Biked around the island!

So, I have now lived at my site for about a month. So far its been great! Then recently I met a group who will be riding their bikes to Tanzania as a fundraiser for an orphanage. A few days ago they invited me and my colleague to join them on a bike ride around our island. So we actually went around the island on our bikes! It was amazing! every corner of the island looks very unique and different. Took us about 5 hours to go all around it but it was lots of fun with number of breaks.

Meet the team

Mimi na rafiki yangu

 

Animals are part of the community here.

Animals here are part of the community and Goats are my favorite. Especially baby goats are dope to look at. So here are some photos I took of some of my favorite animals. I will take more so stay posted as you can find all kinds of animals here.  

scratching 

 Goats relaxing 

 twins

 chilling

 Nap time

 how cool

 New born

More about my site

So now I have been at site for more than 2 weeks and its great so far! Learning how to cook and turning my house into a home, which is not very easy! Schools just opened so I will be introducing myself and hope to start volunteering there soon. Right now my counter part and I are going around and introducing our selves to community leaders, clan elders, beach leaders, youth and women groups.

There was a crazy rain strom yesterday and since I have iron sheets as my roof I can hear everything. It’s a beautiful sound actually lol. But at least its not so hot any more!

My kitchen, making chappti

Movie night with some of the kids

Loving my new home

Chilling 

My host organization and I

My Site!

Mfangano Island is beautiful and the people are very welcoming. I love the children in my host organization; they bring me water from the lake every morning. Since we live on an island our drinking, bathing, washing water comes from the lake. I have started living in my own at this point. So if you have easy cooking tips hit me up!

My house is great as you can see on the below pictures. I have two rooms, a kitchen and dinning/living room. No electricity in my house so lantern is my new best friend. I also sleep early because there is not much to do her when its dark. Finally, I walk about 30 min to charge my electronics.

My house

 Kitchen

Transportation on the island is a challenge. No vehicles on the island what’s so ever, unless people are vising from main land. Therefore, the main form of transportation is Mottobike taxi (piki piki) and Peace Corps does not allow us to ride them. So, I ended up buying a bike and riding a bike here on these roads is quite a work out!        

SWEARING IN CEREMONY

Finally Pre-Service Training (PST) is over! We were sworn in as Peace Corps Kenya volunteers as of Wednesday August 14^th! Swearing in ceremony was very exciting; most of us wore Kenya traditional out fits. Our country Director, representative from USAID, and two Kenyan officials were present. From the swearing in ceremony, we all said bye to our host families and departed to our specific sites. Took me three days to get to my island but I finally arrived safely.

Offically Peace Corps Volunteer

Ceremony

Meet the 37 Peace Corps Kenya Volunteers

WEEK 9: Finishing up training!

So, we finally made it to the end of training! Since everyone passed the LPI, we started learning local languages this week. This was a relaxing week since we were done stressing over the exam. We meet our site partners/supervisors this Tuesday. Our swearing in ceremony is this Wednesday the 14^th. The ceremony is in the morning and we go to site straight from there. Now we are just packing and doing our good byes with our host families!   

Laundry Time!

In America we take laundry machines for granted, but in Kenay we wash by hand. It’s actually not too bad. Saturday mornings are my laundry days, so I blast my Eritrean music and wash! It is surprisingly relaxing!  

LAUNDRY

TIME