A quick update from here in California:
Our site URL has become simply theafricanfile.com, taking over from our World Cup site, which will receive a make over and become better stocked with out videos and photos. In the meantime you can check out the YouTube channel and MobileMe gallery which contains the media from our two months in Southern Africa this past winter. Check out these links below:
As a result of the URL change, some of our links are broken and don’t properly link to the blog posting they should. The search bar on the right hand side has been updated and you can also search for specific topics by clicking on either of the two tag clouds on the right.
Alisa has made it to her final village in Kenya, near Kitale, which is just a few hours north of where she was before near Kisumu:
She’ll be there till mid November, teaching classes in the local school, leading a women’s group, and of course studying her butt off for the GREs that she’ll take when she returns to Stateside. In the meantime she’s also being made into the perfect Kenyan wife, by the spouse of the man who runs the program in Kitale. Apparently Alisa washes clothes in the bucket the wrong way. She’s also going to be taught how to cook traditional Kenyan meals so she can be more desirable as a wife. She’s also written about the intricacies about marriage and ring location:
I have already been asked twice if I am engaged because of my ring. I keep telling people it is on the right hand not the left. If it was on my left then I would be engaged. One of the male teachers explained to me what every finger on the left hand symbolised in Kenya and how you can tell just from the placement of a ring what the persons status was single looking, engaged, not looking, divorced and looking, widow/widower. So apparently I need to move my ring somewhere on my left hand because the fact that it is on the right is causing confusion.
She got her SIM card sorted out, but not in the iPad, she’s using the program leader’s modem and notebook computer. She of course regrets taking my advice on taking the iPad rather than her Macbook Pro, but I’m sure the next time she’s in Kenya, micro-SIMs (what the iPad takes) will be ubiquitous on the continent and iPad-friendly.
The African File 