the first days are the hardest days

I apologize to anyone who checks this often, that I have not been posting very often at all. Classes started and work started and soccer kept going and with those three combined, I have felt completely overwhelmed, and like I barely have enough time to sleep, much less post something.

I like all of my classes (Sociology Senior Seminar, The New African Diaspora, African Literature, and Religion in Philadelphia), but they all require 60-100 pages of reading before each class, which I am finding very difficult to keep up with. I don't know if this semester is harder than past semesters in terms of my work load, or if I am just not used to being in Bryn Mawr mode. Maybe both.

Anyway, for my religion in Philadelphia class, one of our assignments was to go to the Haverford Library Quaker Special Collections and Transcribe a piece of writing from early Quaker recordings. So I chose a letter written about a man who had died (Charles Taylor). The librarian brought out this big thick leather bound book from the mid to late 1600's for me to look through. It was pretty amazing to just look at, much less touch, these original writings from 400 years ago. It seemed surreal to me.

This is the passage I transcribed from the swirly fancy writing:

A Short Testimony Concerning Our Dear Friend & Brother – Christopher Taylor—

He was one of the Lord’s Worthies, Strong and steadfast in the faith, very zealous for the truth, very Careful for the Church, a man unknown to the World his Life was hid with God in Christ his Ministry too not in the Wisdom of the flesh, but in the Power of God, It was the seed, the Birth Born from above that could receive him, and was refreshed by him, in a word he was a Jew inward whose praise is not of men but of God and for as much as that he was a man thus qualified I could not well be satisfied that so worth a man as Dear Christopher Taylor should be buried in Oblivion, for though the Name of the wicked shall rot yet the name of the righteous shall be had in Everlasting remembrance; His chiefest joy was to feel Friends in the Invisible Life, and although many Exercises did attend him for the truth’s sake, he was faithful to you. Death, and so has received a Crown of Life, and although his departure from us was our Loss, yet it was his gain, for blessed are the dead, which die in the Lord they rest from their labors and their works do follow them.

William Yardley

end of the beginning

This morning's soccer practice officially marked the end of preseason. The last preseason practice of my life! Whoa.

At the end of practice, coach announced that the four seniors on the team had really contributed a lot to the program and that they each were a good example of how everyone should play and act in general while on the team, and then she made us all captains! So I am officially a captain of the Bryn Mawr Soccer team : )

It has been an exhausting 10 days, but also really fun. It has been way too hot and my body is punishing me for 15 years of throwing it onto the ground, but I have enjoyed almost every moment of it. The freshmen are all really good and the returners all want to play hard, so I am excited for the season ahead. This weekend we have a tournament where we play a game on Saturday, and then the winner of that game and the next play on Sunday for the BIG win. I am expecting that we will be in that BIG win game, and then winning that one....

More to come sometime soon....

for Aunt Jo

I heard that my Great Aunt Jo has been checking this and I have not been posting anything, and I feel bad about that, so here goes.

I got back to school on Wednesday for soccer preseason. The day we moved in, it was about 65 degrees, which is unheard of for move in day, where it is usually 90 degrees with 80% humidity. That night I slept under 4 blankets...also unheard of for August in Philadelphia. So Thursday we had two practices, which were both good. We have 7 new freshman, most of whom are very good, so that is encouraging. Friday we had three practices, starting at 6:30 am and ending our last one at 8:30 pm. Whew. Today there was record heat in Philadelphia. The athletic trainers rate each day's weather with flags based on heat and humidity. Green flag is good playing weather, yellow flag is take a little caution. Red is be very cautious and black is basically don't excercise outside. Today was a black flag day, but the Bryn Mawr soccer team was out there playing hard : ) I have never sweat so much in my entire life.

So now, with three days and 7 practices down, I am feeling quite exhausted...mentally and physically. But I love my team and I love soccer, so none of it seems so bad. One more week until regular season starts and we play in our first official games.

work/not so fabulous surprise

Laura and I had interviews on Monday to work at this big convention they're having in Boston Wednesday-Saturday. We went to the interview, and after 2 minutes of talking to the lady, she told the other woman working there that we were better than the other people on their list who were "kind of B-teamers". That was pretty funny.

So we got the job and went to our staff meeting on Tuesday night where they told us what we'd be doing, etc. Laura and I are with the 3-6 year olds, who are labled "Rompers". On Wednesday though, I am filling in for someone with the "Excusion" group who are 12-17 and go on field trips in Boston. I'm going with them on a Whale Watch out of the Boston Aquarium.

We are going to be working 8am to 10 pm or 8am to 5pm every day, with 30-40 3-6 year olds. Whoa. I think it will be pretty fun though, as long as there are not a lot of trouble makers. Aparently we have to watch out for the "Dalt Boys" though, who are brothers and are a little hard to handle.

After our staff meeting we met Uncle Rob who took us out for sushi and ice cream (yum). Then we went to the airport to pick up my mom and Joy who were in San Fransisco. While they were away we painted their room (which has been unpainted since we moved in three years ago). We couldn't decide on a color so we went out on a limb and chose a spring-y green color, whcih turned out to be a little brighter than we thought, so we were kind of nervous, but decided once we got the furniture in that it looked good.

So when they got home, they sat downstairs FOREVER and ate and talked, etc. Uncle Rob brought their bags up, so they didn't go upstairs for a very long time. Laura and I had been waiting for the moment they walked into their room all week, so we were pretty impatient. Finally Joy went upstairs to get something and came back down and kind of mouthed "whoa", which wasn't the reaction I was hoping for : ) Then my mom, about 20 minutes later, went upstairs and Laura and I kind of followed behind nonchalantly. She walked into the room, put her stuff down, and about 10 seconds later looked up and kind of screamed, "oh!" It was pretty funny. So neither of them seem to really like the color, which is kind of sad for Laura and I, but maybe it will grow on them.

pole sana Africa

Yesterday I went to the library to check out books on various countries for some research I am doing. I asked for books on Spain, The Netherlands, Mexico, The Domincan Republic, Ghana and Tanzania. The librarian was going through her head and figuring out that they had all of those countries, except that "when it got to Africa, we kind of just ran out of money, so we have a book on African as a whole". She said it so nonchalantly, too. LIke, "no we don't have books on the rare tibetan caterpillar, or golfing in Antarctica, or COUNTRIES IN AFRICA". I was shocked, and yet it just seems so typical.

crazy yard salers

So Laura and my friend Rachel and I had a yard sale on Saturday. We put up signs around the neighborhood saying that it was on Saturday from 10-5. On Saturday morning we got up at 8:30 and started putting all the stuff out on the front lawn, and hoards of people starting pulling up and coming out of their cars to buy things! By 9:30 we had made about $10 each and the yard sale hadn't even "officially" started.
People around here who go to yard sales are serious. One lady even told us she "wasn't even going to do any yahd-saylin today". Yet, she proceded to buy a bunch of random objects, and we didn't complain. So many people though, were such hecklers. I had a set of brand new bags, there were four of them, with the tags still on, and when I asked the woman for $3 she said "two sounds a lot better". There were so many people like this!! I kept trying to remind myself that this junk would have been sitting in my room otherwise, and I wouldn't be making any money off of it, but jeez! I was surprised at how cheap people were being.
People pretty much stopped coming at 2:30, so we closed up shop. Between the three of us, we made about $120, so we were pretty satisfied. Then we all went inside and took a good long nap.

makeover for sister #3

Last night at dinner Grace told us all that she wanted a makeover, so make her over we did. Well Laura made her over, whle I documented

We started by giving her one of Laura's shirts to wear as a dress, and it actually served that purpose quite nicely. Then Laura straightened her hair and put all this makeup on her, at Grace's request. She wanted Laura "to do everything she did to herself". When the transformation was complete, she looked like a completely different person! It was so cute!

