raftin the nile..

So rafting was unbelievable and I think I’m still not quite back into normal work mode yet. Wednesday night, five other girls from our program and I took an overnight train to Western Kenya where we would cross the border into Uganda. We actually got to drive through Kibera, (the biggest slum in Nairobi) at night, which was very cool since you would never be able to walk around to see what it’s like after dark, and the train tracks were literally feet away from the little shops and shanties. The train-ride ended up being 14 hours long (and was 4 hours late) but the sleeping cars were nice and we actually ended up getting a pretty good night’s sleep.

From there, we took a matatu to the edge of Kenya and bike taxis across the Ugandan border, where we picked another matatu to a town in Uganda called Jinga. The people from Adrift Adventures met us in Jinja at this random Chinese restaurant/Shell Station called Ling Ling and we rode in the back of a really nice truck (with cushioned seats and everything) to the base camp. We sat out on this deck over the Nile and have pizza and their Nile Special beer for our Thanksgiving dinner. We were about ready for bed after dinner and 26 hours of traveling, but we had very cool, four-level, intertwining bunks in the lodge to sleep in, which felt a bit like sleeping in a big jungle gym.

I had to wrap my knee up in the morning because it was already getting infected from scraping it up back in Nairobi (and I was a little concerned when I saw the look on the guides faces when they saw it and told me it was going to bleed and bleed and bleed). Fortunately, they were wrong and while it still doesn’t look pretty, it held up really well for the weekend. (Plus I felt pretty badass with my knee all bandaged up.)

So our raft was the six of us, plus Clarky, our British guide, and two Danish guys who both happened to be named Espen. (We all got put together because we were the only group doing a two day trip.) We were all up for going for the “wild” versus the “mild” ride, because how often are you rafting on the nile? ..Although I’m not sure how mild they really would be able to make it; it’s truly amazing how powerful water can be! Adrift has a ton of safety measures set up though; there’s a safety raft and then 3 or 4 guides around in their kayaks, so whenever you fall out, there are always people around to help you out.

The first day there were class three, four and five rapids. I think one of my favorites was a class five rapid called Big Brother, which has two huge currents coming together, but we also went over a fifteen foot water fall called Bujugali Falls- backwards, no less. However, the most intense part of the day, by far, was the rapid referred to as the Bad Place. Essentially. you can’t go through the middle of it without completely flipping your raft, and I think I was actually one of the first people flung out. I somehow lost my paddle, my helmet and my knee wrap in the process, and it was actually kind of scary because you’re sucked down in to the current, and then you come up for a second, but half of the time you don’t even have a chance to catch a breath before you’re sucked back under. But the guys on the safety raft rounded us all up, and it was a pretty mellow ride back to the camp.

So rafting was definitely intense, but incredibly amazing too! When we got to our camp for the night, they already have a barrel of drinks waiting for us, and we all just hung out for a while and had dinner. Later in the evening, we took a ride a little way down the river on the roof of a Landover to see this huge waterfall. One of the guides, Jeffery, went over the waterfall (a class 6) in a kayak, which is absolutely ridiculous! All of the kayakers were pretty crazy though- doing flips and tricks in the middle of the rapids like it was nothing. But the falls itself and driving there were absolutely beautiful. Uganda is a lot more lush and green and just more peaceful-feeling than Kenya. We drove by a big football game outside, and adorable little kids and naked babies everywhere. We sat around the campfire when we got back and had some fabulous pineapple punch and watched the stars, before camping out for the night.

Day two was a handful of good class 4 rapids and wave trains, and some lakes of non-moving water where we got to lay out and enjoy the sun while being pulled along by the safety raft. (A pretty good deal, if I do say so). Then, we got to actually surf on the last rapid in our raft, and were surfing it for over 30 seconds (which even the guides were saying was an incredibly long time!) We also got to try surfing the rapid ourselves on boogie boards which I could only do for a few seconds, but Justine was actually really good at. Finally (and sadly) we had to end our little rafting expedition but we got to trek up between little Ugandan huts with all these adorable kids running around to get back to the van to take us to Jinja. We had a cooler of drinks waiting for us again and got to watch a movie of our rafting adventures. (The guy who was actually filming us the first day had his toes bitten off by a crocodile in the Nile last year! We thankfully didn’t run into any crocodiles, but we did see a couple of little snakes, which I was not particularly excited about.) Before we left the camp, Madalyn, Erin and Justine went bungee jumping over the Nile, but I was definitely too scared and not about to be hanging from my ankles.

