I have decided that it is not. I like Þór, I’m quite used to being called Þór by now, but I want my full name to be a bit more…of a mouthful I guess. I’m not used to having a one syllable name and it feels weird. I’ve always kind of liked having a full name and then a shortened version (Halldóra-Dóra). I also have something of an attachment to the letter H, for some reason.

So I have decided to change Þór into Hafþór (Haf=ocean). I like the idea of people who don’t know me calling me Hafþór, but reserving Þór for those who know me better. It’s also just a fuller, more meaty name, I suppose.

The other part of this is that Matthías is a name I had chosen for myself several years ago. I wanted to keep it in order to connect these two periods in my life, but I have come to realise that it’s actually just reminding me of a time when I was very unhappy. I feel quite distant from it now and I’m uncomfortable with it. Hafþór Matthías is also just about too long.

I went through a list of names the other day and found many that I liked. I decided not to go too far into the weird (with Huginn or Draupnir, even though they are cool) and decided to go with Loki instead. It’s short, it’s not a very common name, it’s interesting and it’s in keeping with the Nordic theme. Also Hafþór Loki just sounds cool, it’s rolls off the tongue quite nicely.

Choosing a new name is very tricky. I want to feel close to it, like it’s mine. I want it to represent me and fit me. I like Hafþór because I come from an island surrounded by the ocean and I’m used to seeing it every day. Þór represents strength and toughness to me, which is something I need. It’s something to live up to. Loki is fun, it has a lot of mischief to it and a kind of stubbornness. It’s a name full of life; a stormy, mischievous, strong name. I like it.

Picking your own name like this is very difficult and a bit sad. I’m leaving behind a good name that I’ve identified with for a very long time. A lot of people around me have to get used to calling me by a new name, and in doing so they might find themselves seeing me differently as a result. It’s a strange experience, but one that I sort of enjoy having. I feel like it’s an opportunity to really find myself, but to reinvent myself at the same time. A chance to take control of my life and set things straight.

Things are all a bit up in the air right now and unstable. I’m in the process of changing and becoming something new, it’s going to take a while and everyone’s a little confused. It’s not going to be the one thing that fixes everything, but it’s something I need to do to find my right place. I am allowing myself to enjoy the journey as well, rather than focusing exclusively on the final result.

Besides, is there every really a final result in life? Each journey gives us the wisdom and knowledge we need to embark on another journey. We collect the necessary tools to enable us to evolve even further. That is the joy of life, this ever evolving adventure.

If it is important to you to gain understanding of the issues faced by (for instance) trans people in order to treat them with respect and avoid doing or saying something which makes them uncomfortable, don’t just assume that they are always willing to point out what you’ve done wrong, or to sit down and answer lots of questions. Many of us have had, and continue to have, so many conversations with well meaning (and less well meaning) curious people. It gets tiring. Sometimes we just want to hang out and talk about something else. I am more than just a trans person. I am also a human being with interests and feelings and worries. I am a Geographer, I like to bake, I love books and horror movies and fun TV shows. I’m interested in international development and global health. I sometimes spend hours playing stupid Facebook games and I really adore kittens. My trans status isn’t the most important thing about me. By demanding that we always take the time to answer all your questions, you risk making us feel like we are some kind of freaks or oddities, and that we are only interesting to you because we challenge your ideas of sex and gender.

There is also another side to this issue. Being transgender is a deeply personal experience, we go through difficult and often painful physical changes, including big surgeries. Some of us have surgeries on our breasts and genitals. We don’t want to talk about that with everyone. My genitals are no one’s business but mine. But people often seem to feel that we owe them some kind of explanation for the choices we make, that we need to tell them the current situation with our genitals. Why? Does the presence/absence of a penis tell you all you need to know about who I really am? Isn’t it enough for me to tell you that I’m a man? You really don’t need proof.

It is important that you take the time to educate yourself for a number of reasons:

1. I might not want to have this conversation with you. I am not your only source of information.
2. Every trans person’s experience is different. Whatever I tell you is not going to cover everything you need to know about every other trans person. Doing your own research online will give you a much wider picture.
3. When you get your information from your own research you will find out in a much less awkward way which words to avoid using, what you shouldn’t ask about, and what to avoid doing. It will be much more awkward for everyone involved if I have to tell you in person that you’re making me uncomfortable.

Don’t get me wrong though. If you’ve done your research and you’re just curious to know me better and understand what I am going through personally, that’s ok. You can ask. But I reserve the right to say no. I am generally more than happy to talk about what I’m going through, up to a certain limit. There are certain things I am not going to want to talk about, particularly if I don’t know you very well.