Here are the pictures from the eventful evening:
http://northeastern.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2064760&l=bb9bb&id=7411464

sala ya kiswahili

This morning my mom and I went to a church service in Lynn that was led by Kenyan priests. The service was mostly in kiSwahili, but also in Kikuyu (another Kenyan language) and some in English. At one point during the service they passed the microphone around to visitors and we had to introduce ourselves and I introduces myself and my mother in kiSwahili! It was cool : ) Then after the service, I talked with some different Kenyan people and one guy invited us over to his house for a cookout sometime to eat some "good Kenyan food". I hope I get to do that, because I really miss that good Kenyan food.

Then we went outside where the whole church (English speakers) were having a cookout and no one really talked to us and it was a good reminder of how friendly and outgoing East Africans are, and how closed Americans are. Because we were standing by ourselves for a while, we left and went back home. I really liked going to the service and hearing Swahili being spoken, it made me feel like I was back in Kenya for 2 hours : ) Hopefully I will get to go back there again.

acupuncture and bus drama

Today I went to get acupuncture for the first time. I was told I have a lot of heat in my body, so the goal is to get that out. The woman put needles in my ears, between my eyes, in my arms, hands, legs and feet. Most of it was okay, but a few were pretty painful. Then I laid there and did breathing exercises for 20 minutes until she came back and took the needles out. It was very interesting, and I am going twice a week for the next three weeks with the goal of making my skin somewhat better.
On the way home, on the 66 bus, a cop pulled the bus over and everyone was wondering what was happening. The bus driver said something about someone getting searched for a gun and everybody got off the bus except me and three other people. Then the driver said the cop had pulled him over because he was "driving erratically", which he wasn't, though many drivers do. Then I realized it was two white cops and black driver. Ugh. The driver went to talk to the cops and the cops told him they didn't like his "tone" when he was talking to them. The driver took the four remaining people on the bus' names and phone numbers for a witness list, and it was another half hour or so before we got moving again. Jeez.

Good Music

Last night I got to see two of my favorite artists perform, as well as a lot of new artists I had never heard of, but were really good.
First I went to Harvard Square for the Mountain Stage Newsong Songwriter's competition. There were 10 competitors and one of them was Chris Pureka, whose music I fell in love with a couple years ago and I have seen perform in Philly and at Haverford College a bunch of times. So each competitor played two songs and they were only allowed one accompanist. Chris went first and was awesome, and I found out that my friend's boyfriend is her upright bassist, so it was cool to watch him play too. Most of the other 9 singers were really good. Some of my favorites were Liz Stahler, Emilia Dahlin, Jason Spooner, and Reva Williams. They were all "folky", but all had pretty different sounds. It was really fun.
Then I went to Central Square to see my friend Annie's band perform. I had seen them one other time in February, and she is one of the few artists whose sound I instantly fell in love with. She sings lead and plays guitar and is accompanied by an upright bassist, a cellist, and a guy who plays mandolin or banjo (or sometimes saw). So I sat there in awe as they played 8 or so songs. Chris Pureka, who had played at the songwriters contest (possibly my favorite singer/guitarist) showed up at Annie's show to listen/watch. After the show she came up and told Annie she had no idea what to expect, but that she really liked it. It was like these two artists I liked so much were coming together into one amazing night and kept overlapping. That makes a lot more sense in my head, and not so much looking at it on a computer screen. Anyway, afterwards I talked to Annie for a few minutes and went home.
I couldn't have asked for a more perfect night. This music resonates so deeply in me, it's hard to describe. I can almost feel my soul sighing with contentment.

Adjusting

The past two days I have mostly been around the house, trying to unpack and find places for things. Yesterday I went into Harvard Square to exchange money and gave 3,150 ksh and got $42 back. That was kind of depressing. Being in my house has mostly been good, but when I leave and walk around Cambridge or Boston it gets a little overwhelming. People here seem so much crankier and less friendly than in Kenya. Even when they don't say anything, you can just feel the coldness.
Last night I made Kenyan food for my family. I made pilau, kachumbari, sukumawiki, and ugali. The ugali turned our horribly. I have heard that making ugali is an artform, but thought "How hard can it be?". It was hard. And mine was not good, and nothing like anything I ate in Kenya. Other than the ugali though, everything was good and everyone seemed to like it. The pilau was an especially big hit with Laura and Joy loved the Sukuma because she loves collard greens.
Sunday I went to church with my mom at a monestary in Cambridge, which was okay. I was allergic to the incense they were spraying around the room though, so that wasn't very good. Afterwards my Uncle Rob, my mom, and I went down to Community Boating in Boston and my uncle got certified to sail there and took us all out on one of the sailboats. It was cool to see Boston from that perspective, I have never been out on the river before in the middle of the city.
So slowly, but surely I am adjusting. I still get extremely exhausted around 2-4 pm when it is my bed time in Kenya. I am hoping that stops soon. My stomach isn't used to richness of the food here yet. I weighed myself yesterday and realized I lost 10 pounds while I was gone, which seems a litle crazy.

back home

I have had a few requests to keep my blog going, so I will try to do that. I don't think it's going to be as interesting as it has been though...so I am not promising anything : )

So I have been home for about 24 hours, and so far so good. I thought it would be very strange to be home, but it feels really good. My dad surprised me at the airport by flying in just for my arrival, from Baltimore. That was pretty amazing. Another amazing thing was sleeping in my bed. I'd been looking forward to that for about 4 months. Also, my Uncle Rob is living with us for the summer, which is really fun, because he is a really cool guy.
Being outside of my house is another story. Grace and I went to play soccer at a field in Cambridge today, and I went to take a left turn and pulled out into the left lane, instead of the right, where there were two cars driving towards me. I need to get used to being on the right side of the road again.
So Grace and I played soccer for about 2 hours, and that was really fun, but I am not in very good shape anymore. My lungs also feel like I have been smoking a pack a day for the past 4 months because the air is so thick with car exhaust in Nairobi.
I went to the grocery store with my mom, which was a little overwhelming, but also fine. I met a water buffalo there named Yvette who was from vermont. Apparently her milk makes the yogurt they sell at Whole Foods. She was a nice water buffalo.
That is all for today. After dinner My sisters and Joy and Uncle Rob and I have plans to play frisbee at the high school track.

I am currently in London, but wrote this in the airport in Nairobi:

I am sitting in a room full of white people here in Nairobi, Kenya at the airport. They’re all sitting around talking and laughing and comparing their Kenyan souvenirs. It is so crazy to me to think that people come here on vacation for a week or 10 days and then go on their merry way. I wonder if they met any Kenyans, besides the ones that were serving them food or driving their vans. I wonder if they think about what life is like here. For some reason it makes me sad and slightly angry. I know that I am just a white person, like them, and there’s no real way to distinguish myself, sitting here on my Macintosh computer, which makes me sad and angry as well. For all I know, looking around, I could be sitting in a terminal in Boston. There’s a kid with a redsox hat 4 seats away. The madness has begun : )

The first thing I saw when I walked into the terminal in London was a big lit up Gucci store. Wow.

