We went to the Benedictine guest house to drop off our stuff. The guest house had a gate which was opened by a security guard. The security guards stayed in the little outdoor porch listening to radios and generally doing nothing, but I guess there must be a need for them because every guest house we visited had one. The guest house was very clean, and bare. We were happy for the place to stay because from there we walked to Joseph's house. Joseph's house was fairly large, it had three bedrooms, a living room, dining area, kitchen and living room. It was filthy! I held my tongue. I was less then impressed with the cleanliness, but I said nothing (that day).
Joseph and I walked down to the shopping area to look for a ktanga (a cloth to wrap around me as a skirt) for me and some food for the meals we would eat there. The shopping area was old fashioned, and the individual stalls very small. It was while we were shopping that I realized just how excellent Joseph's swahili was. Everyone knew him there, and tried to get him to stop to buy stuff from them. "Mr. Joseph, Mr. Joseph, come look here". Some approached him shyly, wanting to be introduced to his mother. At one of the ktanga stalls the young woman was giggling and Joseph had a long conversation with her. She was laughing because Joseph asked how she knew his name and she responded that she saw him running through the streets leading a hundred young men behind him.
The headmaster had been very impressed with Joseph's physical conditioning and had asked him to be the PE teacher for the school. So Joseph had put a notice on the wall telling the students who wanted to run to meet at a certain spot at a certain time to run. About a hundred students showed up, and Joseph was famous for being very sweaty (and small) and leading all these kids on long runs (Joseph said they routinely ran 10 to 16 kilometers). He never really mentioned that to me before, and I found it hard to believe, but all the neighbors knew it!
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