Hello Dr. Bascom [Friends and Family],

I think I had a close experience to Squatter's Rites, at least in the sense of environment. My roomie took me to his aunt's kijijini (village) which is I guess an urban village called Kinindoni. This was Sunday around noon. We got off the Dala Dala and walked for a while into the village, walking past plastic bucket shops, tin pot shops and second hand clothing stands. He first wanted to take me to see his father who also lived in the area. We walked the alley ways, stepped over streams of not too pleasant smelling liquid, and walked by many women and children sitting in the overhang shade of houses and buildings. Finally, we got to the place where his father lives, but he wasn't there so we continued to his aunt's house.

She lived in a house with a high fence around it topped off with broken pieces of glass. We walked to the back of the house and sitting in the shade of the house was Leonard's (my roommate) father. After meeting his aunt we sat there with his father who for some reason didn't talk too much. After a while she said, "karibuni" (welcome y'all), and we went in to have lunch. After washing hands we had ugali, chicken, peas, and shredded veggies.

Then she took us around the corner to the corner bar. With bolingo music blaring in the background we just sat there for an hour and drank (soda for Leonard and me), and finally Leonard's father stood up and said "twende" (let's go), so we went. We walked for a while and Leonard was having fun with the fact that everyone was shouting "mzungu" (English man, or now days, white person) at me as we passed through narrow alleys.

After a while and after passing a few more of those streams, we walked over a huge stream of it and I could hear the pigs. Leonard's Dad had taken us to an urban pig farm/restaurant for lunch, part two? So we went into a small room lined with couches and sat down and tried to converse in Swahili for a while. I talked with this little guy who had one of the famous wire toys, his being a truck. They are very interesting toys and you always see kids driving [pushing] them and putting loads in the beds of them. Anyway...back to the pork... So in comes two huge plates, one with chunks of pork and fried banana and the other with shredded tomatoes, cabbage, carrots, and cucumbers. We scarfed that down and it was great. Five of us cleaned that plate in less then five minutes! It was probably the best meal I've had here, surely the first time having pork in Africa and it not being heavily vinegared as in North Carolina.

After that we went to the second hand clothing shops and looked around, but didn't buy anything more than oranges. So then we went back to that corner bar and drank more until evening came. Kinindoni is definitely an urban village. Many of the houses were halfway completed, piles of trash strewn everywhere and kids running around barefoot playing with the goats and chickens that [were] dodging the cars. Mixed among some of the "modern" houses were more traditional houses made with mud and manure and covered with lime. It was great and the people that you come across are even cooler. So that was a Sunday outing of a different sort...I think I'm going back soon.---John