Spiders, Lizards, and Frogs, oh my!

[Note: More blog entries are below this one – I posted a few today.]

A group of us got on the bus out to the Coast, dropping people along the way until it finally was my turn to be dropped off. I got off along with my supervisor, the Head-Teacher of Kibarani, and we jumped into the lorry with all of my bags to head to where I would live for two years, an apartment in the school compound.

My place is luxurious by Peace Corps standards – my taps for water works about half of the time, if it is not shocking me, I have electricity that works most of the time, and my house has a lot of spiders. It is a huge place – a two-bedroom apartment about the same size as my Williamsburg place, and totally empty. This apartment is kept for Peace Corps Volunteers who works at this school, and I could see evidence of former Peace Corps Volunteers as one door had the logo of Peace Corps plastered on it, the kitchen door had “Doxy!” written in permanent marker (Doxy is the name of one of the malaria medications that some of us take – I take Mefo), and one of the bedrooms had a lot of inspirational quotes and poems written on the walls.

The place, however, was a little dirty, so I spent the day scrubbing a good part of the place, and in the process, scared a few lizards (and was startled by one), found a mummified dead frog in my kitchen cabinet, and transplanted a lot of spiders outside. After bathing tonight, I found a little frog that decided that my basin was a just dandy spot to hang out.

Kilifi is a pretty cool place – it is a nice in-between kind of place – not such a big town like Mombasa or Nairobi, but big enough so that you can buy real coffee (you couldn’t buy any other coffee than bad instant at Loitokitok) and have things to do other than meeting up for a soda.

So, yea, you’re finally all caught up. I look forward to meeting my kids on Monday, as well as the teachers I’ll work with.