The points that I have made here are not only pertinent to trans people. They also apply to other LGBTQ people, people with disabilities, immigrants, people of races other than your own, people of different cultures, and many more. A functional, compassionate society is based on reliable information, and we are all a part of that.

To make this all easier for you, here are a few links to places where you can read about trans people:

Not Your Mom’s Trans 101

http://tranarchism.com/2010/11/26/not-your-moms-trans-101/

A list of commonly used terms:

http://www.thefword.org.uk/features/2008/03/trans_101

Trans etiquette for non-trans people

http://tranifesto.com/transgender-faqs-and-info/trans-etiquette-for-non-trans-people/

Another etiquette article

http://iamtransgendered.com/Etiquette.aspx

Ten things not to say to a trans person

http://tranifesto.com/transgender-faqs-and-info/ten-things-not-to-say-to-a-trans-person/

My name is Þór Matthías Theódórsson and I am transgender. It took me a long time to get to the point where I was able to really accept this about myself, and feel strong enough to come out and share this with the people in my life. To be honest I had reached a point in my life where I felt that something needed to change, or I wouldn’t be able to live with myself much longer.

This process has been very difficult for me, because the image most people have of transgender people didn’t fit me at all. I haven’t been insisting that I’m a boy since I was a child. I didn’t fight against wearing skirts and dresses or playing with dolls. I did pretty much what was excepted of me and I didn’t question it much. I don’t feel like a “man trapped in a woman’s body”. This body is mine and I’ve lived in it for 28 years, I don’t hate it, it just doesn’t fit me very well.

It didn’t even occurr to me that I was trans until my early twenties. Looking back I can see that most of my life I was confused, I felt left out and I didn’t understand why people did what they did. The girls didn’t make sense to me, the boys didn’t either. I tried on all sorts of identities and styles and never felt comfortable or settled. It wasn’t until I was about 21 or 22 that I started realising that something wasn’t quite right. Maybe it wasn’t that I was just a failure as a human being, but that what was excepted of me simply wasn’t right for me. At first I thought maybe I was gay, I tried that on a bit, but it didn’t fit. I am much more attracted to men than women and I realised quickly that I definitely wasn’t a lesbian. I knew I wasn’t a straight woman, I knew I belonged somewhere in the LGBT community, I just wasn’t sure where.

Eventually I came to the realisation that things didn’t feel right because the way people saw me didn’t fit with who I was on the inside. I realised that while I was in fact attracted to men, I didn’t want to be with them as a woman, I wanted to be with them as a man. For the first time in my life something made sense.

I’d heard of trans women before. Men who wanted to be women, who had known since they were children, who were “trapped in the wrong body”, who had hormone therapy and surgery to be as feminine as possible, who wanted to be with men. But the trans experience is so much more varied than that. For a long time I hadn’t even realised that it could work in the other direction, that sometimes trans people were men who had been born female.

I tried to come out of the closet several years ago. I told my family, I bought some men’s clothing, I saw a psychiatrist. But I realised soon that I wasn’t ready, I didn’t understand myself and what I was doing well enough, and there wasn’t much of a support network to rely on. I crawled back into the closet and spent years trying to convince the world and myself that I was in fact a woman. I just skipped the whole dating game, it was too painful to navigate.

About a year ago I started allowing myself to look at this again. I started reading and getting in touch with people online. Finally I realised that there is no one way to be trans. I don’t have to be über-man. I don’t have to change my personality to fit into some kind of transgender mold. I could be trans…and still be me.

So here I am. My name is Þór Matthías Theódórsson and I am transgender. I am not very masculine, I never have been, I am in fact quite feminine. I still like nail polish and fancy earrings. I still have a weakness for bags. I still think high heals make my legs look hot. But I am not a woman. I don’t want to have breasts, I don’t want to have a woman’s voice, I don’t want to live my life as something I am not.

I am going to go through the process of transition, get hormore replacement therapy and the surgeries I feel I need to to be comfortable in my body. But I will still be the same person, with the same interests. I will still be silly, a bit girly, wear make up sometimes. But I will be a man.

Think about this for a second. A man who was born male, who is attracted to other men, who wears make up sometimes, who is very feminine, is still a man if he says he is. A woman can be very “butch”, never wear dresses or shave her legs or wear make up, but she is still a woman. I am a man, and just like every other man, I can be exactly the kind of man I want to be.