We had to take an overnight bus going back to Nairobi, as that was pretty much the only option that would get us home before Sunday night so we could start studying a little for exams this week. The bus was 2 hours late, of course, but we were completely exhausted by then and content to just sit outside and wait. We crossed the border with no problem, but had to stop in the middle of the night because a truck stopped to tell us there were thugs up ahead waiting for buses. We had to wait for a police escort which ended up being a tuck-load of military personnel, but otherwise the bus ride was uneventful and we made it back to Nairobi by 10:30 the next morning.

So now it’s serious crunch time for the next week. But it was soo soo worth it! (There are some pictures at http://picasaweb.google.com/denisemoriba/Uganda although none from the actual rafting..)

I know I haven’t written anything in ages, but these past few weeks have been absolutely ridiculous. Our grant proposals, which we’ve been working on pretty much all semester were due Monday, so we were working like 13 and 14 hour days to try to get everything done. I’ve also been trying to get surveys back from dancers and acrobats, organize a workshop for December, and get this photo lobby display to actually happen and I don’t think I’ve ever been as stressed/frustrated as I was in the middle of last week.

Then this weekend was Sarakasi’s big Umoja Festival, where they bring together acrobats and dancers from the Netherlands, Norway, Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Zanzibar, and have a two week workshop with the Sarakasi artists. The last Saturday of the program, the groups put on performances in different neighborhoods and informal settlements all over Nairobi, and on Sunday, there was a huge performance of all the groups at Uhuru Park. So I was at different events all weekend, helping with ushering a little on Sunday, but mostly just hanging out and enjoying the shows.

Then, yesterday evening on the way to class, an older street kid was following me and asking for money, and then as I was about to put my wallet back in my bag, he grabbed it out of my hand and started running. I didn’t even stop to think about anything; I just dropped all my other bags and started sprinting after him. I almost caught him, but then he jumped into a ravine that goes into the underground sewer, and I was pretty much like- okay, the chase ends here. I tripped and fell in the process and scraped and bruised my hands and knees pretty badly, but I am sooo lucky, because literally all I had in my wallet was some hand sanitizer, chap-stick, 100 shillings (less than a $1.50) and my apartment keys (and one of my roommates just happens to have a spare for some reason)… no ATM cards, credit cards, my phone, etc. I’m sure they guy that took it is kicking himself for taking my wallet and not someone else’s.

So for Thanksgiving weekend, I’m going to Uganda to go white-water rafting on the Nile, which I am soooo excited about! We’re taking an overnight train this afternoon, and then we’ll be rafting and camping out for two days. There are supposed to be class 4 or 5 rapids, and I think they might also have rock-climbing there as well… We literally have soo much work to do in the next week and a half, but how could you possibly pass up an oppourtunity like that?

We did have a little Thanksgiving dinner last night, with my apartment, and some of Justine’s friends from ISSA (where she works). We made mashed potatoes, stuffing, roasted vegetables, rosemary chicken, apple strudel… it was pretty excellent and almost like a real Thanksgiving. And they guys from ISSA are great; we stayed up until like 2 (which seems about like 5 this week) playing spoons and mafia and thumper and laughing hysterically.

I’m sorry this has been a very jumbled posting, but that’s about all I’m good for right now. I hope you all have great Thanksgivings where ever you may be! And hopefully I’ll have some good pictures soon from rafting…

Sunday we had a group excursion to Magadi Lake, Olorgesaillie, and Olepolos. Lake Magadi is this salt lake, in I think the bizarre-est little industrial town I have ever seen! (The salt factory there uses the salt from the lake, and is essentially the source of income in the town). There is no grass or dirt anywhere; the ground is entirely covered in these little white stones, and it was a cloudy-ish day to begin with, so everything was white. There were donkeys everywhere and although everything in their tiny little grocery store looked dusty enough to make you believe nothing had been touched in about fifty years, outside everything was incredibly clean (unlike Nairobi!) and the apartment buildings all looked really new. Then at the actual lake, which was incredibly beautiful, there were tons and tons of flamingos everywhere.

