Triumph of Love

Or Triunfo del Amor as it is called in spanish. 

This just happens to be my favourite tv show here in Kenya. Shameful? Yes. But really, there isn't much else on the Kenyan airwaves. I try to catch Grey's anatomy on Monday mornings at 11 (we are talking re-runs for the first and second seasons) but most of the time I am out or, if by chance I am home, some sort of breaking news happens and all the tv stations turn to CNN or some event happening in Kenya (check out what happened this past Monday which cancelled Grey's). 

The beauty of this program is that it comes on every evening including weekends. Yes friends, that is seven nights a week! Don't you wish your favourite shows would come on every night instead of having to wait for a week till the next episode?  It also comes on at 8pm which is about the time that Kelvin gets home and dinner is ready. So our bonding includes watching a spanish telenova and chatting during the commercials. 

It is a spanish program with english voiceovers (some of which have the funniest english voices). It is incredibly passionate and overly dramatic. It's now at the point that everything bad that can happen has already happened. There has been murders, shootings, kidnappings, drunks, car accidents, attempted suicides, mental hospitals, crime, backstabbing, sicknesses, surgeries, love triangles, marriages, divorces, affairs, money made, money lost, illegitimate children, lying, and evil mother-in-laws. (It reminds my of the OC where after the first season, I was convinced that the writers couldn't come up with any more drama since it had all happened. I was wrong. They just kept coming up with new crazier, story lines). One of the main characters, Max, has the worst of it all. It seems that everywhere he goes, he finds trouble whether his child has just been kidnapped or he finds out his real mother is actually alive or his other mother has breast cancer or his father has been cheating on his wife or his sister is now paralyzed or his other baby is not really his baby or his crazy wife is trying to kill him. I don't know how he doesn't go completely insane or throw himself off a bridge. 

But we love it. We love it because it is constant and we can follow along. We love it because of how cheesy it really is. We love the suspense (they end each episode with some dramatic event which means we must tune in the next night). We love that we can see the same actors on other tv shows on different channels. I guess they don't have much of a selection in Mexico so they have to use the same actors for everything. 

It will end soon I assume and some other soap opera will start (we loved the one that came on before this one. it was called Soy Tu Duena. No idea what that means but it was just as cheesy and dramatic). 

In the meantime, we will continue to follow along Max and Maria's twisted, dramatic lives.