I woke up to the sound of a lot of cars driving around outside. It took me a while to realise why. I suspect they’re full of families here to pick up their kids for Easter. Now I feel all sad that my family is so far away and that I’ll be all alone here for Easter. *sigh*

Idea

I was thinking about something the other day. There’s a big problem with people drinking and driving. I think it might make a difference if it were made into law that whenever someone enters an establishment that sells alcohol, that they must leave their car keys at the door (if they brought them), and that they can’t get them back unless they pass a breathalyser test.

It wouldn’t stop people from driving after drinking at home, but it might cut down on people getting drunk in town and then driving home. Right?

Medication

So I had some tests done recently and it was confirmed that I have PCOS . I saw a gyno to talk about treatment options. Most of the time the birth control pill will solve a lot of the problems, but I’d been told that due to a history of blood clotting in my family I shouldn’t be on the pill. The gyno checked it out and apparently I have what is called Factor V Leiden which means that instead of the risk of getting a blood clot being 1 in 1,000, it is 1 in 125-250. So no pill for me. Instead I am now on metformin.

This means that my blood sugar levels will be regulated (insulin resistance is a common part of PCOS) and then my ovaries will stop producing too much testosterone. My skin will clear up, my periods will be normal (you totally wanted to know that!) and I might actually lose weight. Especially if I manage to get some exercise as well.

The only problem is that it commonly causes gastrointestinal problems to begin with (again something I’m sure you wanted to know!). *sigh* I guess I’ll just have to suffer for a while.

Future plans

My original plan was to stay in England once I’d finished my degree. That has now changed. I have decided to go back to Iceland and get a BSc in Nursing. My interests are too varied, it’s hard for me to settle on anything. :P

I started out determined to study languages, preferably ancient ones. Then I realised I had no idea what I wanted to do with that (other then being super cool and being able to read Latin) so I switched to Geography. At first I saw myself as a scientist, I’d know all about the weather, and volcanoes, and nature. I’d be traipsing about outside all the time, doing science-y stuff with soil and stuff.

Then I realised that while the nature stuff was interesting, it didn’t really grab me. So I turned to Human Geography and started learning all about the geographical patterns of people and what they do. Super interesting. Then I learned about international development and my interest was piqued. Finally I found out about Health Geography and I was set. Global health and developing countries? Totally my thing!

Now I’ve been in England for a while learning all about exactly that and I love it. I’m dying to get out there and help people! While my degree is cool and very useful, I still didn’t feel quite done. I needed something more, I wanted a wide range of skills. Mostly for the sake of being brainy and cool, but also for the sake of being as useful as possible.

So nursing it is!

I’ll go to Nepal in June, and then go home in the beginning of August probably. I should be able to finish my dissertation at home and then just get someone over here to turn it in for me. Then I’ll have time to settle down before school starts in the fall. Unlike here in Sheffield it starts at the end of August back home.

Random bullet points

• Baking flat bread is cool.
• I watched Black Hawk Down the other day, I’d forgotten how good it is.
• Dominos Pizza have this garlic and herb dipping sauce. Dipping my pizza into it is delicious!
• I spent way too much money on music on iTunes last night.

Dating

Did you know there are dating sites for rich people that are all about the “sugar daddy” thing? So women (or men) can go there looking for rich men to pamper them and the men go there to look for beautiful women (or other men) to pamper. It’s hysterical. I signed up for sugardaddyforme.com just out of curiosity. Mostly I thought it was incredibly funny and kind of pathetic…then I found a guy who is gorgeous, makes more than $1,000,000 a year, is 38 years old and lives in London. I almost wish I were a gorgeous bimbo just so I’d stand a chance. The operative word here being almost. I’d really rather go join the effort to save the world.

Last night I was talking to a friend and she expressed some skepticism so I decided to look up owl sounds. Finally I found the owl that makes exactly the sound that I’ve been listening to for so long. It’s the Tawny Owl, which can be found all over England.

You can hear the sound here. It was quite funny to find because it was so exactly the same sound. According to the website where I found this sound file:

“…95% of the time you are going to hear just two calls from Tawny Owls — the well-known hoot, and the “kewick”. The full-volume hoot, hu ….. hu-hooooo, is made by the male, and as far as I know only by the male. It’s a unique sound, and probably involves a use of the vocal apparatus that’s not heard in any other tawny call, whether male or female.”

