When it rains, it pours...

So it looks like this trip is going out with a bang…

I had a lot to talk about for stuff that we’ve done the past couple days but I’m going to condense it all to get to the story at hand…

So after village market last week I went into Kibera for a couple days. There is not a whole lot interesting note other than meeting this cool college student from Japan who is interning for Ken’s YMCA this summer. He went around with me on my research on Friday.

Saturday was the big goat feast day. We woke up early at 6am to get to Robert’s house by 7am to kill the goat. Emily successfully made the kill, much to the surprise of all the Kenyans that thought she would chicken out. I’m not going to go into the details of the kill and its subsequent skinning and dissection, but it was a fascinating experience. Ask me about it if you see me in person and I will tell you more about it.

As soon as we had killed it, we tossed its liver on the grill and after a thorough cooking we had some of it which tasted pretty good. It is traditional to eat a piece of it right after the kill so we had some of that meat for breakfast. Afterwards Matt, Roy and myself came back to Kilimani for a couple hours before returning to the house for a lunch of some more goat. We watched Lion King with Robert and his neighbor’s families. We then went to his father and brother’s house. His brother had a meeting to go to with the vice-president of Kenya, but we spent some time talking to his father. He was a very intelligent man, and asked us to quiz him on his knowledge. Most of his answers dated back to biblical references as he was deeply religious. After that we had a dinner of more goat, before leaving for the night. We stayed up a couple hours to see Emily off, and then we went to bed.

Sunday was a very relaxing day. We sort of wanted to crash after the bus days prior so we sat around for the most part. We sat around and then at night we went to see Captain America at a nearby movie theatre. I enjoyed it and thought it a little ironic that we were watching Captain America in Kenya. It was the next morning when all hell broke loose.

Just before Emily left, we blew a fuse in the house. We thought it only pertained to half of our room’s electricity, but it was also the fuse for the water pump. Little did we know, the water pump was slowly draining over the next 24 hours so eventually it ran out and we had no more. We realized last night that we had run out of water, so we sent an email to the landlord and waited for a response today to figure out how to fix it.

I woke up this morning around 10am. I got out of bed and saw that no now was home except for Minh. I went and asked him what was going on and he told me that Matt had taken Roy to the hospital. At this point I was like What? As it turns out, both Minh and Roy were affected by some kind of food poisoning. They both had thrown up quite a bit, but Roy was especially bad so Matt needed to call a cab to get him to the hospital in town that the expats go to. He needed to be given a ton of antibiotics and they ran a number of tests on him after hooking him up to an IV.

Back at the apartment, there was still no power and no water. On top of that, the toilets were overflowing from the vomit that the two of them had ejected in their sickness. The landlord told us to go and find the caretakers of the complex we live in who do a lot of repairs. I went and found one and brought him in to help. He came to look at our fuse box and told us that the fuse for the water pump was only 10 amperes and we needed a 20 ampere one. He went out and bought one and came back and installed it. After putting it in, the power started flickering a bit, before we lost all of our power.

The caretaker went to check on other apartments, and it turned out that the whole building blew a massive fuse and had no power. We needed to wait for someone to pick up a couple new fuses, and for an electrician to come and install them. Meanwhile Roy and Minh were still sick and there was puke everywhere. While we were waiting for power, I went outside and filled some buckets of water at a nearby tap to pour into the back of the toilets to cause it to flush. It did not work super well, but it was the best option we had.

After a few hours, we finally got our power back. Apparently a fuse had completely exploded and the whole building shorted out. It was all repaired and we thought that everything was fine. Roy was finally released from the hospital with a big bag of medication to take, but he is feeling a little bit better now. Minh is also, but he is flying out tonight which should be an interesting experience. I went to go flush the toilets and it didn’t work. We still did not have water.

I went to go find the caretaker again to ask him to look and see what the problem was. After a little while he figured it out. With all the power troubles, our water pump must have completely lit on fire. The whole thing was scorched and completely burnt out. We need to get a new pump before we get any water.

Luckily the caretaker offered to go and pick up the new pump for us, and he said that he can install it sometime today. It will cost us around $70, but we will eventually get reimbursed by the landlord. And that’s where we stand right now. Roy is home now, and he and Minh are sleeping trying to recover. I’m waiting for the caretaker to come back with the new pump so we can finally get water back in the house.

I just love how both of them get sick at the exact same time that we lose all water and power and ability to flush down any waste. 

Oh Kenya…