The Race

This is Emmanuel. You might have already seen him in a few of the photos so far - he does love the camera. He is part of my everyday life here so I wanted to take this chance to tell you all a little bit about him. A few facts:

He is 37
He is from a Maasai tribe
He works for 'Work the World' (the company I am here with)
He loves and helps support his mum
He wants to help his orphaned nephew through secondary school
He makes less in a month than most people in Australia would earn in a day
He wants to do a computer course and an English course
His job consists of walking us to the bus stop (takes about 25mins), waiting there in 'his office' all day long, and then walking us home when we return
He is single
He is looking for a mzungu wife (that's his 'flavour')
He likes kitties


Sunday/Christmas day was his birthday. We made him a birthday cake but as I mentioned before - it looked a lot better than it tasted. He was so happy and grateful though. You couldn't wipe the smile of his face.

In his attempts to woo a mzungu girl, he has been lavishing Claire with lots of attention. The fact that she has a boyfriend back in the UK doesn't seem to be a deterrent. So in a final attempt to win her affections, it was decided that Emmanuel should race Kieran in a 100m sprint to prove how much he 'loved' Claire. 

You must remember that Emmanuel is practically a Maasai warrior and Kieran is a skinny med student from Perth, we all thought Emmanuel had it in the bag. And then he came out in his 'running gear'...

I'm not sure where the pink shorts came from but they didn't do much to add to his warrior status. Anyway, the boys paced out the race course and then they were off.

Kieran won by quite a considerable distance. Claire was let off the hook and wasn't too shy about showing her relief. And Emmanuel is now biding his time, waiting for his next perfect lady to come along.

Kieran also has the bragging rights now...I raced a Maasai warrior and won!

As a point of interest, we were going through some of the old notes that previous students had left in the house, and one of the girls had found a very effective way of deterring unwanted attention from the local men.

It went something like:
African man: Hey Mzungu, you want a boyfriend?
Mzungu girl: No I already have a boyfriend.
African man: That doesn't matter, what you need is an African boyfriend!
Mzungu girl: My boyfriend is black and in the [insert country here] military
African man: silence


For her this was a true statement but she said that this was the fastest thing any of the girls had come up with to be left alone. Worth remembering!

Till next time x