So there you have it. Somewhere close to Ranmoor Village in Sheffield there is a male tawny owl. There are possibly more than just the one, I don’t know I’ve never seen it/them. It’s not annoying to me anymore, now I smile when I hear it. There’s something so delightfully horror film-y about it. Also knowing that it’s an owl makes me extremely happy. There are no owls in Iceland so hearing one in the wild is completely new to me.

To be honest I’ve spent the last few months going a little crazy every now and then when I see or hear animals that are not to be found in Iceland. I’ve seen a lot of squirrels for instance and I always smile like a loony toon every time. I remember when I was 18 I saw a frog jump across a path I was walking in Denmark. I could hardly stop talking about it for hours afterward. My siblings were not quite as impressed as I was. The summer of 2009 I spent 4 weeks in Brighton and while there I saw two foxes walk across the University of Sussex campus late one evening. We do have foxes in Iceland, but I haven’t seen them very often so it was fun.

Basically when it comes to seeing all kinds of animals I might as well be 5 years old considering how excited I get. On Saturday I’m going for a walk in the Peak District, I hope I’ll get to see some fun animals while I’m there.

—
Picture from Wikipedia

I was thinking about this because earlier I had a plate full of fried sweet potatoes and then an apple. This should have made me feel quite full, but the apple just messed it all up. Now my stomach is just odd and empty like.

I googled this and something I saw made me think. I was reading this discussion here and the last comment says:

According to Seth Roberts (creator of the Shangri La Diet), favorite or very familiar foods will make you hungrier than unfamiliar foods. The theory is that if you’re in such a food-rich environment that you can afford to choose your favorite foods, your body will want to take advantage of the surplus and pick up some extra calories. But if you’re in a food-poor environment such that you’re eating things you’ve never (or rarely) tried before, your body assumes food is scarce and dampens your hunger.

I don’t know about the reliability of this statement and what it made me think is probably complete bullshit, but whatever. It was the whole idea of feeling less hungry when you only eat unfamiliar foods. While I was in Kenya I noticed that I rarely – if ever – felt hungry. The food we ate in the village of Marich was mostly rice and vegetables and stuff and at breakfast we had some kind of semolina grue. None of it was completely new to me as such (except the grue), but the mix of flavours and textures was fairly unfamiliar. I didn’t eat half as much as I’m used to, even though I quite liked the food.

There is an alternate explanation for my lack of hunger: the heat! It was probably the heat, and the fact that I drank a lot more water than I’m used to. So yeah, this whole “unfamiliar food makes you less hungry” is probably nonsense. But it was an interesting thought none the less.

But because of this whole deal with raw vegetables I often don’t feel full after a salad, for instance. I do if I have some more stuff in it such as pasta, croutons and dressing. I also have a bit of trouble feeling properly full after eating stuff that I don’t chew, such as soups and yoghurt. I feel like I haven’t eaten because I didn’t chew it.

Unfortunately my stomach and my mind/eyes don’t always agree on what counts as proper food. I still tend to make too much food because I’m used to seeing a certain amount on my plate. I always feel like I need to eat two slices of bread. I always prepare two slices. This also means I always prepare two sandwiches because they sort of look like two slices of bread. And then I soon realise that I definitely don’t need to eat that much, but I feel like I have to finish anyway because throwing the rest away would be a waste. So I have a strong tendency to eat more than I need to and I can’t seem to kick the habit.

Why is it so hard to change your behaviour? It’s amazing how hard we hold on to what’s comfortable, even when it’s obviously not really all that comfortable.

I have read a great deal about power in the last few months. In fact, I wrote an essay on the interplay between power and security in development. It is clear that rationality is only a small part of the process of policy making. Self interest has a strong tendency to overrule rationality, which is why it is so important to acknowledge who has the power to  influence decisions made on behalf of nations, or large global organisations and corporations. How they use their power to influence policy is equally important.

The common definition of power is that it is the ability of one person/group to make another person/group do something they would otherwise not do. How this is done varies however and often the use of power for this purpose is not obvious to those being influenced or made to do something.

I was reading about the role of power in health policy while sitting in a café in Edinburgh. It occurred to me how much goes on in the world that we never even realise. In the half a year that I have been studying at the University of Sheffield I have read countless articles and books that have been incredible eyeopeners for me. Power is something I was vaguely aware of, but did not really understand until now.

One thing I have come to see is how dishonest and insidious the actions of the most powerful in society are. That’s not to say I was completely naïve and blind to it, I simply had not realised how extensive the problem is.

In Buse, Mays and Walt’s Making Health Policy there is an incredibly interesting discussion of the different kinds of power. Two of them really jumped out at me.