Kwaheri Kenya

This is a quotation from Barack Obama’s “Dreams From My Father”.

“There does seem to be something different about this place. I don’t know what it is. Perhaps the African, having traveled so far so fast, has a unique perspective on time. Or maybe it is that we have known more suffering than most. Maybe it’s just the land. I don’t know. Maybe I am also the romantic. I know that I cannot stay away from here too long. People still talk to each other here. When I visit the States, it seems a very lonely place—“ -Rukia Odero, an African woman who Obama talks to in Kenya.

So this is my last day in Kenya. I am actually a lot more sad about leaving than I thought I would be--especially towards the beginning and middle of my time here. I am really going to miss the mentality of the people here, generally friendly and interested in making conversation and sharing about themselves. I am also going to miss the food, and the Kenyan love of eating and taking time to eat. I have come to love Ugali, which sort of grossed me out when I first got here. I am really going to miss Monica’s sense of humor and her cooking. I am going to miss laughing with Chipa. I will miss my cousins over at the Y-Michelle, Dolly, Rhoda, Cheryl, and Maxwell. I am really going to miss Olungah-everything about him. Anyway, I could go on and on. I am not looking forward to almost 24 hours of traveling, but I am really looking forward to seeing my family in the US again.
I want to thank everyone, in Kenya and in the States, who supported me while I was here. Whether it was sending me an email or letter (even if it never got here), or talking on the phone, or maybe just thinking of me, it helped a lot. This has been an extremely challenging experience, more challenging than I could have ever imagined. It has also been extremely rewarding and I have met some amazing people and seen some incredible things that I will never forget. I will also never run out of good stories to tell.

So here I go, back to the Western world, which they talk about so much here. I hope to have the opportunity to come back to Kenya some day.

Monday Monday

On Monday I met Olungah and Whitney and another girl (can’t remember her name) for lunch in town. There a place in town that has amazing roasted chicken, so we ate that and ugali and sakumawiki. It was very good. Then I went with Olungah back to his office and we hung out there for a while before my friend Eve came over and then the three of us walked back to town. They went somewhere and I headed home.
On the matatu a man named Abdu sat next to met and started talking to me and told me he was from Ethiopia. He was really nice and paid for my ride and asked me if he could cook me lunch sometime, but I told him that I was leaving on Wednesday, so that wouldn’t work out. But, he confirmed my theory, that Ethiopian men (at least the ones who ride the number 9 matatu to Eastleigh) are extraordinarily nice and outgoing.
Then I came home and watched “Blood Diamond” with Chipa and Monica made us mandazis, which are like little fried dough’s. YUM. It is so crazy how fast this time is going and to think that I will be on a plane in no time, headed back west. I feel like my head is going to be spinning for quite a while.

On the news on Monday night was a story about how the Catholic priests of Kenya met to talk about condom use and decided that it was not allowed, even for people with HIV. The report said that 315 people die each day in Kenya from HIV/AIDS and that 9 out of 10 do not know their status. The Episcopal priests met and said that if a couple was discordant (one positive and one negative) then condom use would be okay. It is pretty alarming that this is happening, when 315 people a day, that is about 115,000 people a year are dying from AIDS, just in Kenya. You’d think you could make an exception and allow the use of condoms if it would save a few…thousand lives.

Wikendi

On Friday, Whitney and I officially became seniors! All of the people in our class though, were officially done with university, so they were a lot more excited than we were. When the exam was over, everyone went out onto the green and was running around like crazy posing for pictures and competing to have the camera man photograph them. It was pretty intense.
Immediately afterwards, I had the highlight of my day, which was getting hit by a bird! It just flew out of the bushes and into my stomach! It was crazy! I was also hit by a small child running around the corner later in the day, but that wasn’t as exciting. After getting hit by the bird, Whitney and I walked to this amazing bakery where I had a delicious meat pie and some carrot cake. Yum. Then we took a matatu to my house and watched Lion King and played video games with Chipa.
On Saturday, Chipa and I got up early so we could be at the YWCA at 8:45 to leave by 9 to go to Nairobi National Park with Whitney. The YWCA has its own personal driver, which Whitney’s mother gets to use whenever she wants since she is the president of the YWCA. So Mtua (the driver) didn’t show up at the house until about 10:45 and the three of us (plus Mtua) drove to Nairobi National Park. By the time we got through the gate and into the park it was about 11:30. We didn’t see much and Mtua kept saying “the best time to see the animals is around 9am to 10am, right now they are all sleeping.” He didn’t just say this once, but at least 5 times during the course of the drive and we all just kept thinking “well, our original plan was to be here early.” He was also very careful to point out all the animal’s “waste” that we passed. He would even stop and roll down his window to look at it. Also, when we came upon our first giraffe he said “oh, yeah, that is animal!.” It was pretty funny. We were all joking with him and saying we didn’t know what we would do without a tour guide as good as him : ) We saw a lot of giraffes close up and some different deer like impala and gazelle and heart-beast? I am not sure if that is a real thing or not-it was some big deer with big horns. We got back around 3:30 and Chipa and I hung out at the Y for a while and then came home and watched “My Best Friend’s Wedding” and “Charlie’s Angels.”
On Sunday, Whitney and I met our friend Ali, who we climbed Mount Kenya with. He had been in Pakistan for the last month doing some work there for the program he works for in Kenya. We had coffee at a place called “Hooters”, which is unlike the infamous Hooters of the U.S, and he told us some crazy stories from his recent adventures. Then he had to go to a meeting with his boss, so we said goodbye and I headed home.

Alhamisi

Thursday we had our Swahili exam in the morning, first the written and then the oral. The written was much different than I had expected, and included writing a 300 word essay in kiSwahili (whoa), but I think it went pretty well. I went first for the oral exam, and then waited for Whitney and Jenna to finish theirs, and then we all ate lunch at Hekima (the language school). Lunch was a big bowl of fruit-banana, mango, papaya (which is called pau pau here), watermelon (which I took out) and avocado. It was very good.
Afterwards we all took the bus back to town, and I went to go visit my friend Philip at the university hostels. He has been asking me to visit for a while, but I was always busy or sick when he wanted me to come, so I thought I should pay him a visit. He is a pretty cool guy and when we asked him what his plans were after graduation, he said he is running for mayor! He told us that is why he is often not in class, he has to attend all these political meetings. Wow. I was impressed. He made us chai and we sat around and talked for a while before I had to catch my matatu home.
Then I came home and studied for my Psychological Anthropology exam and watched TV with Chipa. Monica made pilau for dinner ,which might be right up there as my favorite Kenyan dish…but there is a lot of competition for that : )

kiswa

Alhamisi katika asubuhi, nina mtihani kwa kiSwahili wangu. Ninafikiri utakuwa sawa kwasababu nilisoma sana. Kwa mtihani, tunasema na tunaandika pia. Ninapenda kiSwahili na ninataka kuisoma tena, lakini ninataka kuwa mwalimu wangu, Daniel, tena. Nilimsema “tafadhali, kuja kwa Amerika kufundisha kiSwahili.”

