HDR Fix!

Now that my ol' faithful iPod Touch got stolen from my home.  I did not lock my home as I was simply gathering firewood around the school property.  I doubt I misplaced or it fell out of my pocket, but thats always a possibility.  So now I lost my quick-n-dirty camera with it, I finally got my favorite Nikon dSLR camera that served me so well.  So, with Christmas Day today, after running 8 laps on a "soccer field" (red dirt with overgrown weeds) at a nearby school field, I felt recharged to start my photography again.

A self-portrait of me by my humble adobe.  Don't I look like a red-neck Kenyan?  Well, maybe if I get more thinner and tanner, I would pass as a light-skinned Kenyan.

The photos below (all of them) are done using High Dynamic Range (HDR) technique.  They all require at least 3 photographs of different speeds, then they are merged in post-processing to bring out dynamic photographs.  

This is the stairway to heaven, well, actually my stairway from my home up to the school.  The steps are not even and made of stone.

I have many banana trees around my home.  I will see about chopping the bundle in photo below and have them.

Reverse view of the stairway, from the school down to my home.

The school dining hall where all students (not staff) eat their meals.  They all line up by the trap doors in the back with their plates and cups.  Food are pretty much "spooned" or "splashed" on their plates.  They drink chai (boiled cow milk with tea).

This is the canteen. I am not sure what they sell, but I am pretty sure they do not have M&Ms or Kisses for my pleasure.

The view out from the main building. The flag pole circle is where student assembly are conducted every morning.  Also I hear, discipline are performed during that time as well.  I will see if they still practice corporal punishment.

This building is where I will teach.  Classrooms for Form 1 (Freshman) and Form 2 (Sophomore) use this building and another one below it.  Older classmens go to another building further up on the hill near the main building.

Our hearing cows (e.g., hearing dogs) give the school their milk, as well as provide lawn mowing service.

Opposite of the field, viewing the soccer field (yep, thats soccer field). Mount Kenya is beyond the main building, but its covered by the clouds.  One day I will take good picture of the peak (snow covered).

School library.  I guess they havent figured out that being Deaf is in itself silence, and we do not need to be silent. 

Boys Dorm area.  Two buildings housing like 150 boys.  They all are crammed in with bunks.  Girls Dorm area are at the opposite end of campus (not pictured yet).  Lots of clothes lines for the boys to hang their laundry (yes they wash their own clothes).

Boys' choo and wash basins.  Yep they are outside in the open, rain or shine.

Boys bath house -- boys bring their own buckets of water, enter a booth, take their bath, then let water drain to the gutter against the wall.  No running water in these booths.

The classroom building on the lower hill opposite the dining hall.  The stairway to my home is on the left.

Grilled Cheese!

Freshly Made Grilled Cheese!

Yeah, so what about grilled cheese? No big deal, you may think. I would think the same thing when you have a car to drive to a supermarket, or even a gas station, buy bread and cheese, and bring them back home to your refrigerator. Additionally, it takes you maybe 5 minutes to put a pan on your electric stove, and make your grilled cheese.

Well, that is not the case for me here in remote location somewhere in Kenya. I do not have any refrigerator, less means for transportation. So I would like to share with you, my dear readers, my experiences today that led into the grilled cheese you see in the picture above.

This morning, being a devout cheese lover, had this urge to have some cheese, and even grilled cheese. So, after checking the weather, it was sunny and may be a good day for me to travel to the mid-sized town Karatina about 100km away. So, I got dressed, put on my backpack, empty but with two bottles of water, and started my journey down the mountain road. I walked about 4km (45 minutes) down the mountain to the tarmac (paved blacktop road), and waited for a matatu to come by.

Got on a matatu, and as always, the matatu stopped every time someone needs to board, and before we got to Karatina, there were like 24 people sitting in the matatu that has 14 seats. People of all ages sit tightly together, arms up or wrapped, and children sit on laps, not necessarily on their parents' laps.

Once we got to Karatina, I took the time to scroll around town and get to know the town a bit better. They have, supposedly, the largest open-air fresh vegetable, fruit, rice, and bean market in entire Kenya. They also, at another location, a large (but probably not the largest) open-air market for clothing items -- like a giant goodwill. I stopped by a hotel (restaurant) and had a cup of coffee and samoia (sp? triangle fried crust with ground meat inside) as a snack.

Then I got in Uchuma "supermarket" where I knew they had cheese. Cheese is a rarity in Kenya -- only in large hotels or large cities like Nairobi would you easily find cheese. So because it takes a lot of time and effort to get groceries, I went ahead and shopped for groceries as well as some household items.

Then it was past noon, so I went in the same hotel (that I liked -- one of cleanest looking place in Karatina) and ordered Sukumi Wiki (cooked spinach with flavors) and Chapati.

Then, being in the "rainy season" (it does not really rain everyday, but it has rain, while it does not rain at all out of the "rainy season"), it poured. So, I decided to call my trusty taxi driver Peter whom I was introduced to by previous volunteer as dependable and trustworthy to come and pick me up. I hoped we would not get stuck in the muddy roads going up the mountain to my school site. But the rain stopped and the dirt did not get too muddy so I got back home timely and safely.

Now, that I finally got cheese and bread at home, Using my single burner gas stove on the kitchen floor, I made TWO grilled cheese sandwiches, especially because I did not really eat much food these days (yep I lost who-knows how many kilograms), but more importantly because it is a TREAT -- its cheddar cheese.

So, can you imagine how much time, cost, and physical effort it takes to make a simple thing as grilled cheese?

Because I cannot eat the whole cheddar cheese block (shredded about half, ate about 1/8 of it in cubes), I hope to make egg omelete with cheese tomorrow morning -- that is only if the cheese did not spoil overnight.

Burp! Excuse me, but hey, don't you think I deserve it!