1. Power as Non-Decision

This is a method of sorts where those with power are able to trick people into believing they have choices, when it fact only the choices that are acceptable to the powerful are made available. This can be done for instance by drawing the public’s attention away from important issues by emphasising other issues. Such as by using the media to drown sensitive subjects with discussions of other, less urgent ones.

As an example of this they mentioned the tobacco industry and its influence on the World Health Organisation. In order to draw attention away from non-communicable diseases that could potentially have been caused by smoking, such as cancer, they used their ‘influence’ to direct the public’s focus on infectious diseases.

It made me think about the Millennium Development Goals. They have been criticised heavily for being too narrowly focused on infectious diseases and other health issues that are mainly a concern in the poorest developing countries. Meanwhile public health issues in many middle income countries, and even developed countries, are largely neglected.

While diseases such as HIV/AIDS and malaria are important, what is more urgent is to provide quality health care to all. With strong health systems these diseases are much more easily tackled and more people can be approached with preventative measures. In most cases a strong health system requires that the state take action and increase its public spending. This goes against the claims of neo-liberalists that the free market is the only way forward. A greater focus on state intervention, public spending and…god forbid…a bit of socialist welfare, is not in the interest of the global elite.

So is the purpose of this skewed image of the global health priorities a way to draw the focus away from the real problem? That the system simply isn’t working? I wonder. Meanwhile they have convinced everyone that they are doing something great, something so good, that few even question whether it is at all effective. This way they can throw lots of money at particular issues and make themselves feel like they are doing something…while avoiding making the hard decisions that are more likely to lead to real change, real long-term change.

2. Power as Thought Control

The media is not only used by the powerful to divert people’s attentions, but also to shape their thoughts and influence their values. As they put it in Making Health Policy:

Lukes argues that A gains B’s compliance through subtle means. This could include the ability to shape meanings and perceptions of reality which might be done through the control of information, the mass media and or through controlling the processes of socialization.

As an example they mentioned how widespread and popular so-called ‘alternative medicine’ has become. The market is drowning in all sorts of ‘medical’ products that no one has been able to prove to even work. The purpose is to make money, and if people get hurt in the process, who cares? Right?

It is not just alternative medicine though, it is everything. A large part of the media does not care whether the information they spread is factual. They want to sell, and controversy sells. Would Andrew Wakefield’s claims that the MMR jabs cause autism have become so widely accepted if it were not so much easier to sell papers that say “DANGER DANGER” than ones that say “no, everything’s fine actually”? Wakefield’s claims have never been confirmed and it has even come to light that he was making lots of money from it.

This is where the issue of authority comes in. People are quick to accept the authority of doctors and scientists because they believe them to have superior knowledge. Most of the time they do, and I honestly believe that the vast majority of them are doing their best to make the world a better place. But it also means that it’s fairly easy for the less honest to get wrong and even harmful information out there. Especially when backed by powerful people with lots of money who have a vested interest in deceiving people into spending more money. Fortunately the good guys do their best to make it right, to correct the information, to fix it. It would be easier however if they did not have to fight a largely corrupt media world which is more interested in news that sell than news that are true.

Who can we hold accountable for this?

There were some frustrations, all of which were very educational. Here are a few examples:

• We had trouble getting people to agree letting us record interviews. A lot of them were very uncomfortable with the idea of being recorded, even though we explained it was only for the sake of getting the information right and that we wouldn’t do anything funny with the recordings. This often made it a bit of a challenge to interview people and get everything down. This is something I now know that I need to prepare  myself for in the future. I hadn’t even thought about this being a potential problem.
• There was a bit of a debate because in the past people who had been interviewed had been given gifts in return for their participation, such as sugar or soap. From this year on we’d been urged to stop doing this for ethical reasons I can’t be bothered to get into here. Farida and I had some people refuse to talk to us because of this. Fortunately it was only to begin with and once word got out people more or less stopped bringing it up. I felt really guilty about it, but at the same time the logic behind the decision is sound.
• The water sample testing took a lot more time than we had anticipated, so I had less time to do interviews with households. I had been hoping I’d be able to get enough people to do at least some statistical analysis, but I ended up not having enough people to do that. Again this taught me to be better prepared.

According to my results, although I haven’t begun the analysis of my data, all the people in the village get their water from the river, except for a few who cross the river to get to a borehole pump some distance from the other side of it. The only people who do this live close to the river so there isn’t that much of a distance. There are three locations on the river where people get their water, depending on how far away they live. Some of them have to go to the river 2-3 times over the day to get water and it takes them up to 2 hours every time.