Translation:
Thursday in the morning I have my Swahili exam. I think it will be okay because I studied a lot. For the exam we speak and we write too. I like Swahili and I want to study it again, but I want to have my teacher, Daniel, again. I said to him “please come to America to teach Swahili.”

By the time I am posting this, I will (hopefully) be done with my Swahili exam, which means I have one exam left, Psychological Anthropolgy, and then I am done with my semester abroad! Crazy!

On Wednesday Whitney and I met our teacher Daniel at Habesha for lunch. Daniel had never eaten Ethiopian food before, but he loved it and kept raving about the “njela” which is actually njera : ) He made us order our food in kiSwahili, which he has been wanting to do all semester, and we talked and ate and had a good time. Then I went home to study Swahili!

jumanne

Tuesday was another low-key day. I hung out with Chipa all morning, then went to meet Whitney in town for lunch. We ate at this cute little coffee shop that we discovered walking by. I had a very good sandwich there. Afterwards we went to a photo shop where I got some pictures printed that I am going to give to Monica and Chipa when I leave. Then I came home and watched Tyra Banks talk about pedophiles.
Tomorrow I have my last class ever in Kenya! Also tomorrow means one week until I pack up and fly back west. It seems crazy to me that this whole experience is almost over, especially when in the beginning and middle, I thought I would never get through it. Now I am thinking about all the things I am going to miss so much. I wish I could bring Monica and Chipa home with me and have them meet my family and see where I live and where I come from. Maybe someday….

Sick tena

Monday I was sick again, but this time with just a bad cold. So I hung out all day, laying low. I finished Barack Obama’s book, “Dreams from My Father,” which I think everyone should read. Some of the scenes he described of Kenya were so vivid and so similar to what I see every day. By the way, Obama is Luo (just like me) AND some of his family lives in Kariokor (like me). Here are some quotations I liked from it:

“Like how to deal with beggars. They seemed to be everywhere, a gallery of ills—men, women, children, in tattered clothing matted with dirt, some without arms, others without feet, victims of scurvy or polio or leprosy walking on their hands or rolling down the crowded sidewalks in jerry-built carts, their legs twisted behind them like contortionists’.” (38).

“The city center was smaller than I’d expected, with much of the colonial architecture still intact: row after row of worn, whitewashed stucco from the days when Nairobi was little more than an outpost to service British railway construction. Alongside these buildings, another city emerged, a city of high-rise offices and elegant shops, hotels with lobbies that seemed barely distinguishable from their counterparts in Singapore or Atlanta. It was an intoxicating, elusive mixture, a contrast that seemed to repeat itself wherever we went: in front of the Mercedes Benz dealership, where a train of Maasai women passed by on the way to market, their heads shaven clean, their slender bodies wrapped in red shukas, their earlobes elongated and ringed with bright beads; or at the entrance to an open-air mosque, where we watched a group of bank officers carefully remove their wing-tipped shoes and bathe their feet before joining farmers and ditch diggers in afternoon prayer. It was as if Nairobi’s history refused to settle in orderly layers, as if what was then and what was not fell in constant, noisy collision.” (309)

“It’s funny, you know. Once you’ve lived here [in Africa] for a time, the life in England seems terribly cramped. The British have so much more, but seem to enjoy things less. I felt a foreigner there.” –British guy he talked to in Kenya (355)

Twigas (giraffes)

Friday I went to a conference on Traditional Medicine that Olungah was speaking at as well as a few different traditional medicine men. It was really interesting. Traditional medicine in Kenya is called “ethno-medicine” because each tribe or ethnic group has its own medicinal practices and traditions. They talked about how Western medicine only treats the body, as if it is mechanical, while traditional medicine focuses on the body as part of spiritual well being and social environment. Traditional medicine is also a much better option for most people in Kenya for many reasons, such as it is what has been known and trusted for centuries, even millennia. It is readily available and convenient, as many Traditional Healers can come to the home of the ailing. Another huge aspect is that modern hospitals cost large amounts of money, while traditional healers can be paid in livestock, or even a daughter for marriage. Towards the end, a traditional healer spoke who talked about how traditional medicine can be developed, such as putting herbs into capsule form, and that it should be more widely recognized because it really works and has helped a lot of people. I completely agree with him, and I said that in the West, you can see people starting to turn towards more homeopathic remedies for things. Overall, it was a really great conference and it was cool to hear from all these different speakers.
On Saturday Chipa, Whitney, Michelle, Tanya (cousins) and I went to see Ocean’s Thirteen. I wasn’t expecting much, but the movie was actually good. Afterwards Chipa and I came home and Erin Brockovich was on TV, so we watched that. It was a movie filled Saturday.
On Sunday Whitney and I checked off a lot of our tourist boxes. First we took the bus to Karen to go to the Giraffe Center where you can hand feed giraffes! It was pretty amazing to hold out your hand and have a giraffe’s big long purple tongue come out and grab the food. We even held a piece of food between our teeth and the giraffe “kissed” us. It was pretty gross. The giraffes live on this wildlife reserve and the brave ones get fed by visitors coming to the center. I say brave, because most of the younger ones are too scared to come near people. We met Njuhi and her friends Brian and Roman there and then we all got back on the bus and went to visit Kazuri Beads, a place that makes pretty beads and pottery, and then went to the Karen Blixen museum, which is where Karen Blixen lived in Kenya. Njuhi said that Blixen’s home wasn’t very highly regarded by most Kenyans because it was a reminder of all the native people who were displaced by whites when they colonized Kenya. I told her I could see how that would be true, and then thought about how the United States is like that times one million. It is pretty sad. Afterwards, we headed back to the city and all went home pretty tired, but feeling like we had accomplished a lot in terms of “must see things” around Nairobi.

