Ok friends, now it's time to say goodbye to Kenya. At least for a while. I know that I'll be back there, don't know the exact time, but I have to. I'm writing this at Heathrow, so only couple of hours and I'll be back in Finland.. Last Saturday the Finnish girls had organized a kind of a farewell party to me and I must say we had a great time, my stomach was hurting for couple of days because the amount of laughing, so thank you guys, we made the party as good as it was.

 

My feelings have been really confused these couple of last days, because a part of me doesn't want to go back and a part of me wants. I've made some wonderful friends and contacts and I want to thank all of you for the time I've been privileged to spend with you.

 

So thanks to you Manmeet, Kati and Sukhveer for tolerating me for these 3 months in your house, you guys are something special. Thanks for everything Nimal, Bilay, Raj, Ashka, Deepak, Jacob, Emma, Jenni, Kati, Oscar, Raju and especially Jagpal. Jag, you're a great friend and I will miss u a lot. And of course you all whose name I didn't mention here but I had a wonderful time with. I've had a great time here with you guys and I'm gonna miss you all.

 

I hope that I'll see you again soon, Love you guys.

Don't have any new pictures or anything to add here, been just so busy at work after that trip to Kericho.. It's in a way really sad to think that in three weeks I'll be back in cold Finland missing this great Country. Had some misfortune here also last week and that actually ruined my plans of going to Uganda.. I had some money hidden in my room and the other day when I was checking if it still was there, it was gone. Apparently our houseboy or the gardener was in great need of money 'cause whoever it was that stole the money, had to go through all my things in order to find them. I'm not really angry, just disappointed. Anyway, have to go now, will write here at least once before I go back..

Kwa heri!

Jambo!

It seems that I really can’t find time writing to this blog ’cause of the workload I’m under.. Anyway, have had a great time at work (yeah, right) and outside of work. My boss actually offered me a job here after I graduate, so have to think about if I’ll someday live here for good.. ;)

Been out with Jenni, Emma and Kati a few times, we’ve gone to see couple of movies here and have just hung around. Last weekend  Me, Kati, Manmeet, Suk, and Manmeet’s cousin Jagpal were at Kericho flyfishing, here’s some pics from that trip.



The Damn in the morning.



A bit tired after waking up so early..



Some bees (yes, I know that I play a lot with this macro thing)



And this monster was all that we got.. (well at least I got it) ;)

Anyway, realized today that I’ve got only month to go here and it’s a pity I think. I’ve had so great time in this beautiful country and I’ve made couple of good friends here so it’s kind of a shame to think that soon I’ll have to go.. But at least I’m trying to enjoy my time while I’m here. :)

Ok, as the title says, I was in the Masai Mara last week from Thursday to Saturday. Went there with Emma, Jenni and Kati and Mariaana (the Finnish girls that are staying here in Kisumu) and some other Finnish people who are staying up north in Siayia. Mara is so beautiful that you cannot actually describe it with words, you just have to see it yourself. Here's some pics of the nearly 500 I took there. :)



Monkey.



Acasia. ( I have a small fixation with acasias, there's a lot of pics from them.)



Hyeena.



Elephant (and also an acasia-tree :) )



Some birds.



Another Acasia-pic.



River.



Butterfly.



Some scenery.



More scenery.



Tired lion.



Sunset in Mara.

But like I said, Mara is something you have to experience yourself.. Sorry about the poor quality of the pics, had to diminish the resolution so much cause the originals were shooted with very high res and are about 5megs each. :)

Hello all!

It has been a while since I’ve been writing here and so much has happened since. Couple of weeks ago we finally got out with Manmeet and went partying. The only thing about it was that we both had been working for 12 hours on that Saturday so we both were quite tired... We went to couple of bars but there wasn’t so much people and we both were sleeping while standing so we were home by 2 o’clock already. Anyway, started my training and I’m helping out this one workshop with it’s accounts and IT. Cannot say that there wasn’t anything to do at work ‘cause all the company’s accounts are in paper and not in the computer.. So practically I’ve been transferring those accounts into the computer and developing a suitable accounting system for this company’s purposes. Also I’m handling the imports and quotations at the moment so I’ve got my hands full of work. I am working from Monday to Saturday from 7am to 6pm so at least I have my Sunday’s off. :)

@ my "Office"

Last Saturday I went to Nandi Hills to watch the scenery there and it was awesome. There’s practically nothing but tea fields and some villages in between them. Got some great pictures there.