There are two boreholes in the village, but both of them are broken. One since last summer, and one since December. This means that instead of getting safe water from the boreholes, people have gone back to the river. According to our water samples the river water is not safe for drinking, so this is a serious problem. The problem is that they do everything else in the river as well as drink from it. They bathe in it, they wash their clothes, they fish, they pan for gold, and they play in it.

I had no more problems with the heat after that first day, but the heat did get pretty intense at times. I started burning soon after we got there, much to Thomas’s confusion. At one point he pointed at my arm and asked if the red was because of the sun. I told him yes and that it was quite painful. It was strange talking with someone who isn’t familiar with sunburn.

On the 22nd we wrapped up our research in the morning. Farida and prepared samples of water from the field centre’s borehole, because according to another group that had been there the water wasn’t safe, and we spent the morning getting as many interviews as we could. After lunch everyone got together to talk about our research and prepare for presentations of our findings which we had to do later in the day. People from the village came around and put together a sort of market for us. We spent some time just walking around buying a few things in an effort to help the community. I bought some beaded jewellery and two gorgeous bowls.

In the evening we presented our findings to the chief. It was wonderful to be able to tell him what we’d been doing there and he graciously accepted all of it. The water situation was made clear to him and we were told that efforts would be made to bring an engineer into the village to fix the boreholes and to collect money to put together pipes that would pass water from the boreholes to the villagers so they would be less reliant on the river. It was great because it made me feel that despite everything what I was doing there had led to something positive.

That night a goat was slaughtered for us. Fortunately we didn’t have to actually witness it. I didn’t actually eat any of it because I’d just spent the whole time there walking around absolutely adoring all the goats, so I wasn’t exactly excited at the prospect of eating one. There was vegetarian food on offer as well, so that was ok. A group of dancers from the village arrived after dark and danced and sang for us. It was very funny because occasionally they would run into the group and drag some people off to dance with them. I was able to elude capture. I know that makes me a massive bore, but at least I got some pictures! :P

We got up early on the 23rd. Farida and I checked the water tests for the centre and figured out that as far as we could tell there were not faecal coliforms in the boreholes. At 8am we left Marich Pass and drove for 9 hours back to Lake Elementaita. We stopped for a picnic at the equator, which was awesome!

This time when we got to the Lodge it wasn’t just very nice, it was HEAVEN! We were met at the doors with hot wet towels which were very welcome. We had a really nice dinner that evening and entertained ourselves by playing pool or watching TV. It was incredibly sweet. I also absolutely adored getting a hot shower for once and being able to wash of some of my underwear for the trip home. At this point everything I had was dirty and dusty and I felt absolutely filthy. I was able to pack most of my stuff before I went to bed in the evening because I knew we’d be getting up early the next morning for the game drive.

The 24th was the longest day I have ever experienced. We had to get up at 5am so we could have breakfast and head out at 6am. The sun rose while we were on the way to Lake Nakuru National Park. The drive through the park was awesome. The mini buses had roofs that we could lift up so we could stand on the buses and take pictures. It was really cold to begin with, but once the sun was properly up it warmed up quickly. The first animals we saw were buffalos. There were a lot of buffalos. Shortly after that we saw some lions from afar. I wasn’t able to get any pictures of them, but I had binoculars so I could see them pretty well. One was carrying just killed pray, which was super cool. Soon after that we saw a rhino asleep in the trees. We were so excited and eventually it stood up and walked all the way over to us and crossed the road. It was funny how excited we got at that point, because we actually saw quite a few rhinos later on.

Over all we saw zebras, several kinds of antelope-like animals, rhinos, baby rhinos, giraffes, lions, buffalos, lots of baboons, all sorts of birds, flamingos, and pelicans. I might have forgotten something. It was a huge success and I’m so happy I went. Oh yeah, we also saw some giraffes mating and a rhino-mom accidentally shit on it’s rhino-baby’s head!

We arrived back at the lodge around noon and had lunch. Before lunch I went and showered and finished packing. So after lunch I was completely ready to leave. We left at 2pm. Two of the buses went straight to the airport while the other two dropped the people who were staying on in Kenya off at various places. Unfortunately we were at the airport at 5pm, but the plane didn’t leave until midnight. Let me tell you, waiting for 7 hours at an airport is seriously uncool.

After sitting around talking and wandering about a few of the girls and I sat down on the floor and played Good Morning Queen. It was hysterically funny because we were so tired and we kept messing up and it was just a mess.