Olorgesaillie was this pre-historic site where they had tons of old Acheulian hand-axes still in the site that the were excavated and a humerous bone of an ancestor of an elephant. I'm not a huge palentology fan, but the site itself was incredibly beautiful. And there was a pre-human skull on display that was 2.4 million years old, which was pretty cool.

Finally, on the way back, we stopped at this restaurant (I guess you would call it) called Olepolos. It's a very authentic nyama choma place (Kenyan roasted meet), where you literally see goats walking around when you walk in, and then see them cooking them for you on their grills. It took forever for them to cook our food, but it was good, and the view there was phenomenal too!


I posted some pictures form Sunday on Picasa: http://picasaweb.google.com/denisemoriba/LakeMagadiAndOlorgesaillieOlepolos

Well, Obama day and the peak of the post-election drama is starting to die down here, but things are just as busy as ever. (Pictures of people from our group were in the national papers and there was a segment with all of us in on the national news though, which was pretty cool.)

Anyways, Friday was back to work, except I took a day off from Sarakasi to go to interview people at this organization called Kuona Trust (for this NGO paper I have to write). Kuona is similar to Sarakasi in terms of programs, except their focus is on the visual arts, so I got to meet a bunch of artists there, and see them working away in their studios. They were working on everything from cartoons and sculptures of things from recycled materials to charcoal drawings and paintings.

One guy I talked to, who made these huge charcoal and pastel images, was working on a series of pictures about the pre-post-election period, before all of the violence in Nairobi last winter. He did one image depicting politicians, one with the media, one of the religions intuitions, one of the international community, etc. He said he had originally named the works, “Who’s to Blame?” but said he didn’t want to judge anyone, but rather document what had happened, and let each group speak for themselves. I thought it was a very interesting perspective on something that happened so recently and was so disturbing to society.

It has been raining like crazy the past few days; I guess it’s probably officially rainy season. The thing is, when it rains in Kenya, it pours and everything becomes a huge muddy mess. And the other thing is, Nairobi has a serious infrastructure problem, especially in terms of the roads, and for some reason when it rains, traffic gets absolutely ridiculous. What might normally take fifteen or twenty minutes to drive can literally take hours when it rains. Luckily, this is only the short rainy season, and by the end of November we’re supposed to be heading into summer.

obama day...

As amazing as it would have been to be in DC during the election, I have to say, Nairobi definitely did not let us down! We got invited to the American Ambassador’s Residence to watch the votes coming in, so we all got up at like 4 this morning, and took cabs over there. We needed our invitations and passports to get in and there was quite a bit of security, but almost 1,000 people ended up coming, so we were glad we got there early. Apparently a lot of the big people from parliament made an appearance, and although we didn’t actually get to see her, Wangari Maathai was there too. (She’s famous for winning a Nobel Peace Prize and being the first women in Africa to get her doctorate, and she started the Green Belt Movement, which has helped women’s groups to plant billions of trees all over the continent.)

Anyways, we watched the votes coming in till about 7:00 in the morning, when they announced that Obama was officially the new president-elect. I cannot begin to explain the energy in compound then, and when McCain and Obama gave their speeches; the Kenyans were excited that their brother was going to be leading America and we were excited to actually have something to be proud of in our country for once. Everyone was laughing and crying and excited (and tired)—just generally a crazy time.

After that the Ambassador made a speech and some Kenyan high school girls who had won a essay-writing contest read letters they had written to Obama. And then, a representative from the Kenyan government spoke briefly said that Kibaki, the president, had announced that tomorrow is an official holiday, in honor of Obama!

It’s been crazy being in Kenya for the election, firstly because in the US, the nation is split between Obama and McCain, but in Kenya, literally everyone is a fan of Obama. And secondly, it’s crazy because we’re so much more important here. We would never get invited to the home of an important dignitary to watch the elections in the US, and even walking down the street today, people are all cheering and excited and wanting to shake our hands. I’m not sure all the Kenyans we’re interacting with fully understand that having Obama as president is not going to dramatically change US foreign policy towards Africa, but it still is cool for them that someone whose father is from Kenya is going to be president of the US.

It seems like there have been holidays left and right over the past couple of months: Kenyatta Day, Moi Day, Idd, the Indian holiday Duwali (which we’ve been hearing fireworks for, during the last week), Halloween, and the election (which I feel like will basically be a holiday here- with people probably going crazy either way. Halloween was pretty anti-climatic, because everyone was exhausted by Friday night, but the rest of the weekend was very relaxing.

