Although it’s still warm, it’s not hot enough to make you feel completely wrung dry like in Wajir. Instead it’s a little on the humid side. Actually, the climate kind of reminds me of home. Much of the major road is even tarmacked and in decent condition. The unpaved roads are in much better condition, for the most part, compared to Wajir and even parts of Tharaka and Mwingi (the areas I worked during my first month in Kenya). After experiencing some of the more challenging parts of the Kenya bush, it’s really amusing when the locals tell me that the distance to a health facility is quite long and the road is very bad. The first time they told me that, I thought maybe we’d have a two hour drive over rough roads. Instead, it was more like maybe 40 minutes, of which maybe 10-15 minutes was over uneven, rocky, dirt road, but otherwise the rest was tarmacked or packed even dirt. Perspectives are always relative to experience.
For the most part, the people here are farmers (tea, sugar cane, and even rice – amazing vast green fields) or fishermen – lots of tilapia from Victoria Lake – rather than pastoralists (i.e., livestock herders). There’s also a lot of freight or lorry traffic along the roads. 
Apparently, the road between Nairobi and Kisumu is a major commercial throughway for transporting goods all the way to Uganda, Rwanda, and other African countries. This means that we often ran into more conventional traffic on the road than what I’d seen in Wajir. I think I prefer the camels, goats, and sheep. They were at least more interesting and picturesque and didn’t emit big clouds of black smog.
In contrast, aside from the big lorries and the occasional semi-trailer, here in western Kenya, you also have to watch out for the boda-bodas (bicycle taxis) and other cyclists. It sometimes seems like there are bikes everywhere, and they often dart in and out of car traffic and among other bicycle traffic. Some of them are aggressive to the point of maybe crazy the way they ride into your way or into other bikes. We saw a near potentially fatal accident when one boda-boda careened into another and knocked the passenger and “driver” off their bike into the path of an oncoming matatu (shuttle bus) that barely swerved in time to miss them. A definite close call.It’s nice to wind up my time in Kenya in Kisumu and Nyanza province. I’ve been able to go running in the small park across the street from my hotel once and drew some very curious looks, but it was a good run. Unfortunately, the rest of my time here has required long days with very early starts, so running was not an option on other days since it’s too dark. Instead, I’ve been running the stairs of the hotel – and drawing the rare odd stare when any of the few people who are up happen to see me through their windows (the stairs are outdoors, sort of). Oh well. It’s something to keep me in semi-decent shape.
The other reason I’m glad to be in Kisumu is that I have some friends from my CDC days who are now stationed here. I had a chance to catch up with my friend Wairimu, who is working in HIV/AIDS research here for CDC and whose family is in Nairobi. It was really great to see her; the last time I saw her was almost three years ago back in Atlanta. We had a really tasty Indian dinner at a nearby hotel as we chatted and caught each other up on our lives post-Atlanta. Hopefully, I’ll also get a chance to catch up with some other friends (Danny and Mary), who, as it turns out, are neighbors of Wairimu. Anyway, it’s nice to have friends in an unfamiliar place.
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