Today was a fun-filled day. We ate mandazi for breakfast and samosa for dinner. (And I, Miriam, had curry for lunch, so my day was complete.) We also went to Galleria, had lunch and briefly shopped for coffee and tea for family and friends back home. We hope to learn to make chai so that we can teach you all when we get back.

The main event of the day was visiting Bomas of Kenya, where we watched a performance of traditional dances from around Kenya. Sarah even participated in one. She told us that the experience was fun, but rather awkward. In her words, “I had never felt more white in my life.”

At the end of the show, there were some amazing acrobats who performed. The acrobats even included a fire eater who did all sorts of crazy things with a flaming torch, including rubbing it on his body and even sticking it down his pants. This was nerve-wracking to watch because some of us thought that he was going to catch on fire. He acted like he was the life of the party. At the end of the performance, the acrobats presented various formations including a formation where one man held the entire rest of the troop up in the air. 

After this, we walked around and visited displays of traditional homes from various ethnic groups of Kenya. The huts were made out of various materials depending on which ethnic group they were from. The materials of these huts correlated with the lifestyles of the people and the places in which they lived. For example, some of the huts were made out of mud, manure, and then had a layer of bananas which they stomped to hold it all together and harden it into a cement-like material. The manure also had the effect of keeping bugs away. In fact, this is the type of hut built by the Luo tribe, which is the tribe that Barack Obama’s father is from. We thought this was pretty interesting and something we hadn’t known before.

by Hannah and Miriam