On Saturday, I went to the Maasai Market with my roommate Justine, and then we went to Kibera, the slum where she works. It was perfect weather and it’s actually a really nice place to walk around, because there’s always so much going on and it feels much more like a community than the rest of the city.

Anyways, Justine has been working with a women’s group in Kibera, trying to help them get their accounts together, so I was going to go with her to meet them. (They have a merry-go-round system, where all the women put a little money in each week which goes to one person, as well as a doll-making business— but they’ve been running into some challenges with their book-keeping.) It turned out the women’s group wasn’t meeting that day, but there was a parents’ meeting at the school which we got to sit in on instead, which was also very cool, since we would never normally have any reason to go to something like that.

This school that we were at literally has holes in all the roofs, and struggles to pay a couple of dollars a day for firewood and food for the kids for lunch. There used to be school fees that covered all those expenses but they got rid of them altogether, because some kids who weren’t able to afford to pay anything weren’t going to school at all. So now, it’s this women’s group, and a share from their merry-go-round that is completely supporting the school.

Sunday morning, I went to this amazing modern art gallery called Ramoma, because I need set up an interview with someone there for my NGO paper. It’s in this very Indian neighborhood called Parklands, with tons of Sari shops and Indian food places everywhere. It’s kind of like India in the middle of Kenya and it’s very bizarre to walk around there because there are virtually no Kenyans anywhere. (There's a huge rift between Indians and Kenyans here, because the Indians supposedly own a lot of the businesses in Nairobi, and have a reputation for not treating their Kenyan workers very well.)

I don’t know what my problem is this week, but I have been so exhausted! There’s been a lot going on, but it’s just the usual crazy. Our organization reviews and grant proposal outlines for our internships are due this week, so we’ve all been rushing around, trying to find working computers and internet, and meeting with all the people we need to in our organizations. (My grant proposal is trying to get funding to have capacity-building workshops for the performers on a regular basis, on issues like personal finance, different forms of contraception, performers’ rights, etc.)

I needed to meet with the director at Sarakasi to go over some of my ideas Wednesday, but she’s an incredibly busy woman who is literally in meetings and on the phone all day! So finally, after about the third time I had peeked in her office in the middle of a meeting, she just told me to come in and sit down while she finished the meeting, so she could talk to me after. And it turns out, the man she was meeting with coordinated the opening and closing ceremonies of the Sidney Olympics!

Wednesday night was my roommate Justine’s 21st birthday. I got home from work late, so I didn’t have time to go out with her and some of our other roommates, but we had some Halloween-themed brownies for the occasion (thanks to some candy corn from Heather!)

Thursday, we had class at USIU, but my friend Jessica and I decided to leave early so we could get in some extra work on our grants proposals before Swahili class. But on the bus on the way back, we pass by some markets in Ngara, where they have tons of stands of clothing for sale. (The market is actually right around the corner from where I work, but I hadn’t gotten a chance to stop yet.) So we were looking in different shops and got separated a little bit, when all of a sudden these masses of people start running down the street, and shoving us into the shops, and there is white smoke everywhere. It turns out the police had decided to tear-gas the street, which they do on a semi-regular basis in an effort to deter the hawkers on the street, who don’t have actual permits to be selling stuff. (Its' very in-effective though- because everyone's right back out at soon as it clears up.)

The tear-gas wasn’t actually too bad; it’s kind of the same reaction to cutting a really strong onion for your eyes, and it burns your nose and throat, but I think it was lucky that we happened to be right next to some shops. So they ushered us way into the back (which I had a brief panic moment about, because I couldn’t understand why they would put us all in a tiny room where there was no ventilation). But obviously, they knew what they were doing; there was a tiny court-yard out back where all the businesses keep their trash, so we all hung out there for a bit, until the streets cleared up.

So eventually Jessica and I met up again. We were actually pretty excited that we got tear-gassed because now we can say we’ve actually lived in Nairobi, and we decided we would take that any day over the ridiculousness of USIU.

So I have one more class this week, and I’m done for the weekend (and I have no major anything due at the begininng of next week) so life's looking good!

nyumbani village

So we just got back from Kitui, which was quite the little excursion. We left Friday morning and took a bus from Nairobi to this little town in the middle of nowhere! It was an incredibly bumpy ride, but it was really pretty out there; lots of rocks and really red dirt- kind of Arizona-like. From there we rode in the back of a pick-up truck to Nyumbani Village, where we were staying.

