Umoja

David and Tommy had never been to Bondo, the town about 50km from Kisumu where I am doing my fieldwork, until this weekend.

We travelled over to Bondo by matatu on Saturday. The easy, cool ‘winter’ weather seems to have passed and it was a hot morning. A friend of mine who I met working in the Patient Support Centre - she was a volunteer, working for expenses of 50/= per day (about 35p) but in many respects managing the place - had started working with young people on issues around HIV/AIDS as a kind of hobby. Her hobby had grown bigger than she ever expected and she was now launching her organisation with funding received from AMREF, CDC and Merlin.

We arrived in Bondo and the warm weather turned suddenly into rain. We ate lunch at my favourite hotel, although there wasn’t much choice on the menu as Saturdays are quieter than other days, especially market days and then I took David and Tommy up to the hotel where the event was due to take place. The hotel was suspiciously quiet when we arrived and it turned out that only the evening event was there, the earlier part was right across the other side of town at the teachers’ training college.

We waited for the rain to ease and then left looking for boda-boda (bicycle taxis) to take us to the college. Luckily we bumped into a friend who gave us a lift over. There were over 200 people there sitting under two awnings, with a few VIPs on a stage. We were ushered to join the VIPs and given BYAAD t-shirts to wear. Then my friend came to greet me and told me that i was the guest of honour at the event, and that i was expected to make a speech! Not just any old speech either, but the finale speech of a whole day of speeches! I have never been a guest of honour before but was flattered and did my best to perform to the crowds!

We left the college at around five and rested in the hotel until a late evening meal was served, followed by the noisiest party ever fuelled by the biggest sound system in Kenya, possibly the world. We didn’t sleep that well in the room across the road from the party, but it was really fun and being a guest of honour was certainly worth the loss of a few hours sleep!

Needless to say, Tommy was a star and is now famous in Bondo. At one point he had crowds of children chasing him, only to run away screaming if he said anything to them!