Rain!!

Steve, Ian, Rachel and I take Boda Bodas to Kiboko Bay today to meet Ed Yarrow, a fellow VSO volunteer for lunch. We travel down wide and shady streets with well-groomed yards. Parts of it remind me of being in Hawaii. As we pass the Impala Reserve, the paved road ends and then the dirt road narrows. We pass cows grazing among the structural bones of an old house. We turn down what looks like a private, though unpaved, drive and slowly come up to Winam Bay, the part of Lake Victoria that juts up into Kenya. It's quite beautiful, this lake, especially from the patio of a nice restaurant. Lunch is a little more pricey than we're used to paying—400 Ksh compared to the usual 100 Ksh. As the afternoon ages, the wind off the lake picks up until it's quite forceful, creating crashing waves at the lake's edge.

The boda bodas are a great way to travel. The guys try to charge us twice as much as they charge the locals, but we know enough now to insist on lower fares. Steve and Ian are big guys, though, usually bigger than the boda boda drivers, so I tell them to pay more. But I'm not so little, as one boda boda driver told me,'Madam, you are much weight to carry.'

Taking the boda bodas back to town, the skies in the distance, coming from the Rift Valley, look dark and dense with rain. Within two hours, the rains are falling and falling. The air immediately cools. After a couple of hours, it stops. I take a boda boda home from town and actually become chilled in the cool evening air. Ahhh. Is this the beginning of the long rains, or will it heat up again?