Mud Hut for sale in Kenya?

I don't think there will be any international office of Keller Williams opening up in Kenya in the near future. I had the thought in the back of my mind as I jetted over continents to land in this 3rd world country. If I could find one mud home with a for sale sign in the yard, I could have my picture taken by the sign and be able to count this trip as a business expense! But that wasn't to be. Other than the fact that I handed out all 25 of my business cards to young Kenyans, the trip was all pleasure and no business.

Being a real estate agent in rural Pennsylvania is fun. Most of my listings are modest and homey, with updated modern appliances and indoor plumbing. I have seen flats in the poorest section of urban living in Pennsylvania that had electricity to power the flat screened tvs and working kitchen sinks, refrigerators, stoves and bathrooms with sinks and flushing toilets. When the opportunity came up in my life to visit Kenya with a friend of mine, I jumped at the chance. I wouldn't be staying in a fancy hotel or resort in downtown Nairobi. No, I would be staying in the homes of my friend's family, both hers and her husband's. Now that I have been there and returned unharmed, I need to proclaim the sharp contrast to American life that I found.

1. People are poor but very willing to share whatever they have. Most don't own their own homes, or at least don't own the land their shack or garden sits on.

2. The homes are made out of logs of locally grown trees, the frames packed in with mud, the roof being either thatch or sheets of corrugated metal. The floors are made of hard packed cow dung, smoothed and hardened to almost look like cement. Some homes are made out of bricks made locally. Many homes have minimal electricity, enough for a lightbulb hanging from the ceiling in two rooms and a small television and staticky radio in the livingroom.

3. One of the homes I stayed in had indoor plumbing, where the toilet and cold shower were the same spot. On a good day the toilet flushed by using the handle. I wasn't there on a good day so needed to catch the water from the cold shower in a basin and use that to flush the toilet. This was an especially modern home owned by a wonderful and very generous professional family. The other homes did not have indoor plumbing. Instead, they had something similar to our outhouses, buildings they call latrines. Latrines are a hole in the cement type floor and three walls and a door. To use these facilities, exercises like squat thrusts would have been helpful before coming. Enough said about this. In the stall next to it there is just a room like a closet with a string stretched across corner to corner. This is the shower room. A basin of hot water is brought out with a bar of soap. It is a sponge bathe, wash your hair and rinse, dry your body and get dressed type of room and then, before walking in the muddy yard to get back into the house, you might want to use the basin of shower water to take into the toilet stall next door to "flush".

4. Most people walk from their home out to the main road and then take public transportation. Public transportation consists of mini minivans, matutus, bicycles with a padded back seat or motorcycles, or buses. I saw more people walking in the streets and cattle grazing by the road than passenger cars. I saw flipped cars and jackknifed tractor trailers and double decker buses with the windows exploded out. The roads, the drivers, the lack of lights or traffic enforcement, and the fact that they drove on the left side of the road, made traveling the scariest part of my trip. Driving in the cities caused me to just close my eyes and pray which isn't a bad thing.

5. Shopping was an interesting experience in all of Kenya. Below you will see a typical shopping centre that gave me a twinge of homesickness. It was a Philadelphia Shopping Centre.

Because there are no ice boxes or refrigerators in the cooking rooms of most homes, food for the day's main meal needs to be purchased or picked fresh from shanty garden shops daily. In bigger cities there are grocery stores but most towns consist mainly of shops along both sides of a highway that they call a town.

Women cook their vegetables and goat or chicken meat on either kerosene or charcoal burners that sit on the floor. Meals are served in the living room on a coffee table. Before the food is served, a pitcher and a basin is used for each diner to wash his or her hands. Often after eating the meal of goat or chicken, the pitcher and basin is passed again. The meal is completed with a hot and milky cup of chai tea, which is the most common hot drink served in all homes. For this coffee loving girl, I was pleasantly surprised how much I grew to like chai. I had a variety of mukumu, ugali, chipatis, goat stew, chicken, rice, and many vegetables like carrots, arrowroot, cabbage, onions and potatoes at most of my meals. Kale and maize are grown on home plots everwhere. Very common in many areas are orchards of banana plants and mango trees. There are pinneapple plantations and sugar cane farms. At one home, I was brought a whole plate of sugar canes to gnaw on - a special treat for Kenyans. I opted for a fresh mango mmmmmmm........

There are so many more things to tell you and pictures to show you - things like the live chicken that was presented to me as a gift of honor; the street children singing a special song just for me, the busy market place with the body of a seemingly dead man laying on the sidewalk; the zebras running across the road stopping traffic; the day spent in the government clinic with three newborn babies; the street fight right in front of me; the orphans, the boarding schools, etc..... I will tell you all about these things in the next chapter of this blog. I am signing off for now - still your Realtor for Life but with a whole new appreciation for lifestyle.