James

Wednesday and Thursday were extremely busy. Wednesday morning at 9 we had out first final exam, which was for Culture and Communication. Let me tell you, “Kenyan time” does not apply to exams. At 8:15 I was walking to the cyber café to print my paper, which we also had due for that class, and I saw my friend Margaret. She seemed very concerned that I was walking away from campus at that time, but I assured her I would be there soon. Then in class at 8:40, everybody kept asking me where Whitney was because she hadn’t arrived yet. I have not been to a single event or gathering that met early or even on time, but these people take exams pretty seriously. The actual exam was straightforward and we had to choose 3 questions to answer out of 8. It took me 35 minutes out of two hours, to write 6 pages of answers. When I got up to leave, almost the entire class gasped audibly and were giggling as I walked out of the room. I had two or three of my classmates come up to me later in the day asking why I had left so early and to not do that anymore because it scared them. Even Olungah said I shouldn’t do that. Strange.
Tuesday afternoon we had Swahili class and then met up with Jen Russell and Olungah to meet with some official people from the University. Then Njeri (Njuhi’s sister) picked us up and Whitney, Jen, Njeri and I went to my house for tea, which was pretty fun. Monica had quite the display out with tea and bread and mandazis (Kenyan fried dough type things). So we all sat and talked for a few hours, which was nice. We even got onto the topic of the World Wrestling…whatever it’s called, and Monica was telling us she used to be so into wrestling and was naming all of the wrestlers and who was her favorite. It was hilarious! Afterwards, the 4 of us headed to Carnivore, a world famous restaurant in Karen where we met up with Njuhi and William. At this restaurant they give you a flag and as long as the flag is up, they keep bringing food, which is mostly various kinds of meat. I sampled crocodile and ostrich, among other meats which I had eaten before. I couldn’t stomach the crocodile, but the ostrich was very good.
On Thursday morning we met Olungah at the University, picked up Jen, and headed to Kibera so Jen could see where Whitney is going to volunteer at Carolina for Kibera. Afterwards we went to Nyumbani Children’s home which is a home for kids living with HIV/AIDS. The woman we talked to who helps run the place is actually from South Philly, which was pretty funny, especially hearing that accent after so long. The place is amazing and their goal is to make it seem like a home for these kids. There are about 100 kids living there between the ages of 2 and 24 and they get funding from all over the world. All of the kids were at school while we were there, except for the preschoolers who they teach on the site. We walked into a room of about 10 kids, ages 2-8 who were all doing various things.
One boy named James, who was 2 years old, immediately came up to me with this big smile on his face. We played together for the next 30 minutes, mostly with my camera, which he loved. He sat in my lap for most of the time and would look at the camera then look up at me with his big smile and laugh and then look down again. He ended up taking a lot of pictures of my arm. When it was time to go, I really didn’t want to leave, but I stood James up and told him I had to go. He just looked up at me and wrapped his arms as far as they could go around my legs and didn’t let go. I almost started crying. I really wanted to take him with me.
At 2pm we had another final exam, this time for Anthropology of Infectious Diseases, which took me a little longer than C&C. I felt good about it and caught a matatu home just in time to beat the downpour. My next exams are Thursday and Friday of next week so I have a little time to relax : )

Jumanne

On Tuesday I met up with Jen Russell (our program coordinator from Bryn Mawr), after Swahili class. It was good to see a familiar face from home. Whitney, Olungah and I took her to Habesha, our favorite Ethiopian restaurant and we caught up on each others lives in the past couple of months.
Afterwards Olungah and Whitney had places to go, so I took Jen to Maasai Market so she could have that experience. It was an experience indeed. I ended up trading all kinds of things that I dug out of my bag for various Maasai Market items. As I walked by one man he pointed to the hair elastic on my arm and asked me if I would trade it for one of his items. So I ended up trading the hair elastic and a pen and about 27 shillings for a carved soapstone bowl. Another man and woman traded me a pretty necklace that I wanted for a necklace that I was wearing, a luggage lock and two pens. When I showed the man how to move the numbers on the lock to open it, his eyes got really wide and when it popped open he smiled and cried out “it’s magic!”. It was pretty funny. It is surprising the things they want, like they didn’t really want the necklace I had, but they really wanted the pens and the luggage lock and the hair elastic.
I am trying to get myself into exam mode after not really having serious classes for the past 6 months. I am finding it to be pretty difficult. Luckily all of my classes are pass/fail and all you need to pass at the University is a 40%.

Monday Monday

Well as I said yesterday, a bomb exploded in the city center of Nairobi Monday morning. Whitney and I were saying how we had been warned so much by our program coordinator about how dangerous Nairobi was, but we hadn’t found it to be very dangerous, especially in the center of the city. Ironically, our program coordinator arrived Monday morning to visit Kenya and check out the program. So the day she arrived, a bomb went off. So much for proving her wrong.
Besides that craziness, the day went pretty well. We had Swahili in the morning and then met up with Olungah and my favorite professor, Mrs. Bukachi, and went out to lunch. After hanging out in the city doing various things, I headed home.
I was watching the news tonight about the bombing and at one point they were talking about the police statement and interviewing different police officers, mostly in kiSwahili, so I didn’t understand most of what they were saying. What I found somewhat humorous was that the caption at the bottom of the screen read: “police statement: this was a serious crime incident.” No kidding. Apparently BBC news reported that the bombing was Al Quaeda, which seems like a pretty bold statement to be making when according to all the authorities here, nobody has any idea who the bombers were.
The leading story here seems to be that two men were trying to get onto the bus with the grenade to go to the airport, but someone bumped the one with the grenade while he was outside of the bus, and the bomb went off. I can’t believe they thought they could make it to the airport on a crowded bus, not to mention how horrible the roads are. I personally would not want to be holding a grenade for over an hour while the bus bounced in and out of pot holes and people elbow you constantly getting on and off…but that’s just me.

bombing

So I heard this morning while eating breakfast that a suicide bomber had bombed the Ambassador Hotel in the center of Nairobi. The Ambassador hotel is where all the buses come to and leave from and is a big meeting place for people in the city.

The Hotel was not bombed, it was actually some man who was trying to get onto a bus with a grenade, and the bus was full so as he was getting off, he got bumped and the grenade went off, which killed at least one person and injured a lot of people. I haven't heard anything since 9 this morning, so I am not really sure exactly what is going on.

I am fine though, except for wondering why people have to be so stupid and why there needs to be so much violence in the world. I can't really understand that. Where is it getting anyone?

So that's my Monday news. I hope everyone is having a nice quiet day wherever they are : )

boring

Friday was not a very good day for me. I spent most of the day throwing up and having diarrhea, while traveling from Mombasa to Kariokor by plane and two busses. It was pretty miserable. By the time I got to my house I was still throwing up and was extremely dehydrated, so Monica said we should go to the hospital. They put me on an IV and gave me a lot of different medications. I was there for about 4 hours and they discovered that I had a bacterial infection based on some blood work they did. So the doctor prescribed me some antibiotics as well as anti-vomiting medicine and sent me home. I managed to keep down some yogurt, just barely, and went to bed.
Saturday and Sunday were pretty low key because I still wasn’t feeling very well, but better than Friday. I was supposed to go to a big rugby tournament with Njuhi and some other people, but I decided to stay home and rest. So I mostly watched TV and read and just hung out.
So that is my boring weekend blog : ) Hopefully I will have some more exciting news soon!

Fishies

Today we went snorkeling off of Wasini Island, a couple hours away from Mombasa. Apparently the Reef there, Kisite Reef, is the second largest in the world behind The Great Barrier Reef.
Before going down to the boats, we went down into the "slave caves" where the Arabs used to keep slaves before selling them in Zanzibar. The cave was really cool and there were a lot of bats, but it was eerie to see the chains attached to the walls and to get a small glimpse of what had happened down there for so many years.
When we went snorkeling I saw the entire cast of Finding Nemo, except for Bruce (that was last week), and it was absolutely incredible. THe water was warm and blue/green and it was so salty that you could basically just lay on top of the water and look down at all the fish. There were so many colors and so many different kinds of fish. I even saw a rainbow fish, like the book!
After an hour or so of snorkeling, we headed back to the island where we had an amazing lunch of crab and fish and fruit. The crab was amazing and I felt bad for all the people who ordered chicken ahead of time. At one point we looked up from the table to the ceiling and there were hundreds or maybe thousands of bats above us, which kind of creeped me out.
Overall it was an amazing experience and we were lucky to get such a good price, especially with all the package included (lunch, cave tour, etc). Those resident cards we have are really pulling through for us.
Tomorrow morning we are headed back to the dreaded Nairobi for final exams. This has been such a great time, I don't know if I am ready to leave.

