cake for breakfast!

Day 21 (9/25)
Last night around 9, we all smelled a cake being cooked. So I went to go check out the kitchen. Arthur was in there (love him!) and I caught him checking the cake in the oven. I asked him what he was doing so he laughed and told me not to tell. He tries to trick us all the times and he told us some ridiculous stories about it being his birthday. Then finally he said it’s for breakfast tomorrow and I didn’t believe him. We ended up betting on it. If it was really for breakfast, then I owe him a pack of my gummy fruit snacks and if it isn’t for breakfast then owes me extra milk for my cereal. Haha funniest thing ever, I accused him of lying (or fibbing) and he said he could never because he is Christian.
…We had cake for breakfast (plus the usual homemade crepes and donuts, along with eggs, toast, cereal, and oatmeal). So he made sure to see me and ask if I believed him now. Haha so I gave him a pack of gummy fruit snacks. He was pretty excited.
Now he wants to keep betting with me "so I can loose some more of those delicious snacks"

After breakfast we went out into the field, split up into groups of 4 and interviewed farmers. In 3 hours we interviewed 12 farmers, and we trekked (and I mean trekked) through farmland and the bush. But it was really interesting and again, kind of fun in a weird way. We got to see the differences between wealthy farmers and ones that are poorer, and there are shear differences in the amount of land, number of animals and just how they live. We had an interpreter so there wasn’t too much of a language barrier. We basically just wanted to know how much land they had, how long they have been there, what they grew, their biggest problems, and things like that.
Their biggest problem was always wildlife ruining or eating their crops, elephants in particular because they are able to basically bowl over anything in their path and just go and eat the crops. Fortunately the farmers keep watch and scare them away the best they can. However…nobody likes them and hence there are so many issues with the locals and conservation. We learned a lot too about the lack of water and how it is sanctioned off (each farm gets a certain amount of hours to use the water).

We came across a few little kids that were completely alone in their house, because their mother went to go get water. They came out and talked to the interpreter and she said they didn’t know when their mom was going to come back. It really is amazing the age of kids here and what they do compared to American kids. Here it’s not uncommon to see a 5-7 year old boy by himself watching 20 sheep and goats in the middle of nowhere. In the States, if you saw a little kid by themselves anywhere, immediately you subconsciously look to see if parents are nearby and almost always they are. Here, 80% of the time there aren’t even older kids with them, never mind parents.

Another thing with kids here is the stigma that comes with seeing a white person, a lot of the time they want money or candy. I have mixed feelings about it because you know they are extremely poor compared to you but at the same time, they obviously have been given things by foreigners before and now they expect it. Part of it isn’t their fault because they don’t understand how it can be perceived as rude but it’s just another example of culture differences.

I learned later that the other group that was doing the same interviewing project as our group only encountered 7 farmers instead of our 12. However, they were invited into farmer's houses, offered tea and things and talked with them for a while. Our group went out to the field where the farmer was and interviewed them right there. The only difference between their group and ours is that our group had a female interpretor and they had a male interpretor. That shows the cultural gender differences because all the farms were in the same area and so the same cultural norms applied.

Cornelia just came back from a run, she saw a Black Mamba on the running trail. The askaris are all over it though, hakuna matata.