The plane ride back to England was looooooong. I had a sleeping pill so I slept for most of it, but I kept waking up every now and then and just wanting to cry because I was so uncomfortable. I sort of remember waking up enough to eat at one point. If anyone had been watching me then it probably would have just been funny. Eventually we made it all the way to London. I took the underground to St. Pancras with a girl called Kat. She had a train to catch at 9am and I had another one to catch at 10am. I was half brain dead with sleepiness the whole way home, but I made it there shortly after noon.

So that’s that. Kenya. :)

Umm. You’re saying this isn’t enough? Oh fine, I’ll write a proper post about this. *sigh*

My Kenya trip was packed full of “firsts” for me. The first “first” was simply the fact that I was using a rucksack instead of a suitcase. I tried to pack as wisely as I could and I think I was fairly successful at that. I made a list of things I’d need and I stuck with it. I also had to buy a lot of things, such as a first aid kit, a torch, candles, all kinds of medication, hand sanitizer, etc. All this I packed with as little clothing as I thought I could get away with. Turned out I didn’t really get away with it, I could’ve done with some more clothes.

Another first was the aeroplane. It was one of those huge planes with three rows of three seats. I’d never been on one of those. The plane ride was also incredibly long, 9 hours. I’d never done that before either. On the way out I sat next to two old ladies who were going on a safari in Kenya. One of them was terrified of flying so when we got quite a bit of turbulence over Italy she had a hard time keeping herself calm. The turbulence didn’t bother me, but I felt sad for her. Fortunately I had some sleeping pills so I was able to sleep most of the way.

The third first was Africa itself. I’d never been there before.

We landed in Nairobi early in the morning on the 16th of January. I felt excited and nervous at the same time, as well as absolutely exhausted. It was sunny and warm, and since it was 6 in the morning and the sun had just risen, it wasn’t too warm. We all piled onto these safari-mini-buses and drove through the city on our way to the Lake Elementaita Lodge. The ride wasn’t too long, only about 3-4 hours. I was tired and probably should’ve tried to use the time to sleep a bit, but I was too excited. I basically sat by the window and ogled everything I could see. What I saw wasn’t far from what I’d imagined, I suppose. The nature was a strange combination of green and very dry. I saw big houses built for rich people surrounded by areas full of rickety wood and iron sheet houses for poor people. There were a lot of donkeys and goats, and we also saw some zebras and baboons.

The Lodge was very nice. A lot nicer than I expected. In hindsight I am glad we had that day to spend in comfort before moving on. The surroundings were incredibly green and beautiful and we slept in these little houses spread around the main building. The food was excellent, the waiters were very helpful and professional and the pool was awesome. I slept for a bit before noon, spent some time by the pool, and then some of us went on a walk to the lake with a Maasai guide who told us a bit about the history of the land…and a lot about flamingoes.

I was exhausted that night and fell asleep the moment my head hit the pillow. At one point I woke up to my roommate Sabrina pulling the mosquito nets around the beds and I was so asleep I spoke to her in Icelandic. It actually took me a minute or two to realise something wasn’t quite right and to switch back to English.

We left early the next morning (17 January) on the same mini buses. The ride out to Marich Pass took about 9 hours. To begin with it was all right, but the further we went the worse the roads got. It was also interesting to see how much more pronounced the poverty was the further away from the main highway we got. We stopped twice, one for a few minutes on the equator, and then again in Eldoret for lunch. There was a supermarket there that we went to and it was a strange thing to experience because it was just like any other supermarket I’d ever seen. It didn’t quite make sense to me in all that poverty, but it was cool and we were able to stock up on some snacks and candy. Our priorities were flawless!

The last hour or two of the drive were really bad. The view was stunning, but the roads were horrifying. Reaching Marich Pass was a massive relief. We arrived between 5 ad 6 in the afternoon so the hottest part of the day had passed. We all slept in these round white concrete huts with straw roofs, and again I shared with Sabrina.

Before I got there I’d been incredibly nervous about bugs. When I first saw the hut I’d be sleeping in I had a minor internal panic attack. There was a mosquito net hanging over the bed and once I’d been given a mattress and everything I wrapped the mosquito net around the bed and tucked the ends under the mattress (thanks Lucy for that tip).