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday to Mary, another one of my wonderful mothers
Hope your day is great and those children of yours are nice to you : )

Love that African Hospitality

Last night Whitney and I saw “The Namesake” which is based on Jhumpa Lahiri’s book. It was very good and I recommend the book first and then the movie : )
Today Whitney and I went into Old Town in Mombasa. First we went to Fort Jesus, which is the fort that the Portuguese used when they occupied Mombasa, and then it was later used as a prison. Since we are considered residents of Kenya with our student ID’s, we got in for pretty cheap. The place was cool, really old and interesting Arabic architecture.
Afterwards we walked around town for a long time, through busy little streets. Old Town is really pretty because all the buildings are old…hence the name, so it has a lot more character than Nairobi. People are really nice too, and generally don’t harass you as you walk down the street. Mombasa is a majority Muslim town and it was really interesting to be in a place where Christianity is not the central religion, as I have never been anywhere like that before. We stopped on the side of the street and a man cut open a coconut for each of us and we drank the water inside, which didn’t taste very good to me, but it was an experience.
We walked around a lot more and finally came to this cute little shop where a man and his wife were sitting. We were told this place had great food and that the man was a really nice guy, and both proved to be true. We sat and talked with him for a couple hours while he served us samples of everything he made. He was a very wise old man (as cliché as that sounds). One of the things that stuck out in my mind was when we were talking about travelling he said “water that flows down from the mountain is clean and clear, but water that sits in a puddle gets dirty and stagnant, so it is better to always keep moving and travelling”. I thought that was really interesting and something I will always keep in my mind. He also told us that a lot of famous people had come into his shop, but when they came he hadn’t realized they were famous, like McJagger and a few movie actors. He also said that Nicholas Cage rented the place out in 1984 to make his movie “Short Cut”, which I definitely want to see now. It was really cool to meet this man and his wife and his food was absolutely amazing.
We then took a few matatus home, trying to get in the general direction of the house we are staying in and finally found a place we recognized and walked home. It was a lot of walking and Mombasa is HOT and very humid, much more so than Nairobi. It was a good day though. We also went for a walk on the beach with the family’s dogs and Lesley at around sunset, which was really nice.
This family is so nice and welcoming. Got to love that African hospitality. It has been so completely unreal being here, but so incredible at the same time. I feel so lucky to have been picked up by chance by these people. Talk about being in the right place at the right time!

Unbelievable

Today Whitney and I landed in Mombasa at 7:45am and started walking from the airport to where we were told we could catch a matatu, a couple kilometres away. As we were walking, this car pulled over and a woman asked if we wanted a ride. They seemed friendly, so we accepted and we started driving down the road. The husband was British, but grew up in Kenya and the woman was from Zimbabwe. They have been living in Mombasa for the past two years, after living in Zimbabwe for a long time before that. So they were asking where we were staying and we said we had a friend recommend us a hotel, but we didn’t know the name and the phone number wasn’t working. So eventually the woman turned to us and said “do you want to come stay with us?” We hesitated, but accepted, sort of in disbelief. The whole time we were driving I had actually been wondering what these peoples’ house was like because they seemed to be pretty well off. They were really nice and said they had three kids our age, two boys who were not currently home-one who they had just dropped off at the airport, and an 18 year old girl who was home studying for her exams and who would like to have some company.
So we pulled into their gated house and walked in through the front doors to find a large, open air house, with an outdoor pool in the center of it. They showed us our room, with a huge queen-sized bed where we’d be staying, with our own bathroom. We were in complete shock. Then they served us breakfast. Afterwards, Whitney and I walked to the beach, which is about 10 minutes away. The beach was beautiful and it was hot and the water was warm. We met a guy on the beach and then his friend, who we talked to for a couple hours. They were really nice and seemed genuinely interested in talking, and not in dating us. So that was really nice and refreshing, after Nairobi.
They told us that if we wanted lunch we could be home at 1, so we headed back and had tortellini and garlic bread for lunch. Yum! After lunch we swam in their pool and laid in the sun. We had tea and talked to the mother, Lesley, for a while in the afternoon and then went with her to run some errands and see some of the town. We then came back and I took a bath in the large bath tub and went to watch the satellite TV.
This whole experience so far has been completely surreal and amazing. I keep breaking into a giggle, just thinking about where we are and what good luck we have had. These people seem genuinely nice and said they like having us around now that their sons are gone.
Tonight we are going to see “The Namesake” at the movie theatre in town. I will write more tomorrow!

tutaenda mombasa

I am off to Mombasa tomorrow morning and will write more when I get back on Friday or Saturday. In the meantime, here are some articles from THe Daily Nation, Kenya's main newspaper.

Mombasa:
Crackdown launched against homosexuality

A pressure group yesterday announced a crackdown on homosexuality and lesbianism in Mombasa. The chairman, Mr. Maalim Babu, said the group, affiliated to the Council of Imams and Preachers of Kenya, was concerned that Mombasa was becoming an immoral town. Homosexuals and lesbians organized a secret meeting at a Mombasa town hotel last week. The group yesterday appealed to Christians and other faiths to join them in the war against immorality. Mr. Babu estimated there are 25,000 homosexuals and lesbians in Mombasa alone.


Kitui:
Eating competition man choked by bread

A man was choked by a loaf of bread in an eating competition organized as part of activities to mark Madaraka Day at the Kitui stadium. Katiwa Ndaya was invited with four others to compete in eating a load of brad and soda in record time. Katiwa, who finished third, had no time to celebrate his victory as his eyes popped wide open with bread stuck in his throat. He was rushed to hospital where he was assisted and returned later to claim his prize.

Wikendi Nzuri Sana (very good weekend)

Wikendi Nzuri Sana (Very good Weekend)

I had a great weekend this weekend. Friday was Madaraka day and after Swahili, Whitney and I went to Njuhi’s house for a celebration lunch and family gathering. Her grandmother and aunts and uncles and cousins were there and we had chakula kubwa (big food) that was amazing once again. It was cool to meet more of her family, especially her grandmother. There was a family meeting that they have once a month where they discuss how each person/family is doing and what each person wants for the upcoming month or year. So everybody went around talking about recent events in their families and what they needed and who to pray for. They spoke in Kikuyu, so Njuhi translated for us. Then we all held hands and sang songs. It was really great to be able to be there and be a part of that. Despite the language barrier for songs and prayers and the meeting, I felt very included and there was a lot of power and positive energy in the room. On Friday night I slept over at Njuhi’s house.
On Saturday we went into town to meet Tim, Njuhi’s cousin, for the Sawa Sawa Festival, which was a jazz festival in the Nairobi Arboretum. The Arboretum is really beautiful and big and I had never been there, despite it being right on the edge of the Central Business District in the city. We saw some great groups play, including this famous South African guy named Hugh something that starts with an M (Masekele?). Unfortunately I have a bad name memory. He played the saxophone while another man played a trumpet and there was another with a guitar. The sax and the trumpet were amazing. They played one song with a group of little girls who were orphans. They sang a song called “make a change” that made me choke up. They were glowing while they sang, with huge smiles on their faces. It was adorable.
Another man sang a cover of Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song”, and while I have always liked that song, lyrics never resonated with me as much as they did when I heard it in Kenya. “Emancipate yourselves from slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds…How long shall they kill our prophets while we stand aside and look…” Those words just seemed so much more powerful in a country where slavery is so recent, and in some cases still present. The white man may not officially be the power holder anymore, but after Independence white men are still the ones who run major companies and live in the big houses with gates right outside the city. Many people are killed daily because of corruption and poverty is rampant. I can now see why Bob Marley is so popular here-he sings about the oppression Kenyans, and many people in other developing countries, face constantly. The oppression that their current states were founded on through colonization and then through the power the European continues to hold.
Afterwards, Tim, Njuhi and I went to Tim’s house for dinner and then we went out to a few clubs with three more of Tim and Njuhi’s friends. I had a really good time hanging out with them and dancing. I was the only white person at the club we were at, but for once that didn’t attract unwanted attention and was able to just hang out, so it was nice. We got back to Tim’s house at 5am and I slept until almost 12.
Sunday I went home and showered and did laundry. Then Monica and I went to the hospital to see my 3 week old nephew. He was at the children’s hospital because he had gotten a bacterial infection, but he was doing much better when we saw him. I held him for a while and he was so beautiful-warm and sleepy with soft little tight curls of hair. I wanted to hold him for hours. But alas, we headed home.

