Marine Corps Ball

Each year on November 10, the United States Marine Corps celebrates its birthday. Since 1949, Marines have been providing protective support to U.S. diplomatic missions around the world. And each November, these diplomatic missions look forward to the Marine Corps Ball - with its speeches, pomp and circumstance, drinking, cake cutting, eating, drinking, dancing with your colleagues and boss, seeing who brings the most outrageous date...and more drinking! Below are a couple photos from our first Marine Corps Ball.

Time to Make the Bread

Those of you in the United States may be surprised to find out that Jeremy has become quite a baker in Nairobi. I believe this newfound baking interest stems from two circumstances: 1) most of the bread available in Nairobi sucks (except for the French bakery and Art Cafe), which is especially sad after the great bread in Portland from places like New Seasons and Great Harvest; 2) he spent his first six months here without a job and with lots of time to be creative in the kitchen.

Many of his breads have been standard French or Italian loaves. He's also dressed them up with parmesan or garlic. To please his "healthy" wife, he even made whole wheat! Jeremy has also branched out to other bread products including pizza dough, Stromboli, and cinnamon rolls. He made cinnamon rolls for a potluck brunch a few months back, and the other guests keep begging him to make more...one person even wanted to hire him to make a batch for a birthday breakfast! Of all his creations his favorite is a beer bread boule (see below photo).

Trick-or-Treating in Nairobi

If you live outside of a kid-saturated surburban housing development in the United States, you've probably had the same experience I've had the last several years on Halloween: you go out and buy a bunch of candy, turn on the porch light, and happily anticipate the doorbell of the first trick-or-treater. Then you proceed to wait...and wait...for the doorbell to ring. By the end of the night, maybe 5 trick-or-treaters have come by, and you're stuck with a huge bowl of candy to eat yourself.

I'm happy to report this was not my experience in Nairobi last night. The Embassy organized trick-or-treating in our compound of 60 houses. The best part was I didn't even have to buy the candy!! The parents of the trick-or-treaters provided candy in advance to our social activities office, who then distributed it to the houses who were giving out candy. So, last night I happily spent an hour giving out Snickers and M&Ms to princesses, goblins, Captain America, jedi knights, werewolves, and other costumed munchkins. And all I have left are a handful of Tootsie Rolls and hard candies. Success at last!

KFC

Although I would not be caught dead in a Kentucky Fried Chicken in the US, the first KFC in Kenya opened a couple of months ago in Nairobi, and I couldn't resist checking it out.

The word is that the line has been out the door since opening, so we decided to go during the week, when crowds would likely be smaller. We timed our visit perfectly because we didn't have to wait at all!

I ordered the two piece chicken meal with fries and a drink for $5.80 and Jeremy got the "fully loaded box" of one piece of chicken, a chicken burger, fries, mashed potatoes and gravy, and a drink for $7.80. Sadly, they do not have biscuits here in Kenya. They have an item called "mini loaves" that are Kenya's attempt at something resembling "bread on the side," but the min loaves didn't look appealing enough even to sample.

We ate in the restaurant, which actually had a nice atmosphere, compared with the depressing, dirty, harsh fluorescent environment of a US fast food restaurant. They actually had a couple different seating options, from sitting at a side bar with tall white stools, to regular tables, to a comfy couch area.

Business was good for a Thursday night; I would say about a third of the tables were full and people kept showing up as we were eating. We also had the pleasure of an experience straight out of white trash, fast food America: a mother yelling at her kid and shoving food in his mouth as he moaned and fidgeted in his chair!

I have to admit: I'm not much of a fried chicken eater, but it tasted good!

Cat Health Update

After her encounter with the dog, Bellini was fairly sedentary for several days. As she began to move around more, we noticed her back feet were the cause of her discomfort. She didn't let us get too close, but we could see that her middle toes seemed stuck together. However her mood improved as did her mobility, so we watched to see if she would heal on her own.

She definitely seemed better and even started venturing outside again, but her feet were still causing her some trouble. So it was off to the vet today. The vet concluded that Bellini had shredded her back toenails on the tree, exposing the nail sheath, which was now infected. Bellini received a soothing antiseptic foot wash and started a three-day course of injected antibiotics. We'll be back at the vet the next two days for the remaining injections. Ah, the joys of pet ownership!

Sunday Outing

Yesterday, we finally visited the Karen Blixen house, made famous by the book and movie "Out of Africa." A lot of the items in the house are replicas, because Karen sold most of her belongings when she left Kenya to return to Europe. The grounds are very nice, and they have a cute garden restaurant down the street from the house.

After getting our fill of history for the day, we headed to Blankets and Wine, an outdoor concert/hang-out event held monthly. We ran into several other Embassy and expats friends there.

Kenya's version of annoying city birds are called kites. They will hang around anywhere there is food to see if they can get lucky. And if they get tired of waiting, they will snatch the food from you, literally. At one point, the area around us became target practice as kites dive-bombed people's picnic blankets and grabbed food right off people's plates or even out of their hands! Luckily we were sitting under a tent, so we were safe from the bird attack, but I saw some people get hit multiple times by the pesky kites!

Soon after that, ominous clouds gathered overhead, and as the rain started coming down, we decided to leave. That turned out to be a very wise decision, because about 15 minutes down the road, it started absolutely pouring, and we wondered how our friends were faring under the tent!

How we almost killed our cat

Yesterday our neighbor was having a BBQ. As we walked back and forth between our houses with various food and drink, our cat Bellini was watching us curiously and seemed to want to participate in the action. She's an outdoor cat who's very adventurous, so we decided to encourage her to follow us to our neighbor's backyard. We didn't plan to let her in the yard, but thought she could hang outside and watch us through the fence until she got bored and went home.

As I entered the yard, our neighbor's rambunctious dog came tearing out of the house and pushed past me out the gate before I even comprehended what happened. The dog raced after Bellini as she took off running. According to bystanders, the two went flying around to the front of the house and Bellini barely made it up a tree before becoming dog food! The dog was called off and taken back to the house, but Bellini stayed up in the tree a good 30 minutes before we could coax her down. Since then Bellini has been uncharacteristically subdued and didn't even sleep with us last night. I think she quite literally had the bejesus scared out of her and it will be a couple of days before she's back to normal!

Below is a picture of Bellini in her normal, pre-dog attack mode. This is a picture of her up on our roof. I told you she was adventurous!