Carcasses, fries, & chocolate

*I have just posted a ton of blog entries written over the last 3 weeks……We FINALLY have fast internet now that we are in Nairobi
One day during training we were challenged to go into town and accomplish several tasks, a sort of scavenger hunt. Instead of a race to get all the answers we were encouraged to build relationships and gather information about families, history of the area, and people. I had to fight my natural tendency to want to speed through it and “win.” Fortunately for me (and unfortunately for my group) Annikah was a nightmare most of the time preventing any hurrying on our part. She was ok at first but after a few minutes of walking through town she was begging for food. The only respite from her fussiness came when a local butcher began smiling at her through the window where there were disgusting dead animals hanging in the window (the smell was also lovely as there was no refrigeration). He loved making Anni smile and it was hilarious to see this grown man wielding a knife and hiding behind carcasses playing peek-a-boo with Annikah: Totally creepy but very sweet. After our run in with Sweeney Todd we acquiesced to Anni’s request and went to lunch. She was not happy at the selection at the restaurant and cried the whole time. She asked for “fries” so we decided to break from our group to take her to the local fast food place we knew had fries (or chips as they are called). It took us about 15 minutes to find the place and then once inside we promised Anni the fries soon to stop her wailing. We sat down and when the waiter came we ordered chips only to find out they have no fries because they have NO POWER! A frustrating situation just became even more chaotic and we decided to make a quick exit before total meltdown in T-minus 1 minute due to the lack of fried potatoes. Poor Annikah, of course, did not understand why she could not have any food and explaining to a toddler in mid meltdown is useless. Our best option at that point was to make a quick stop at the grocery store to get some other options, yogurt, bananas, avocadoes, and some candy bars: all 3 of us needed chocolate at that point! The happy ending came when we found another restaurant that served fries and Annikah was elated to gobble down the greasy goodness. That was enough of an adventure for us and we grabbed a Tuk-Tuk ride back.