Walking to school

I was thinking the other day about how awesome my "commute" here is.  It's about a 20 minute walk from my house to my school, and then another 20 min from the school to the nearest tarmac where I can get a ride to Eldoret town.  I pass lots of kids, neighbors, cows, chickens, farms, primary schools and a little stream with a nice wooden bridge.  It's absolutely beautiful and I after 7 months at site I'm still loving it.

So, take a walk with me from my home to school!

A few minutes walk takes me through a neighbor's shamba ya maize;  the corn here isn't sweet, but is ground up and used for the main food here, Ugali.

This is the farm from the other side.  It's only about an acre.

Right after that farm I go into a wooded area with a nice little stream and wooden bridge.  There's a couple spots in the hike that are treacherous after heavy rain.

After climbing uphill a little ways, there are another few farms to pass through.

I see this neighbor almost every morning, and we always wave without saying a word.  He's a man of few words and pretty cool to boot.

This is his house.  What do you think of the view he wakes up to every day?

This is the little path I follow afterwards.  Anytime you see a picture of a kid fistbumping me, he/she probably lives along this path.

This is a little duka shop where I sometimes come to buy a soda or something.  The mama that runs it is really laid-back and we love sharing stories or jokes;  trying to explain a dream I had last night or how my day is going in Swahili with her is probably the main practice I get. 

These are all from the same path.  Sometimes I have to discourage Rex from antagonizing the cows, but she's generally well behaved and my neighbors (including the children, thank god) have mostly figured that out by now.  The girl with the headphones asked me what I was listening to so I gave it to her.  She couldn't recognize Green Day for some reason.  The kids know by now they can just run up and I'll fist bump em, and say whats up, and they are still just as excited about it as when I first came here it seems.  It really helps me stay motivated when I see them nearly every day like this.

Some more shots of the kids.


Sometime soon I'll have a more detailed post on what I've been up to - I've been very, very busy.  Hopefully lots of good news to come soon, like the completion of my first secondary project!