africa, we do not complain about it that much anymore, we have made ours the Kenyan saying: Hakuna Matata (don’t worry…!). Here life goes slower than in the places that I´ve lived before. They just do their own thing and don’t bother themselves too much with time J.

AH! I forgot to talk about the place I am staying at now. It´s a guest house run by a German man and his wife from Tanzania. All the rooms are in the ground floor around a garden of palms. We get breakfast, lunch and dinner, so I don´t have to worry about fixing my own meals, besides that the couple cooks very well. We get nice pancakes with veggy omelettes every morning and very yummy African dinners. I love it!!! I

For the rest I am doing pretty well. The first days were a bit rough, trying to get used to my new life, but this morning when I woke up I thought: Cristina, you are really privileged!, so I’m living my dream.