So this village is made up entirely of kids who have been orphaned because their parents had HIV or AIDS, and about 30 grandparents (mostly grandmothers). The village consists of a school, a social hall, a goat and cattle farm, and the about 20 houses, and each grandparent has about 10 grand-kids (some of their own, and some others) living with them. They grow and raise a majority of their food in the village, as they're trying to be as sustainable as possible. Although families live, work and go to school there, the village is not intended to be a place where you would permanently reside, as families and kids will eventually go back to where ever they came from. They're also slowly expanding the village, so that hopefully, at some point, it will have almost 1,000 kids.

So we went on a tour of the village and the sand dam there, went to Environmental Day at the school where we helped clean up trash and plant trees, and then just hung out with the kids and the grandmas. (It was a much slower paced weekend than we're used to!) And we got to feel like we were roughing it a little since we had pit toilets which made our entire house smell rather like a latrine, and basically ate rice, beans and corn for four days.

It was a whole other time schedule too because it started getting dark everyday around 6:30, and since there was no electricity and we didn't have many flash lights, we were usually in bed by like nine (except for the last night when it was my friend Jessica's 21st birthday.) Then, however, going back to your house after dark was quite the experience, trying to avoid scorpions, mambas and cobras.

So we survived our weekend and enjoyed the calm of rural life, although I'm not sure how the three volunteers we met there could handle that for months! Not just the life style but they're completely isolated and there is literally no one in the village between like 19 and 55.

[I posted pictures of our rural weekend excursion on picasa: http://picasaweb.google.com/denisemoriba/NyumbaniVillage ]

Soo- we're finally finished with mid-terms, which is a relief because we had no idea what the expect of USIU, but they seemed to be relatively fair.

Today I didn't have classes since it is still technically mid-term week, so I was able to get a lot of errands done. I also went to this place called Amani, where my friend Chrissy from our program works. It's a program that trains women coming out of rough life situations to make clothes and jewelry and all kinds of other stuff, so that they are able to support themselves. I definitely got a lot of Christmas shopping done, but they also have a cafe and a really pretty area to sit outside, that's very peaceful and removed from the city, so it was a very relaxing afternoon.

At Sarakasi, I'm trying to finish a survey on what kinds of things the performers would be interested in for different workshops, so I can hopefully get started on my grant proposal in the near future.

Next Monday is yet another holiday, (Kenyatta Day- this time) so we have the day off from USIU and our internships and all of us in the AU program are going to stay in a rural village called Kituii for four days. I'm not exactly sure what we'll be doing there, but it supposedly has several really successful development projects in the works, so it should be pretty cool to see, and also nice to get out of Nairobi for a bit.

So I guess that's pretty much all for now. My thoughts go out to the Nadeau family; I can't imagine what you must be going through right now.

More later...

I worked at Sarakasi today, and was starting to get really frustrated. I wasn’t there for almost a week and half (since I went to the hospital one day, was gone on Safari another day, and had the Muslim holiday Idd off.) And after coming back, even though I’d been working at Sarakasi for several weeks, I still didn’t know what I was actually supposed to be doing. (On Monday, for instance, I wrote addresses on envelopes for seven hour.)

So today I went to go to one of the training centers in what is supposedly a ghetto, on the East side of Nairobi. A group of kids form the local school meet with a trainer for a couple of hours each week, to practice their acrobatics in another old cinema. And this afternoon, I finally got to sit down with the director of Sarakasi, which was incredibly helpful and definitely what I needed to get re-excited about working there.

Aside from that, we’re kind of getting into the thick of things, in terms of school work. We have midterms at USIU next week, and we’re supposed to be starting to develop ideas for our organization grant proposals and NGO sector research papers. And for our photo class, we’re supposed to have fourteen prints done by next week, even though we haven’t started developing yet, and there is one enlarger for our class of 46 (…which is not even remotely close to possible!) Our photo class continues to be a joke, but we actually got to go into the darkroom for the first time Tuesday. The smell and the feeling of not knowing whether your eyes are closed or not because it’s so dark, was so great and reminded me why I actually like photography. That in itself almost makes the whole class worth it.

