All 'Hail' Naivasha!

We move so quickly at the field school that it kinda gets hard to remember the order of places and the actual places that I have been in the last two weeks.

After the Maasai Mara I traveled to lake Naivasha which is one of two fresh water lakes in Kenya and I was able to take my first shower in a long time. The campsite we were at was beautiful. It was really touristy cuz they had this perfectly manicured campsite that was covered with large canopied acacia trees and the best part was that we had running water. that meant SHOWERS and FLUSH TOILETS. (The most hilarious thing was that on our way out of the Mara we stopped at a soap stone carving touristy place on the side of the road for a pee break and the washrooms were soooooo nice in comparison to the Mara drop toilets that we used for four days). There was toilet paper and sinks and MIRRORS (which probably wasn't the best idea for me to look at myself in at that point because it definitely LOOKED like I have been camping for a while.) 


Anyways once we got to the campsite and saw all the running water we were a pretty happy bunch.

Beautiful Campsite in Lake Naivasha

The days that followed in Naivasha were pretty interesting. We learned all about the "cut flower" export market. Did you know that 25 percent of the flowers on the market are grown in Kenya?? One factory provides four thousand jobs but the thing is that many of these jobs are manipulated through power relationships meaning that the male managers will take advantage of their female workers if the female is desperate to be promoted from a seasonal position to a permanent position. Its crazy because our market patterns directly influence the work patterns of these workers in Kenya. Their insane over time hours are dictated by our need for rose.

My anthropology class atop a mountain overlooking the flower farms in Naivasha

Over valentines day they have to work their asses off growing flowers and harvesting them and bunching them round the clock. We got to go into Karturi flower farms and observe the whole growing and packing process ourselves and ask all sorts of questions about the quality of a job at the flower farm. The interesting thing about research is that you never know if you are getting the "truth"... all the flower rep told us about were the GREAT things about working on the flower farm... and we were all very confused to say the least because she obviously didn't tell us about the DRAMA that these flower farms cause..

The other crazzzzyyy thing that happened at naivasha was that we got hail! Chunks of ice falling from the sky. In east africa. Our staff told us that this is extremely rare soo we were all pretty surprised... Not to mention VERY worried about our tents that were being pelted with ice and water for half an hour.

The time we got hail in Africa..

But. They were DRY and we celebrated the amazingness of our tents.

Shout out to Brandon who says "give me a shoutout" as I blog on our bus ride to Elangata Waus.

Andddd we celebrated my friend Shelby's birthday and she was my tent mate so I tried to stay up till midnight on her bday to give her a present but we failed and I gave it to her at elevn thirty and went to sleep. Hahahah. Early nights are how things go over here. This was a great place to celebrate birthdays cuz there was a beautiful bar with a star deck with tons of food and drinks n for three nights we hung out... Drank. Relaxed anddd loved life!