The first two days or so consisted of a series of fears I needed to face, such as using the long drop toilets, showering in a dark room where I couldn’t see if there were bugs or not, and actually sleeping in the hut. Bit by bit I calmed down and before long a lot of my fears were overcome. I found that sleeping in a bed completely surrounded by a mosquito net is actually quite nice. As soon as I’d climbed into the bed and closed the net completely around me I felt quite safe and slept easily. It was wonderful because I’d worried that I’d have trouble sleeping.

On the 18th, after breakfast (which was a strange semolina porridge of sorts), we were given guides to show us around. I was teamed with Farida because we were doing very similar research. I was going to look into access to water in the community and the differences between different households, distances and such. Farida’s research was more qualitative in that she was studying what people know about water usage and sanitation. Our guide’s name was Thomas. He grew up in West Pokot and knew he area well. He showed us all around the village. We realised that it was actually bigger than we’d thought. On our way in the day before we hadn’t seen much of it. We found out that the houses are well spread out around the main road that runs through it. According to Thomas the people who live nearest to the Moruny river are usually the most affluent ones, while they are generally poorer the further from it they live.

Shortly after we headed out that day I started getting a headache. It was probably a combination of being too hot and dehydrated, and minor caffeine withdrawals. After lunch a part of the group left us to go spend a few days in Mbara, another village higher up on a mountain nearby. The rest of us were taken to Sigor to see the weekly market. The ride over was quite bumpy so by the time we got there I was already feeling pretty crappy. We spent some time walking around the market and it was fascinating. There were so many people and animals all over the place. They were selling vegetables and fruit as well as traditional medicine, clothes, and beads. I saw a big pile of chickens that had their feet tied together so they couldn’t move. They just lay there breathing really fast and panicked. It made me very uncomfortable.

A few of us bought some mangos and some bought beads. It was a bit chaotic though. The people were of all sorts. Some dressed in clothes that are pretty regular (to me), but others in very traditional clothing. The most fascinating of them were the pastoralists in their colourful clothes, with so much colourful jewellery, and the bright red hats with feathers in them. They were beautiful. Here’s a picture I found of one of them.

There whole time we were there we got a lot of very odd stares. For the first time I felt like maybe I could understand what it must be like to be non-white in Iceland. It wasn’t a nice feeling. Thomas the guide had told me earlier that morning that the little kids there would joke about me looking sort of like a banana. It was funny, but I would only face this kind of scrutiny and amusement for a few days, while for many people they feel like this all the time.

After the market we went to take a look at Tikeet, another village in the area. Or well, we meant to. Some of the group went to Tikeet to do their research every morning. I didn’t envy them because it was difficult to get there. The drive from Sigor took a while and the roads were the worst yet. We stopped by a small hanging bridge over a river and then had to walk from there. It took us about 30-40 minutes to get to the Tikeet Health Centre (which we have been collecting money for, click the link to read about the fundraising efforts). At that point we stopped and didn’t go further. It would have been another 15 minutes or so into the village, but it was too hot and a lot of people weren’t feeling well. We were also running late and had to get back in time for dinner.

At this point I was feeling particularly bad and I was starting to realise that I was in danger of overheating. The walk back was very difficult for me and then the 1.5 hour drive back to Marich was torture. By the time we got there I felt very sick and was just about to lose myself in a panic attack. I stepped off the bus and one of the teachers, Dan, asked me if I was ok. I burst into tears. Oh god how embarrassing!

Deborah (another teacher) had me pour some water over my head and Dan gave me a rehydration sachet. I went to my room and took some painkillers. Unfortunately those came straight back up again. It seemed my stomach had decided it had had enough of all this tomfoolery. Eventually I was able to keep the painkillers down, drink a lot of water with the rehydration salts and then I slept until morning.

After this I made sure to add rehydration salts to my water once every day to be sure I wouldn’t be dehydrated and I had no more problems.

Click here for part 2.

Click here to see all my pictures over on Flickr.

I’m not complaining though, if anything this encourages me to write more! :)

So, right now I’m uploading all my pictures to Flickr. It’s going to take forever because there are 380+ pictures and I didn’t think to reduce the size any before I started. But because it’s taking so long I’m not going to post anything until tomorrow. I have already written about the trip, I just have to put it in here, put all the links in and add some pictures. There will likely be two posts, since it’s 3500 words or so.

I’m not doing much of anything these days. I got back from Kenya on the 25th. I need to start working on my data and write my report, but since a part of the group decided to stay in Kenya to have fun until 4 February I felt justified in taking a break. Classes start again next week and to be honest I’m looking forward to it. I can’t wait for things to get back to normal. This Christmas break (or not break, I had essays to write) has been too long.