21st – Volunteer coordinators live in mansions!?

We usually use the Makuru slum clinic as our meeting place whenever we head to the slums of Nairobi, but this was my first placement there. There wasn’t much to do. I sorted vast quantities of drugs and threw away expired ones, observed a few consultations for patients and the sat on my backside chatting to Barbara and Kate, two of the girls that work there, for a couple of hours. They mentioned that they were nearing marrying age and wanted to marry a white guy. I think I’m in there.

Later, in the evening, I went with everyone to visit Dan and Bri (our project coordinators, married for ten years, in their early thirties, Australian) at their place. How humble. It only has five bloody bedrooms, each with a huge four-poster bed and on suite bathroom; huge dining room, kitchen and living room complete with ping-pong table; gigantic grounds patrolled by two guards and guard dogs (which are actually just cute, fuzzy little puppies, but Dan assures me they will be killing machines soon enough).

We had a great time while we were there, playing Frisbee (Man, American Jenny is vicious at Frisbee), ping-pong and a game called signs that I won’t explain here, all while drinking booze.

The drink must have had an effect, because Christine and me left the key to our cottage at their house. Gail (another coordinator) thankfully dropped it off for us so that we could get in and go to bed.