Somewhere @ Nandi Hills

In that same Saturday at the evening there was a fundraising party at Sukhviir’s school and me and Manmeet were handling the bar and found out that we actually work very well together behind the bar counter. Although we were working we still had time to get some drinks ourselves also, so we had to get the calculator out at some point in order to cash the right amounts from people. :) The party raised money quite well and was in every way a success. We were home about 3am and had a few drinks there also so we finally got to bed at 4.30am or something..

 

Max likes Whiskey also...

...And Manmeet apparently likes me..

Yesterday night I finally met three of these Finnish girls who are here doing their placements in local hospitals. Me and Manmeet’s cousin, Jachbaal, showed them a bit of the city but they and I had to work in the morning so we weren’t out very late. Girls were very nice and this was actually the first night out since they got here. On Saturday we are anyway going on a decent bar tour and I’ll report how it went..

Kati and Manmeet are in Nairobi until Sunday and Suk is at his grandparents so I’m all alone in the house. It’s quite nice to be just by yourself for a while.

Seems like the rain season is soon here, it has been raining every evening and been a bit cloudy. But I don’t mind ‘cause the weather has been very hot and these rains cool the air down a bit.

There was a small thunderstorm the other day.

Oh yeah, I’m not anymore hearing ‘Mzungu!’-shouts at the street so either I’ve gotten a little color to my skin or they are getting used to see my face around the town. :) I’m actually planning that I might go to Uganda one of these days while I’m here because it’s so near and I hear it’s very beautiful up there. I’m trying to get Jachbaal to go with me but will see if we’ll go. Me, Manmeet and Kati are also going to Kericho for a weekend and are going to do some fishing there. I have only eight weeks left and so much to do and places to see that I’m wondering where I’m going to find all the time for doing them all.. But however, I’m enjoying my stay here, it’s a very beautiful country and I will try to get to the internet more often, but it’s not that easy ‘cause usually after working 11 hours I’m not in the mood to get frustrated by slow connections.. But will try however. See you!

On Thursday and Friday was at the gym in the morning and then spent the afternoon at the ship with Manmeet. On Friday evening we went to Kiboko Bay for dinner and to meet the restaurant's owners who are very good friends of Kati and Manmeet. Dinner was great and so was the company. Thank you for that. This restaurant is located at Dunga area, which has recently been home for some violent robberys and car-jackings, so we went there with two cars 'cause its more unlikely that car-jackers attack a "convoy" of two cars. Actually we heard on Sunday that a party of five who left the restaurant while we were there, got robbed and their car was jacked after they left the restaurant. Luckily no one got hurt and the car was also found the next day.

Then on to Saturday. In the morning I went to check out this tomato- and fish-farming facility which is held by a Belgium guy, George. (Everybody around here seems to be George, so its quite amusing when I say that Yrjo is a Finnish version of George..) Anyway, the view up there underneath the mountains was great. The farm is about 50 acres which is about 22 hectars or something, so its quite big farm. They've had a lot of trouble during this year with the flooding and the rains. For example, their water-pumping station got flushed away when the river was flooding about 5 meters higher than usually. Also their whole crop of tomatoes got rotten because of the excessive flooding that took place in the fields. This has been a common problem in this region this year and tomato price has doubled (around 70Ksh/kg when it used to be around 25-30Ksh/kg). After the farm excursion had lunch and then spent the afternoon with Manmeet at the ship.

