I should probably talk about all the animals here at one point. Probably the wildlife highlight so far, much more so than the solitary giraffe ambling in the desert, are the monkeys; in Kakamega and also in Ndanda, monkeys jump back in forth among the trees, looking for bananas. Last week I was cut off by a troop of maybe 25 baboons wandering through the jungle behind the mission. It was cool but also a little scary, as apparently they can be dangerous if provoked and I was on alone and on foot. I kept my distance.

Of course most of the creatures I see are not nearly as exciting. Butterflies (kipepeo or "little fan") of all colors are always flapping around, termites build tunnels of dirt up my walls, huge grasshoppers leap across my lawn and wasps with huge, threatening stingers buzz around my office. Last week I saw a small spider with a huge pair of fangs- on closer inspection i saw the fangs were on the wrong end of the body, a decoy to warn off predators. Long lines of army ants march across the jungle and occasionally swarm through people's houses ("surround your bed with kerosene and wait for them to leave...") I have three or four geckos living with me, who feast on all these little ndudus. All these bugs are at the same time fascinating and repulsive.

Back in training my next-door neighbor came to class with a good story. He had arrived home and found a great comotion around his choo (outdoor toilet). "We saw something in the bathroom," said his baba. "We don't know what it is, but it had more than a hundred legs and it was at least a half a meter long."