This is what Facebook said to me as I was setting up my account. A presumptuous statement, but perhaps correct.
Anyhow, I set up the account a while back, but today I actually approved all my outstanding friend requests and officially stepped into the Facebook world, probably five minutes before MyFacester 2 will come along and replace it, negating all the work I put into setting up all my privacy rules. Oh well.
I’m also now Linked In, although I didn’t put quite as much time into that.
I suppose I spent my day off doing all this online networking because this weekend left me Internet deprived, as my home became the unofficial Mombasa WiFi hotspot for visiting volunteers. As much as I complain about my Internet connection, I heard “this is the fastest Internet I’ve used in Kenya!” on more than one occasion. One volunteer uploaded pictures for the first time for his family to see.
From left to right, you can see three simultaneous uses for the Internet: updating the One Laptop Per Child XO-PC to support a Safaricom modem, uploading pictures to Picassa, and doing research for work:
As usual, spending time with volunteers means eating nicer food than usual. Most significantly, we discovered a sushi bar not far from Mombasa (it took me about 45 minutes on a matatu). I was very happy, and the experience also made more room in wallet, in case I want to use it to hold things besides money.
The restaurant is also a club, and we were there the night before for some dancing. I can’t say for sure who he was, but there appeared to be some sort of Indian prince there, and he sat with impeccable posture in the corner, surrounded by his jesters, who all danced around him and acted ridiculous while he looked around stoically, motionless except for his bejeweled feet tapping to the music. I wish I had my camera at the time.
We also made a trip to the beach, because we have to live up to our “Beach Corps” nickname. I wanted to swim, but unfortunately the tide was so low that I walked toward the water for half an hour before I gave up and came back to the shore.
Others continued further, and were met with even more resistance: two volunteers stepped on sea urchins, and one reacted by falling over and landed on even more sea urchins. We called the Peace Corps Medical hotline and were informed that papaya should be rubbed all over the wounds. So, we got some papaya and yes, it did seem to look better the next day.
Before we called Peace Corps, though, someone suggested using some combination of tweezers and a lighter to remove the stingers, and here are they are attempting to make that work (wide angle lens used to protect the identities of the potentially embarrassed):
