Me with my new necklace!
Yesterday I spent the morning studying the United Nations at the Arcadia Center and printing out the necessary documents for my Peace and Conflict Studies midterm. At about 1pm I went back to my apartment, ate lunch, and set out to the fabric market with three of my friends. Our goal was to buy several pieces of beautiful fabric so that we can go to a dressmaker and have clothing made. After walking through several alleys and dirt roads we found the first shop we were looking for. It was incredibly organized and overwhelming with all of the fabrics neatly folded lining the four walls of the shop. From this shop I bought two beautifully patterned pieces of fabric. I also bargained with the salesman and got the two pieces for half of his original asking price. (My winning line was saying that I was going to take buy the exact same thing next door for my asking price.) The second fabric store we went into was INSANE! Organizationally it was the complete opposite of the first store. There were fabrics lining the walls as well as HUGE piles of fabrics on the floor so I could not see any of the actual floor and could not avoid stepping on the fabric. Now that I think about it the second shop kind of looked like my bedroom after not cleaning it for several months. I also could not help but think about how much Grandma Evelyn would love this shop. Something about it just reminded me of her love for flea market shopping! Anyway, I did not buy anything in the second shop but thoroughly enjoyed the experience.
Today I volunteered at Women in Action. I decided I wanted to see a different side of the organization today instead of volunteering at their preschool like I have been doing. Getting to the WIA office was an adventure because my friend Valerie and I decided to take a dala dala even though we were not 100% sure which routes to take. We hopped on the Njiro near our apartment and should have gotten off at the place I thought we should have gotten off, but of course we did not and about 3 minutes later after taking several turns and getting completely disoriented Valerie and I got off of the dala and attempted to walk back to the main road. I asked one woman how to get to Nairobi Road and she gave me very vague directions so I asked another woman who was with her family. After a few minutes of delegation they decided that they knew where I wanted to go and sent their son to lead us. I was very nervous about having this man walk my friend and I through a neighborhood I was not familiar with but he turned out to be one of those people who make you less skeptical about humanity. His name is Julius and he is 24 years old and he did not ask for anything from us, not even money. When Julius lead us to Nairobi Road I realized that I did not know if I should turn left or right so I pulled out my cell phone, called one of my program directors, and handed the phone to Julius. It turned out we were only about several hundred yards away from the office but for those few minutes I was getting a little nervous.
Once Valerie and I got to WIA, Mama Mosha put is right to work. I started typing an info sheet for a presentation to donors that they have tomorrow and Valerie started beading jewelry. The fact sheet took longer than expected because I needed to figure out how to make custom flow charts on microsoft word and we needed to figure out the major changes the organization has experienced since 2007. The four hours I spent at WIA gave me a good look into the basic necessities of an NGO: finding grants and donations. The incredibly nice women at WIA also fed us ugali with greens and gave each of us a beautiful necklace that Valerie made today.
Tonight I am going to Via Via with the group again to dance the night away. More studying and paper writing this weekend. :(
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