Tea Farms and Toilet Lids

I'm not one to experience jet lag, although an 8-hr time difference has had quite an effect. After being dead-tired at 11pm last night, I awoke at 2am and couldn't go back to sleep. My roommate had fallen to sleep with his headphones on, and I got tired of guessing the song or wondering how he could still be asleep listening to Foo Fighters. So I got up and went to the bathroom to read. I put the toilet lid down and carefully sat down on top (the seats here are of plastic, not porcelain, and that's if you're lucky). After about half an hour I shifted positions, forgetting where I was sitting. The toilet seat shattered, sending me into the bowl and pieces clanging on the tile floor. The noise reverberated throughout the house, and I froze halfway down the tube. Satisfied that no one would be coming to check on me (for surely they had awakened), I hesitantly gathered the pieces and reassembled the seat next to the tub, where I then did the most sensible thing I could think of: laugh heartedly and then finish my book.

In the morning, I told my "host mother" that there had been accident and explained what had happened. She declined my offer to pay for the lid despite my persistence (I think I'm going to pay for it anyway), saying that the important thing was that I had come to her and stated what was "amiss." I found this very interesting, for in the States we may have been told not to pay and thankfully no one was hurt. However, perhaps in this society it is more honorable to admit one's mistakes and preempt the finding of the broken piece by telling the person whom I had wronged. At least, that's what I came out of it, along with a lot of laughter from my American compadres.

Today we went to a tea farm called Kirabethu, or "Holy Dancing Ground." The owner, Fiona, was third-generation British to be living on the farm, and numerous weddings in her family had been held there. Tea is the largest export for Kenya, followed by coffee (although tourism brings in the second-most revenue). The country jostles with Sri Lanka for number one exporter in the world, I believe. We found out all about the tea making on the 35-acre (formally 350-acre) farm. Kenyan tea, originally from the foothills of the Himalayas in India, is quite strong and must be fully processed from picking to packaging within 24 hours so as not to lose its strength. They had a beautiful garden where I took lots of flower pictures, and had retained six-acres of primary forest where we saw collibus monkeys (black with white manes and trim) and chameleons. An incredible experience, and a place I hope to return to one day.