Nakuru Market

The point of this morning is to orientate ourselves around Nakuru. We catch a 'bus' or matatu to the main market.

Matatu's are small decrepit vans which provide an unofficial sort of bus service to and from town, people hop on and off for 20 kenyan shillings, they are run by an organised crime gang, which is incidentally improving the infrastructure of the city. This I will learn to be a very Kenyan sort of irony.

I've never felt so crowded and precarious with regards to the definition of my personal space as here. The sky stretches wide and open above my head and the market sprawls, yet I am having to perform impromptu pirouettes around customers, squatting stall owners, errant kids and livestock. The most terrifying of these various unpredictable and vigorous moving obstacles are juggernauting potato-men with 25 kilo sacks of produce on their shoulders. Their loads seem heavier than black holes, even their faces concertina up into a concentrated grimace, this is the first and only time I have seen a Kenyan look unfriendly. The urgent and seemingly aggressive 'shhshhshh' they rasp as they descend upon you however is not hostility, or anger. Their momentum makes them utterly unstoppable once on the move, the load they carry knows nothing of patience or civilities. Get in their way you will - the paths are just over a foot wide at best - avoiding them entails taking massive liberties with my centre of gravity. I find myself on tip toe leaning at apologetic 45 degree angles over obese mounds of swollen avocados.

We visit Hope and Vision Alley that is run by a Kenyan cooperative BK works closely with. It recently won best youth cooperative in Kenya. No small thing. I get to make my introductions to some of the business men there. Also have a beetroot, avocado, mango and passion fruit drink for about 10p. Innocent smoothies eat your heart out. We have lunch in a 'mumma's', which are little improvised huts owned by a woman, or mumma serving regular customers lunch. Our regular is called Helen who serves the typical sukuma wiki (kale), udengu (lentils), chapati, ugali (a stodgey maize mixture which is THE staple here), and kachumbari (spicy salsa).

Today we start our business/entrepreneurship syllabus. Our afternoon lesson is the spaghetti challenge, which involves building the highest construction out of dry spaghetti and string/cellotape as possible, whilst still being able to support a marshmallow on the top. My teams is 2^nd highest by about half an inch, but by far the most aesthetically pleasing.

Horrendous thunderstorm, buckets and thunderclaps. I knew it was rainy season but I wasn't prepared for this gigantomachy of atmospheric agitation.

Tucked up in my top bunk after a long day. The neighbourhood dogs begin barking. It sounds like 101 dalmatians have gone missing in Nakuru and they're all sounding the alarm. At first. My patience wanes as the night goes on and the violence of their communication increases. By 3 am it sounds like the most distressing kind of dog fight imaginable. Snarling bodies slam against corrugated Iron. No sleep tonight.

Our balcony in the rain.