Then, on to the great plans for the weekend. After work me and Manmeet went to the Sunset Hotel to have couple of beers before going home. There was some tourist group that spoke a language that sounded familiar, or to be exact, their accent had a familiar sound. They were from Sweden. So, me and Manmeet sat right next to them in the bar and I started listening to what they were talking about. They didn't of course realize that I spoke Swedish 'cause me and Manmeet were talking English added with Swahili all the time, so by the time they started talking something about me and Manmeet, I said to Manmeet in a quite loud voice:  "ska vi nu prata svenska, eller hur?" You can imagine the silence that came to that swedish party. :D After couple of sentences of Swedish to Manmeet, these girls were quite quiet. Soon after this we went home and a couple of more beers and after dinner started to drink whiskey, which was probably a mistake.. Soon after we started, or that's what we thought, we had drank a litre of whisky and were pretty wasted. We looked at the clock and saw that it was 3:30 AM. So our night out was actually a night in and a lot of whiskey.. Maybe next weekend with a better luck.. :D

This week has been quite the same as last week, have been at the ship on Monday and Tuesday and yesterday i woke up with a fever and sore throat and so did Sukhviir so we spent the whole day home and I was freezing although it was 30 degrees celcius outside, so I was wearing jeans and a sweater the whole day. Today have still been recovering from the fever, so no gym today, but in the afternoon I'll probably go to the ship. Still waiting for the Coca-Cola's owner to contact me so I could at least visit that place. Will try to add pictures later on, forgot my flash drive home. Kwa heri!

On tuesday I was with Manmeet at the docks and got burnt a bit (although I never burn, as Juho&Co know..).. It was about 38 degrees in the shade and the water reflected the sun nicely.. ;)




Some pictures from the dockyard, as you can see from the bottom picture, this water hyasinth is a major problem here..

However, not much has happened since my last writing, joined the gym and have been there every morning, it's not that expensive here as in Germany,  Timo, here it's 3500ksh/month which is about 30 euros and this gym is quite good, although a bit too american style for my taste (lots of machines but no good handweights on benches to work on..) Anyway, this saturday Manmeet is finally going to show me the nighlife in Kisumu because last weekend went how it went..

Here's some more pictures, the upload speed seems to be ok at the moment (2min/picture) so I'll add a few..



Suk fishing at the Yacht Club



Max teasing Pepe.



Local ants.



Bar at the railway station.



Max and Suk.

Was going to go out with Manmeet on this weekend but the plans got altered a bit on friday.. We were going to Manmeet's parents for a dinner and my cousin Kati was driving, when things started to go wrong.. As Kati was starting to turn right (with her indicator on) a motorbike without lights hit our right side.. Of course Manmeet jumped out of the car and started yelling to this motorist as did he to Manmeet. Then things started to heat up, because all of the sudden there was about 60 people surroundng our car and yelling that it was our fault.. I think that those are that kind of times when a msugu like me feels quite small.. :) However, we got the police there and Manmeet's father came to the accident scene and picked me and Suk up while Kati and Manmeet went to the police station to give out a statement. After Kati and Manmeet got back from the station we had dinner and the night turned out ok after all.

On saturday we were planning to go out but while we were having a barbecue at home it started raining so heavily that these plans went bust.. So we had just great T-bone steaks at home and had some beer and whiskey there so it was a nice night still.

On sunday Kati had to go her friend's baby shower and me and Suk went to Kisumu Yacht club to do some fishing and hanging out. Suk got about 10 fish while I got only one.. Later on that evening Manmeet's parents showep up in the club and later Kati and Manmeet got there and we had a couple of drinks there.. When we got back home from the club, we put Suk to sleep and Manmeet and I started cooking and having some beer and whiskeys. Manmeet showed me how to do fish masala, so watch out guys, when I'm back in Finland that's something that I'm gonna cook you. :)

A little bit of sunset at the Yacht Club.

Weather here has been great although it has rained so lot which I hear is not common in Kisumu at this time of year and I'm even starting to get some color to my skin. ;)

 

As the title says, I've been here for four days and been just gettind used to to the climate and everything around here. So far it has been great, and I don't actually expect it to get any worse, only better.

Today I went to the gym with my cousin and have to say that this height of 1200 meters and the heat here do their job. I was running on threadmill to warm up, and when I checked on my pulse it was somewhere around 170, when in Finland with the same amount of exercise it would be around 130-140.. Anyway, got a good exercise and am feeling great at the moment. Tonight we are going to my cousin's mother- and father-inlaw for dinner and later on my cousin's husband, Manmeet, promised to take me out on a tour to Kisumu's night. Will report on that later.. :)

Forgot to mention that the electricity around here is quite random.. and for what it comes to water, it has been out for 1,5 weeks at my cousin's place.. ;) quite interesting..