This week didn’t have the best of starts, when I was in Kitale I lost my cell phone when I was pick pocketed. It was two pick pocketers, one acted really bad and distracted me, while the other one apparently got my phone. After the incident I checked my pockets and noticed I still had my wallet, so I kept moving. It was quite a hassle partly because I had a lot of numbers in the phone which I had not saved elsewhere. Luckily I was able to get my old number back, but to get the old numbers back I had to stand in the Safaricom store and wait in an incredibly slow line. It took about an hour and a half but I eventually got a list of numbers that I had dialled, which was good enough for me.
On Tuesday we went down the football pitch at the school to watch Pathfinder academy take on some rival school. It was a very good game, but at some point Justin and I found a kid named Mohamed in the corner of the field playing with a soccer ball. At first we were all kicking the ball around and trying to keep the ball in the air. Eventually this turned into a game of “give-and-take” also known as keep away. The football game had been pretty one sided, so it didn’t really matter that our game was spilling onto the field. The game just kept growing until there were many kids involved, at this point the game on the pitch had concluded, so we started a small game with makeshift posts at the corner of the pitch. Apparently there were teams, and Justin and I were obviously on opposing teams, but outside of a handful of kids who I could recognize (and one who kept coming up to me and saying “go! Challenge!”) it was just a mass of kids chasing after the soccer ball. This was even more so the case when the game took to the whole pitch. I mostly stayed on the periphery for fear of booting someone by accident. At some a kid walked up to me and challenged me to a race. I ended up running a variety of races at a variety of distances. Those kids are fast.
Justin and I also made time to work on a marketing campaign in the Kiminini area. We began by launching putting up posters, and we ended up receiving a lot calls from people interested in what we were doing. With a bit more recognition we were able to take a consignment agreement that we had drafted up to some local businesses, including Subiri’s the biggest supermarket in Kiminini (still smaller than the average dollar store in Edmonton), and a pharmacy. We also had some other adventures by producing some T-Shirt and stickers. When we were walking around with our consignment document and filters wearing our T-Shirts we ended up walking by the main market area of Kiminini, and getting mobbed by, well, a mob of curious onlookers. It actually happened twice in Kiminini, and Martin and Collins were all to happy to explain our filter to everyone. There also several other interesting things going on, first of all the T-Shirts were a huge hit, many people asked for them, or if they could buy them. Secondly we printed a bunch of stickers, they were a hit, we gave some away to kids, to adults, and we were going to ask the taxis to put them on their cars, but their weren’t too many of them so we approached the moto bodas (motorcycle taxis) many of whom stuck multiple stickers all over their bikes. We visited two other markets that were a bit smaller than Kiminini, and we had similar results, drawing large crowds. Interestingly we also found that all the markets had one character. I’m a pretty good magnet for these people, so I end up dealing with them a lot of the time. The one in Kiminini (whom I had seen many times before) introduced himself to us… “hello, I am a magistrate of the court, I am about to serve 9 years in prison… give me five shillings”
“sorry, but I could never bribe and esteemed magistrate” I told him. He still hung around.
I had another fun time on the taxis as well. This time when I got to the stage was a brand new car (literally the car was new) and I was the last one to get in, and we were off. I have to reiterate that all the taxis are old, missing window cranks, missing inside panels, etc. Not this taxi, it was new, it had a CD player (there are floppy disks still for sale at the stationary store) some other disk player, and a tv screen mounted on the dash. But we got pulled over by the police again, and this time we ended up parked for about 20 mins. There were four of us piled in the back, and one the ladies literally said “Where is the justice for the people of Kenya.” They asked if there was anything like it in Canada, and we talked about such things for quite some time. Eventually the two people in the front seat got out, and a policeman got in. I got out at the first stop in Kitale and never found out where the cab went.
This weekend I also attended three Church services with Justin, Sammy, Collins, Martin and Pius to promote our filters. Seventh Day Adventism is big here so we attended a service on Saturday, and were invited for a lunch afterwards. On Sunday Martin, Collins and I attended the Salvation Army Church while Justin, Pius and Sammy went to a different Church. We eventually met them at a third Church, Kenya Assembly of God. Much of what was said was in Swahili, but there were still many English speakers and it was very good to go out and talk to people and to learn what they had to say.
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