So I’m thinking this weekend will include quite a bit of actually trying to be productive. Last weekend, a bunch of us went to the Mr. and Miss Kibera pagent. (Kibera is one of the biggest slums in Nairboi- with I think about 800,000 people.) My roommate Justine works for ISAA, the organization that was sponsoring it, so we were all there for pretty much the entire day, but it was definitely a good time. And the majority of the weekend, we didn’t have power, so Sunday morning, we went to get breakfast at Java House (essentially, the most American restaurant around) I got the best avocado, cheddar and bacon omelet and apple muffin I think I’ve ever eaten!

So life’s good, busy, (and I’m about a week behind on my blog because I forgot which email address and password I used—hahah.) But I was able to post some picture online on Picasa http://picasaweb.google.com/denisemoriba/MaasaiMara#5253984173417790274. There’s a bunch of safari pictures for now and more to come?

maasai mara- day 2

Sunday morning, Justine (both my roommate in Nairobi and my roommate for the weekend) and I got up at 4:40 to see an African sunrise. Unfortunately, we seemed to have had some miscommunication with the Maasai that told us the time, because it wasn’t actually light until almost 6:15. But we did get to see seven shooting stars, and were super awake for our 6:30 game drive.

We didn’t actually see the “Wildebeest Migration” (…think the Lion King) which is supposed to be one of the wonders of the world because I guess it happened earlier this year- and most of the wildebeest are already in Tanzania. But we did see a big herd of stampeding wildebeest and lots of zebra. And the most exciting thing- was that we were able to get really close to a bunch of mama and baby lions- actually eating a wildebeest!

Later in the morning, we got to visit a Maasai village, which you can pay to have a tour of. The Maasai men and women each came out and did some kind of tribal dance for us. Then they brought us into their fenced-in community- to show us how they make their fires from sticks and their huts from dung and mud. Apparently, the Maasai’s diet mainly consists of milk, blood and meat, which I guess would explain why they’re so small! We also learned that they wrap their stretched-out earlobes around the top of the ears, so that if they are running from something it won’t get caught, and that they pull out four of their teeth so that if they get tetanus and have lock jaw, they will be able to take whatever herbal remedy is prepared from them. So the Maasai Village was very cool. We got to talk to the Maasai a little bit- although there was a bit of a language barrier, as their main language is Maa and they only speak a bit of Swahili and English. But the Maasai guys came up with a nick-named for me- Longashu- which I later found out means many cows.

On our afternoon game drive we were on a mission to find a cheetah, which we amazingly did actually spot. We also saw buffalo, which means that we saw four of the “Big Five” (leopards, buffalo, lions, and hippos but no rhinos.) Then at night, the big excitement was that it was Lindsey’s (one of my other roommate’s) 21st birthday. So after dinner, we had a cake and then this troop of Maasai comes in to where we were eating to do one of their Masaai warrior dances. It was very cool because some of the Masaai we had met who worked at the lodge, (including the chef in his chef hat) were all part of the dance.

So today, we sadly had to go back home to Nairobi--- back to school and work and other equally exciting things.

maasai mara- day 1

Well- I don’t even know where to start about Maasai Mara. It was probably the most amazing weekend I’ve ever had, and we packed soo much in but it still went by way to fast! We left in two vans early Saturday morning and drove an incredibly bumpy six hours through part of the Rift Valley and to the Mara. On the way there, even though it wasn’t officially a game drive, we saw monkeys and warthogs and giraffes and antelope, just on the side of the road. We also saw tons of Maasai out in the fields with their herds of cattle and goats, and lots of little Maasai villages. (The Maasai are the nomadic tribe that live in Kenya and Tanzania- and usually dress in lots of red and beads- kind of the Totem tribe that you always see pictures of in books or whatever.)

So we decided the luxury camp we were staying at was probably the nicest place any of us have or will ever stay. Every “tent” (and you could really only call it that because of the zipper to get in and the cloth walls) were basically like honeymoon suites. Also the food was amazing! We had three course meals for breakfast, lunch and dinner that were soo good!

So on our afternoon game drive in the Maasai Mara Game Reserve we got to see impalas, hippos, elephants, hyenas and a leopard. We saw the sunset from the van on the way back, and then upon arriving back at the camp, our driver told us that we were supposed to report to main area for our sadona. We weren’t exactly sure what the entailed, but some of the Maasai led us down into this dried up river bed, behind the camp, where they had made us a camp fire, and had a little bar set up to make us “Crocodile Tears”. (The Maasai working there were fully decked out in their traditional attire and escorted us around at night, because although it’s really not unsafe or at all, you can actually hear lions in the distance.)

