11th - 17th August:

It has now been one week since I arrived home from Kenya. During that time I have just been trying to get used to how life is back in Ireland and the differences there are to the life I was used to living in Kenya. Since I was living in Kenya for four and a half months I think it will take a little longer for me to fully settle back into the different way of life here but so far I have noticed a few.

                                                                                                                                            I have mostly been visiting friends and family who I haven’t seen since I was last here, but getting around Cork is different from how I did it in Kenya. I was used to there not being any traffic lights and everybody making their own way on their own. It now seems strange to me how controlled and regulated the traffic is here and how good the roads are for example that every road is covered in tarmac is a different thing to see since I was living on a back country mud road which had many potholes and was in need of repair.

                                   The technological differences are huge for example when I was living in Kitale I didn’t have internet so if I wanted to check my emails I would have to go into town, go to an internet cafe and get online from there. Now I can just take out my phone and have the information at my fingertips. However there are some sides to take I miss for example I like the idea of not being contactable at all times. I Kenya I could leave the house without my phone and it wouldn’t be an issue, here it is almost unheard of for someone to not have their phone on them because we need to be contactable wherever we are.   

                                               One of the first differences I noticed is the weather. In Kenya the worst whether would be that it would rain for maybe an hour during lunch time. For the rest of the day it would be really hot and sunny. However in Ireland this is very different because we receive lots of rain and it is generally cold even during our summer time. It is strange to walk down the road and not attract attention from people like you would being a white person in an area where many people have never seen white people apart from on the television. Walking down the road without many eyes on you or without hearing someone call “Musungu” is very different because even though this was a very hard thing for me to get used to now that I am without it feels quite different.

                                                                                                                                    I know that now I am back I will miss some of the memories I have taken away with me. For example when I first started going to the Day Care the children didn’t know my name but they were thought to say “How are you” to a white person. A few of them thought that was my actually name and that all white people share this name so that is why you should say it to them. They would come up to one of the Sisters and ask “Is how are you coming to visit us today?”.