Last Thursday

On Thursday I met my friend Margaret and we went to her room in the women’s hostels for the university. We hung out in her room and talked and watched some guy named Michael Smith (?) singing gospel with this huge church of people in Canada. It was interesting. We also watched a DVD of Westlyfe (sp?) videos. I gave her a keychain I had gotten her in Capetown that was a beaded “M”, and she LOVED it. She couldn’t stop looking at it and holding it, it was really cute. She made us ugali and sakumawiki for lunch and it was actually the best sakuma I have had since being in Kenya. Sakumawiki is a green leafy vegetable similar to kale that comes in long strips. Most people eat it with ugali, which is a stiff meal that looked like mashed potatoes, but thicker and stiffer, and does not taste anything like potatoes. Anyway, both are staples in Kenya, but this was the best of either I have had yet here.
At 2pm I had my Psychological Anthropology exam, which I think went pretty well. Afterwards I went over to the YWCA and watched “The Queen” with Whitney, but didn’t get to finish it because it started pouring and I thought I should get home since getting a matatu in the rain is even harder than getting a matatu in the not rain. The past two days my matatu ride home has taken an extremely long time because the traffic has been so bad and we spend so much time just sitting. Also today on my matatu a song, which seemed excruciatingly long, was playing in which the chorus was “1 pussy and 13 dicks”. Wow. I could not believe it. Another more believable, but still sort of funny thing was that in the newspaper yesterday there was a page with a huge list of people who were supposed to contact some woman to claim their dead relatives’ estates. One of those people listed was Barack Obama. I wonder if he read “The Daily Nation” and is coming to claim his property. Apparently a bunch of his relatives live in Kariokor, where I live too!
Friday is Independence Day here, which is called “Madaraka Day”. Everyone has their Kenyan flags hanging outside their shops and houses. I am interested to see what it’s like. We have Swahili in the morning, but we are going on some kind of “adventure” in Karen. Afterwards Whitney and I are going to Njuhi’s house for lunch and maybe some kind of festivities. I am looking forward to another large amazing meal and some good company : )

oops

SO I seemed to have forgotten the blog I wrote last night to post today. I will post it tomorrow.

Today is Madaraka day (Indepedence day) and we are going to Njuhi's house for lunch.

Sorry for the disappointing blog!

hakuna darasa

“Fear is a friend who’s misunderstood”

That quotation is a lyric from a song by John Mayer called “The Heart of Life”. I have been listening to the song a lot lately and like it very much, particularly that line. It resonates a lot with me after coming to Nairobi and living here for three months and doing all these crazy things that I am afraid of, but then end up loving (or getting used to).

Wednesday was pretty low key. I went into town to do some internet-ing. Amazingly, I was able to get a lot of pictures up online because the internet decided to work and work quickly. I was supposed to have class at 2:30, Swahili, which is my one remaining class now that the professors of the other classes 3 have announced their endings. But alas, Swahili was canceled, so Whitney and I went and got something to eat and to catch up on our weekends. She had gone to the coast with some people from our class, which turned out to not be that fun apparently. And I told her about South Africa. Afterwards we went to a travel agency to book a flight to Mombasa-since she had no desire to take the 9-10 hour bus ride again after this weekend. So we’re going there at the beginning of June, which should be nice.
At 5:30 I took a matatu home which took about 45 minutes to go 2 miles because the traffic gets really bad after 5pm, so we were just sitting on the road not going anywhere for a while. I’m going through Zoë and Capetown-fun withdrawal, especially since the past two days I have come home to an empty house. Apparently Chipa has been staying at the YWCA for the past week. He was supposed to come home Tuesday, but he still hasn’t come home, so who knows. So yeah, back to adjusting to this Nairobi life I’ve been living.

I was just reading the Daily Nation, the newspaper here, and this clip was on the inside of the front page:

Man who Killed his wife jailed for a day
A 70-year old man who clobbered his wife with a jembe handle was yesterday jailed for a day. Samson Karimi Ng’ang’a was convicted by a Nyeri court after pleading guilty. He was facing a murder charge, which was reduced to manslaughter. He agreed with the facts read by the State counsel, who accused him of killing his 67-year old wife, Joyce Wanjiru, on the night of January 14 and 15 at their home in Mbiri, Murang’a South District. Ng’ang’a attacked his wife of 45 years over the use of kitchen utensils. After the verdict, Mr Ng’ang’a said he would start life afresh after serving his sentence.

Capetown

My trip to Capetown was one of the most amazing vacations I have ever taken and I am so glad to have done it. Although it was much colder than I am used to since it is winter there now, after a day or so, it was actually really nice to be in “fall” like weather. It was absolutely amazing to see Zoë, I had somehow forgotten just how much I missed her, which made leaving extremely hard. I think I have somehow gotten used to missing people and being uncomfortable, so that when I am reminded of the good company and comfort I am lacking, it seems so much harder to live without afterwards.

Thursday
On Thursday I flew to Capetown via Johannesburg. On my first flight the pilot told us to look out the left side of the plan so we could see Mount Kilimanjaro. I was excited and expecting to see a beautiful mountain in the distance, but when I looked out we were directly on top of the mountain so that it looked almost like you could jump from the plane onto the snow covered peak. You could also see the giant hole that is the opening to the volcano. It was absolutely incredible. I sat next to a South African man and we talked almost the whole flight. When I got to Johannesburg, I experienced a lot more culture shock than I expected. It was overwhelming to see so many white people and to be in a place that looked like a shopping mall. I met a girl at my terminal who was Pennsylvania and we coincidentally had seats next to each other on the plane, so it was cool to talk to her. She had just done the 20+ hour flight from the U.S. Also in Johannesburg I went into the airport store to look at snacks and they had an assortment of beef jerky type things, including ostrich! Crazy. I got into Capetown around midnight and found Zoë and Ben from Vermont (her housemate) and Ashley, a friend. Then we drove back to “The Cobbles” which is the name of the house they are staying in. There I met Natascha from Germany, Katie from Chicago, and MC (goes to Amherst?)-more housemates. After a lot of catching up we went to sleep.