After dinner, we sat out by the fire again to look at the stars, which are truly indescribable. Nairobi is so smoggy and polluted that just being away from the city for the weekend was incredibly refreshing. I don’t think I’d seen stars the whole time I’d been in Kenya, and I’m not sure how or why- maybe something to do with being on the equator- but the sky seems sooo much bigger here.

day with the clowns

I spent this morning at Kenyatta Hospital, this gigantic concrete complex that is apparently the largest hospital in East Africa. Sarakasi has a program there where they bring in performers and clowns to sing songs, perform, and play with the kids in the pediatric wards. Many of the kids staying in the wards have been there for months or even years, and hardly ever get a chance to go outside or interact with anyone other than their families and the hospital staff. And many of their families stay at the hospitals with them, so there are rooms and rooms packed with 20 beds and tons of kids and family members.

The kids were absolutely adorable- especially this tiny girl named Suzie, who followed me around all morning. A guy named Steve and I, went around to the different rooms of the kids who couldn’t get out of bed, with puppets, but most of the other kids could come down to the playroom to watch the clowns perform and color and run around. But being there was also definitely the hardest thing I’ve done here so far. There were kids with malaria and AIDS, and in one of the wards we visited, all of the kids had cancer. Lots of them had so much energy, it was hard to believe they were sick, but some of them would sit there and cry and cry. The other terrible thing was there was a whole room of children who had been abandoned at the hospital. The nurses feed and care for them, but with only a few nurses for hundreds of kids, they really don’t get much attention at all.

That particular program through Sarakasi is running low on funding, so I’m not sure how much I’ll be back in the next couple of weeks, but I was really glad to actually get to go out and see it for myself.

Then this afternoon, I had my class on Development of Culture in Kenya class, which is pretty exciting to be done with- since it’s three hours long and the last thing we have to do on a Friday afternoon. And this weekend we’re all looking forward to even more than usual because we’re going on a Safari at Masai Mara. (It’s supposed to be a really great time to go because right now is the middle of the wildebeest migration, and I literally cannot wait!) Our bus comes and picks us up at 6:30 tomorrow morning, and then we drive 6 hours, through the Rift Valley, to where we’re staying. I think we get to go on three or four game drives and we’re staying at the lodge there for two nights. I’m definitely planning on taking a lot of pictures (and I promise I’ll figure out someway to actually post them!)

Today was day number three of my internship and I still have no idea what I’m actually going to be doing at Sarakasi. I’ve gotten to watch the acrobats and dancers (who are truly amazing) and meet most of the trainers and staff. I worked on creating a donor list- and sending out the monthly newsletters today, but I think this it still part of my “orientation” to the organization. I’m still hoping to go see the program where they bring performers to a local hospital, see some of their community training centers, and see the “Ghetto Radio” run out of Sarakasi. I have to say though, although I’m still kind of floating around in terms of what I’m doing, I’m working with a really great, energetic team of people, and the building itself that we’re working in is amazing. It used to be this old, abandoned cinema that was just renovated within the past year, so there’s a huge stage where practices and performances are held. There is a huge spiral staircase that goes up three stories to where the offices are, and if you go up on the roof, there’s a great view of the city.

Some of the other girls have really cool internships as well. My roommate Justine is working with youth in Kibera, an informal settlement or slum in Nairobi, at the Initiative for Sports and Social Arts, and Sophie, another girl in my apartment is working at Umande Trust, where they’re helping communities to create these bio-toilets, where waste is turned into fuel for local schools. But really- all of the internships that everyone has are super interesting, and very different. Definitely lends to some interesting dinner conversation, and I think we might be able to work together with some of our organizations on certain projects.

I just have to add that as I write this, I am being serenaded by the Imam in the mosque down the street. This is actually a very Indian neighborhood, but it is Ramadan after all. I’m amazed on a nightly basis at how well a voice can carry through closed windows and be heard over the Al Jazeera playing in the background as we do our work. Mornings can be pretty loud too. We have a gorgeous view out of our apartment, but there are some homeless people who occasionally throw rocks at their tin shack before the crack of dawn, and some stray dogs who also don’t hesitate to make their presence known. The rest of the time though, Njema Court is actually surprisingly quiet.

