Austin Eugyne Matugi
Saturday, August 4, 2007

Yesterday I visited my sister Lucy and her new born baby boy. They live in Embu near two of Mama's sisters. The baby's name is Austin Eugyne Matugi. He was only 3 days old and VERY cute! I travelled with Mama and Fafa. First we walked to Makutano, which was farther than I thought and of course it had rained during the night and the road was muddy. The Vice President of Kenya was visiting one of the schools along the way. It is quite prestigous, a very good yet expensive boarding school for girls. There was a big crowd, both to see the VP and also to see the helicopter he would be arriving in. The school was all decorated with Kenyan flags and banners and the students lined the entrance in their smart uniforms dancing and singing . It was quite the sight. There will be elections in December so all the politicians are visitng and giving money to schools and organizations to try to gain support. They only have an election every 5 years, and they elect president vice president and members of parliament all at the same time. It would be nice to be here for the voiting but I hpe I will atleast hear about the outcome.

Anyway we took a Matatu to Emu where we went to the marekt to by sugar and fat for teh new mother. On the way to her house we passed the slums of embu–simlar to those in Nairobi but MUCH smaller. We saw one of mamm's sisters along the way. When we got there only Lucy and two friends were there and of ourse the baby! Mama was sooo happy! He was so bundled up in blankets you could hardly see him. We talked, watched TV and passed the baby around for everyone to hold. They get some really bad TV shows but also so old episodes of good ones like Judging Amy and ED! We also ate some nice food–rice with spices and meat. It was really nice to have something alittle different. Soon after Lucy's husband and his mother and father arrived. His name is Denise and they were very happy to see me. They said I was an honored guest hahah. He is an insurance agent, a very friendly man and spoke very good englsih. Most of the television was in english though they were not able to understand since they talk so quickly. There was also a computer animated cartoon they that they were very perplexed by. Its pretty hard to explain computer animation. There were also some clips of movies like spiderman and they were totally amazed by the special effects. As a whole though I was kind of ashamed of the television shows they were watching. What a convoluted image of white people they must have. Lots of overly dramatic soap operas and ...well ...some really bad television.

Dennis asked me what I had studied in school. When I told him I was a graphic design major. He told me he had taken a few classes in design in secondary school. He pulled out some of his old projects. Really it was more a drafting class he had taken. They were orthographic drawings and a few dimensional line drawings. Still it was very interesting to see the type of work they did in a design class in Kenya.