Happy Valentines Day!

Happy belated Valentines Day! I hope that everyone did something cool for someone else!

Lately things have been pretty slack here in Mombasa. The matatu training was conducted by the Kwacha Afrika peer educators, who have been facilitating workshops about these subjects for years, and have much experience to draw from. Their teaching method was so effective, in fact, that we had hardly anything to do during Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. On Saturday I encountered something that I never thought I would see in East Africa. Melissa, Angela, and Rebecca had gone off for the day to see some ruins outside of Mombasa, while Joelle was spending the day with African Mike (the one who comes over for dinner each night). Mzungu Mike and I instead decided to check out a store we had kept hearing about called Nackomatt. Not knowing what to expect, we decided to walk the three kilometres in the midafternoon sun. Bad idea, we were pretty dehydrated by the time we arrived.

On the outside, Nackomatt looks like a well-to-do collection of various stores, nothing jumped out at us as being out of the ordinairy. Upon entering the building, however, we immediately saw the contrast from the typical Africa shop. Nackomatt was essentially a mini-North American mall, with tiled marble floors, high celing, air conditioning, and a coffee shop. The main attraction was just around the corner. If anyone knows what a Co-op is in Quebec, this is the perfect description. It was a grocery store selling every food product you could want, a frozen drinks section, a large pharmacy section, as well as a furniture section upstairs. It was huge! Mike and I stumbled through the corriders in awe of the shiny products that lay stacked on the shelves. We looked at each other with stunned looks, "can this really be happening? Are we in paradise?"

As it was, the prices were expensive (regular prices you'd find in Canada) so we did not buy much, only a Fanta, a milk packet, and I treated myself to peanut butter to make our breakfasts a little more interesting.

On Sunday 8 of us got into a car we had rented for the day and drove 2 hours south to a snorkeling area. We got on a rather large boat with a few other people, rented some gear, and drove out an hour into the ocean to a small sandbar where we jumped out. The water was great, and the coral was healthy on the outskirts, but the only way to get onto the sandbar once you were done snorkeling was to walk on top of the coral, whcih was beginning to die from previous tourists who had done so. I did not think this was good idea for a few reasons, one is that it damages an already threatened fragile environment, and two coral is sharp and occasionaly poisonous. As it was there was no other option so we carefully walked with our flippers (or for those of us who had them) over the coral towards the sand. Melissa cut herself twice, but she seems to be ok. On the way back we spotted a sea turtle, which was the best part of the day.

Before heading in to port we went to a small island that was inhabited by only 1200 people. Immediately I noticed the ratio of adults to children, it seemed that there were 6 or 7 kids for every one adult. The captain explained to us "there is no electricity on the island, so night comes early and there is nothing to do for 12 hours at a time. As a result, there are many children living here compared to the few adults." It would be interesing to see the population growth in 20 years from now....

So far we have had 3 meetings covering the gender training starting tomorrow, the career fair next week, as well as the Women's Guest Speakers Panel which is sometime soon....The career fair planning seems to be coming along extremely well, the youth are being mobilized across Mombasa (as a result of meeting with the youth leaders last Friday, where a monkey decided to poo on Kasena's head) and everyone is eager to be a part of the training. More on that when it happens.

Missing Canada and everyone over there!

Evan