(the picture is not actually from anything related to Sarakasi- but we saw these amazing kid acrobats performing at a street festival the other day)

day in the life

So it’s about ten o’clock on a Thursday night and I’m about ready to crawl into bed. All I did today was go to class, but seriously life here’s exhausting. Just to get to USIU, we have a 20 minute trek to the center of Westlands, where we are supposed to bargain for fair Matatu prices with our vast knowledge of Swahili- all at the crack of dawn. From there we have to forage for seats on a USIU bus, which takes anywhere from 20 minutes to 2 hours to get to school, depending on the “jams”. (Although we thought the jams were pretty ridiculous at first, we’ve quickly learned that the longer they are, the longer our morning nap can be.)

Classes at USIU are pretty much a joke. In Fundamentals of Photography, our professor announced today that the board wanted to switch the course to a class on digital photography- mid-semester. (Keep in mind, this is after he insisted that every student go out and buy a manual SLR camera, and regardless of the fact that they have yet to make their photo lab digital). And I won’t even go into International Organizations, except to say that I’m going to be super good at regurgitating definitions of regimes by the time that class is over. Thank God for Swahili, which is actually interesting and entertaining and useful. Who knew classes could actually be enjoyable?

We don’t get home from Swahili till like 9- which for some reason seems like an incredibly long day. But we actually got our act together and cooked some fabulous spinach sauce and rice for dinner. Although we’ve basically been living off of cereal and peanut butter and jelly for breakfast and lunch everyday since we’ve been here (I’m talking five loaves of bread and two jars peanut butter a week for the five of us), we do actually cook real food for dinner. In fact, the first week we were back in Nairobi, some of our Kenyan friends came over and helped us cook chipati (this friend tortilla like-thing), ugali (this spongy stuff made out of maize), fish, lentils, beef stew and I don’t even know what else. And it was actually surprisingly good, considering the fact that we made it.

Sooo- I was thinking I was going to have so much free time this semester, but I think between commuting, classes, my internship, eating, and sleeping whenever possible, our schedule’s actually pretty full already. Not that it isn’t a good time too. On Tuesday night we went to this club K1 for jazz night, which was super fun and a good break from everything. Not gunna lie- by the end of my first day at my internship Wednesday, running on four hours of sleep, I was pretty exhausted. But I guess you’re only 20 and in Kenya once, right?

we finally have internet!

Three weeks today since we've been in Kenya- and it has been a crazy time thus far. The first week we randomly had orientation at a Bible Translation Center in the Central Province, but since then we've been back in Nairobi, adjusting to life here. Everything's dustier, the sky's bigger and everyone stares at us since we are the Mzungus (a.k.a. white people or foreigners) -although people have also enquired as to whether I'm Hispanic, Caribbean, Kikuyu or Obama's sister- since I've been here.

I'm living in a fabulous apartment in Westlands, which is probably the equivilent of Embassy Row in DC. It's super spacious, and we have a little verandah. (Also, apparently house cleaners and laundry women are a standard part of relatively well-off Kenyan households- which was actually kind of weird at first- but I'm having no problem adjusting in that regard ;) My roommates are great too and we cook dinner and eat together every night.

As far as classes go, I'm taking Photography and International Organizations at USIU (the United States International University) and they are definitely different than AU classes- it kind of feels like being back in high school again- that is- if the professors even show up. But we're also taking a Swahili class and a class on Development in Kenya (that are thankfully not through USIU) and I think thouse should both be really interesting.

We also found out where our internships are going to be (which is a relief-because visiting all the internship sites all over the city and having to make a case for the ones you wanted was quite a process.) But I'm going to be working with this organization called Sarakasi, which supports performers and acrobats that come from the slums. Their aim is to use art and culture for social and economic empowerment (yes- I know- blah blah blah) but they have all kinds of cool programs going on at any given time- and I can't wait to actually go and get started- whatever it is that I'll actually be doing.

So that's basically what's going on. Of course there are the unfortunate events like being mugged on way home froms school, on Matatus (the crazy vans- with blaring music- that people are packed into for public transportaiton), or more than half of the people in our group coming down with mysterius African stomach viruses. But we've also gone to some great clubs and kissed giraffes and met really great people. Overall I'd say I'm adjusting well, and very glad I came.

till next time..