Kisumu

I've just come back from Kisumu on the edge of Lake Victoria where I was spending a week volunteering at a microfinance organisation called RAFODE. I was working on some financial models using Microfin, from which I generated some strategy options for the next year and gave them some advice on improving operational efficiency, with the help of their current serving VSO volunteer Ricky who had arranged all this.

It was great to do a week's work in an office, it felt productive as there was a tangible output at the end of the week, something I haven't had in some of the other volunteering I have done (and something Ricky doesn't get most of the time either)

I was shown the sights and sounds of Kisumu which I was told wouldn't take long. Kisumu felt more like Mombasa than Nairobi, a much older place and the people have certainly a more pole-pole (slowly, slowly) attitude than you get in Nairobi. As Kisumu is a small town, I managed to go to pretty much every restaurant there as well getting to know one of the tuk-tuk drivers, Pascal, quite well.

There was a rather odd set up at one pair of restaurants, with large outdoor seating areas: a vegetarian restaurant (the Laughing Buddha) where you can get alcohol and an Indian restaurant (Al Noor) where you can't (for religious reasons). So the natural solution for those wanting food from Al Noor and alcohol is: order your food sat at the Indian restaurant's table, order your beer from a Laughing Buddha waiter . The waiter will bring a Laughing Buddha table to place next to the Al Noor table so that you can set your drink on a Laughing Buddha table and eat at the Al Noor table not offending anyone's religious sensibilities. An example of religious tolerance if ever I saw one, also the food was great.

As Kisumu is a centre for malaria research there are seemingly lots of westerners, mostly because they all go to the same restaurants.  The impression you must get if you stay for any length of time is of being in Groundhog Day, especially as we managed to go to the Laughing Buddha 3 times in one week (which apparently is not unusual)

Although as I was sat, drinking a well-earned beer (at least I paid for it), at Kiboko Bay resort overlooking Lake Victoria at sunset I did wonder if it wasn't such a bad Groundhog Day to be revisiting.

Allys came to visit at the weekend and we went to Kakamega Forest which I shall be writing about next!