Kenyan Night Out

For those of you who may not know, Jeremy now has a full-time job at the embassy. Since August, he has been Customer Service Director, head of a new office whose mission is to help embassy staff get the services they need from the other 1200 staff spread across 45 offices. Jeremy's primary customers are new arrivals. As you might imagine, moving your family halfway around the world to start a new job involves a lot of questions, paperwork, and logistics.

Jeremy has a great staff of three Kenyan customer service professionals. On Friday night, they invited us out for Kenyan barbeque (locally called "nyama choma") as an office Christmas party. The party was supposed to get started at 6pm, but due to the legendary Nairobi traffic, none of us got there until after 7pm. We ordered drinks and chatted until the food arrived, which did not occur until 9pm.

First course was goat liver...yum (not really). Next course was goat kidney, which actually was tasty. Only the women are supposed to eat the kidney; the full explanation was unclear, but it seemed to relate to fertility. Then the main course came - roasted goat, roasted chicken, ugali (startchy side dish made from maize flour), and kachumbari (Kenyan-style pica de gallo) - all served family style with no serving or eating utensils allowed, just your fingers!

Full from dinner, the ladies got up to do some dancing. They taught me a couple traditional dances, one of which involved doing the twist for an entire song, which seemed to last FOREVER. When we returned to the table it was time for the final course: a horrendous soup of boiled goat head and hooves (I chocked down only a sip, but Jeremy cheerfully drank a full portion) and Kenyan sausage, which was tasty, but very fatty and chewy.

We finally said our good-byes at midnight, after being informed that a "real" Kenyan night out would involve going clubbing and not getting home until dawn! It was a fun night and we're thankful to Jeremy's staff for being wonderful individuals, cool peeps, and showing us the Kenyan way to have a good time!

Christmas Miracle

This weekend, I sang in the Nairobi Music Society Christmas concert.  I've been singing with the group since October.

As concert week dawned, I woke up on Monday with a sore throat.  My symptoms slowly worsened until I stayed home from work on Thursday with a full-blown cold.  By Friday afternoon, I was able to walk around without totally exhausting myself, so I headed out to dress rehearsal.  

To save my energy and my voice, I sat in the pews during the rehearsal, following along with my music but not singing.  As I listened, I thought "Oh my God, we have to perform this tomorrow!  We are not ready."

But when concert night rolled around, a Christmas miracle occurred.  We actually sounded good!  Really good!  As we finished our last notes, the audience enthusiastically clapped, clearing hoping for an encore.  Sadly, we did not have one prepared, but it was gratifying to receive such praise for our performance.