Kisumu - the Guest House

Hellur from Nairobi. We are playing catch-up on the bloggin action, so I will share about our accommodations on our two week trip to kisumu. We stayed in the lovely abode called St. Anna’s Guest House. To our surprise we each had our own rooms and everyone—except me (molly russell) –had a first floor room, which did not seem to be an issue initially. I thought “wow cool, upstairs by myself, and there is a cool balcony” little did I know my neighbors would be quite some characters. I will say it was very convenient to have the toilet, showerhead, and sink within a foot of each other. For the first week, my upstairs neighbors were men acapella singers. Once again initially that sounded great. I would have talented singers serenade me to sleep every night. Not at all what occurred. The nights they actually sang (instead of the typical shouting) involved perfecting one line of a song, usually a rather boring line at that, so it sounded like a skipping CD. They left on a Friday morning, so that night I had the upstairs to myself. I settled into my mosquito-protected bed to read before going to sleep early. Just as I had begun to soak in the silence, I hear a van door slide open and a women’s voice emerge with a loud “We’re here!”—the high schoolers had arrived. My new neighbors were giggly, fanny-packed, chaperone-accompanied high school kids. They really were not crazy or anything, I just found the morning wake up calls and teenage armies to be humorous. Overall St. Anna’s was amazing to us. We had good food and made friends with the guards, cleaning men (yes it was men that cleaned our rooms daily), and desk people, they were all very hospitable. We even had a personal market out front everyday where we definitely contributed to their income for those two weeks. Let’s just say we had a lot of free time waiting in the mornings to become very close to them. I have come to love the “Africa time” that everyone runs on—I can’t speak for everyone on this one though. I would say we had significant chunks of bonding time waiting on food and rides throughout the two weeks there.
So yes, I did manage to write a lot on just our guesthouse, but for two weeks it was our home, as was kisumu. I loved every person I met in kisumu and had a “best day ever” moment everyday. God taught me soooo much, but some of those stories can be heard in other peep’s blogs. My time’s up, so blessings everyone!

Molly Russell