Friday
Friday morning we woke up and walked up to the University. It is absolutely beautiful where they live and at the University. There are huge mountains everywhere. After Zoë and Natascha turned in their papers, we walked back home and Katie, Natascha, Zoë and I decided to go for a drive around the coast. Zoë had had some trouble earlier that day with the rental car because it was a manual, so I was the designated driver, which was an experience. It took a little getting used to, driving on the left and shifting with my left hand, but once I got used to it, it was fine. It was actually really fun to drive again, and it was funny to me because it was a Toyota Corolla, which is the same car (of my mother’s) that I drive back in the U.S., so I was in the same car, but driving on the opposite side. The coast was absolutely beautiful and the roads I was driving on made me feel like I was in a car advertisement. We drove around the winding cliffs of the mountains, overlooking ocean. We also stopped at a stretch of beach and saw a bunch of penguins, which we walked right up to, and I also found some cool shells. We went home around 6 and then all of us (Ben, Zoë, Natascha, Katie, MC and I) headed back out for Cuban food which was delicious and then to see Pirates of the Caribbean 3, which was good, but long.

Saturday
Saturday we were happy to sleep in a little bit. Zoë and I went up to Kirstenbosch, which is a beautiful garden/park and walked around and took pictures and talked. Then we headed home because Zoë and Natascha had a soccer game, which the other team ended up not showing up for. So Katie and I watched them scrimmage each other while I made friends with a little boy who I played catch with for a while. After practice we went home and had a “braai” which is a cookout and the food was amazing. I am pretty sure I gained all the weight back that I have lost in the past three months, in these past four days. I ate so well. So we ate and then all went bowling, which was pretty fun. After bowling we played some pool and then headed home because we had an early morning ahead of us.

Sunday
Sunday morning we (Natascha, Katie, Zoë, and I) left the house at 5:30 to go shark diving! It was a 2 hour drive to the place and the sun didn’t come up until about 7:15, so most of the drive was in the dark. We got to the place and ate breakfast and then we all went to the boat. The group probably had about 18-20 people in it. The ride out was pretty choppy and we were starting to feel queasy, but then when we stopped and put the anchor down in the water, things got a whole lot worse. The captain was saying how the water was extremely choppy and there were just tons of constant waves rocking the boat up and down. So as the captain starts talking about feeling ill due to this rocking, the man next to me starts throwing up over the side of the boat. This was just the beginning because I am pretty sure that for the entire 3.5 hours we were out on the water, there was always at least one person throwing up. I managed to concentrate hard enough to not do that, which amazed me because I don’t do well with throwing up and I was surrounded by it, not to mention two other boats nearby where you could hear those people as well. When I was getting my scuba suit on to get into the cage to dive, I started to feel extremely nauseous and the captain told us that if we felt sick, getting in the cage would make it a lot worse. But I came to shark dive and I really wanted to do it, so I got in with Zoë and Natascha and another man. Things were going okay at first and we were seeing tons of big sharks. One was even chewing on the cage (luckily on the opposite side from where I was) and got its tooth stuck on one of the ropes. It was pretty intense. Pretty soon though, the jostling of the cage got to me and I threw up that entire big breakfast in the water that we were all sitting in. The man next to me felt the need to mention that at least the fish were enjoying it. Ew. We saw tons of really amazing sharks, but we were all glad when we were back on land and our stomachs settled a little bit.
When we got back to the house, we took a nap, and then went out to dinner to this place that specialized in all different kids of game. Zoë and I split a “game skewer” which had springbok, kudu, and some other kind of meat on it. It was really good. There was actually shark on the menu and we thought about getting it, but the waiter said that the red meat was too good to pass up, so we opted for the skewer instead. Ben, Zoë and I also shared a tasty bottle of South African wine.

Monday
On Monday morning, Natascha made us really amazing pancakes and then we all headed into the city because she was getting a tattoo. While she was being inked, Zoë, Katie and I walked around and did some shopping. In one of the stores, the guy working there had this little baby with him who was probably 18 months old. She was really happy and we danced a lot with her. She was a pretty good dancer and all of the sudden would start what looked like break dancing. It was pretty crazy. She really enjoyed my camera so we spent a while hanging out with her while she ran around giggling and dancing, etc. After the tattoo and shopping were complete, we went home and Zoë and I made Portobello mushrooms with goat cheese and avocado for lunch. YUM. It was really beautiful outside so the two of us went for a walk up the street and into some shops. That night we all hung out and played cards and drank wine and had a good time. Zoë and I managed to sleep a few hours before 4am when we had to leave for the airport for my 6:20 flight back to Johannesburg and then Nairobi.
So the trip was amazing. Zoë’s housemates are really awesome and it was great to spend time with people and just feel at home (even though I was technically nowhere close). I had missed my best friend, who seems to understand me very well-certainly better than anyone here in Nairobi, and that was really refreshing. I was not looking forward to coming back here and getting used to the social and physical isolation again, but it isn’t too long until I head back to the U.S. for some real culture shock : )

siku mbaya

On Monday Monica wanted to be sure I didn’t get to my exam late like last time, so she told Njenga to come at 8:30. He came at 8:20, so I got to school at 8:30 and that is when someone told me our exam was at 10 and not 9. Apparently the professor had changed it the night before and told select people (not me). So I killed some time before 10. I felt really confident about the exam because I had spent a lot of time memorizing all the material. 10:00 came and the classroom was packed with people ready to take the test, all with little pieces of paper they were using as cheat sheets. One of my friends called me over to sit in front of her because she had a paper she didn’t want the professor to see. Sheesh. So it became 10:30 and the professor finally walked in with no apology for being late or explanation and asked the class to spread their desks apart, which they didn’t, so he walked out of the room and said “when you are ready to take the exam you let me know.” So then everybody moved their desks and we waited another 15 minutes but he never came back. We waited there until 11:30 and the professor’s assistant came in to tell us the exam was moved until next week on Wednesday. I was really frustrated at this point, but thought I could take the exam next Wednesday because I would be getting back from South Africa on Tuesday afternoon, no problem. Then the exam got moved to Tuesday morning! This school frustrates me so much sometimes!
To de-stress I snuck into the Sarova Stanley, which is a five star hotel in Nairobi and they have a 5th floor outdoor pool with yellow cushioned lounge chairs. I swam and sunned there until 2, when I went to Swahili. For our homework we had to write 50 sentences that had to meet all these different criteria. This took me 3 days to do, including the re-writing, and when my professor didn’t show up I wanted to give up on this school altogether because I had spent so much time preparing work for this day and I wasn’t able to show anything for it. Finally my professor showed up though and I turned them in.
When I got home the power was out, which meant the TV was not on, and Chipa and I had a really good conversation about all kinds of things. He has his driving test tomorrow and he’s really nervous. He is also really frustrating with his whole driving experience because had had to pay a lot just to take the classes and each time he goes to drive he has to give the teacher a bribe or else they refuse to teach. He also has to give them a bribe tomorrow or he won’t pass his test. Poor guy. Also, we were having a conversation about homosexuality in Kenya and I came out to him, which was cool. I was hoping that he might come out to me too, but no such luck : ) I really hope I can get him to Philly sometime, I really think he would enjoy himself.
I’m headed to the airport to go to Capetown and will share those adventures when I get back.

hakuna simu (no phone)

Tuesday started off well. On Monday we had gone to immigration to get our pupil’s passes which serve as multiple entry visas. We had paid for them the first week we were here and they still hasn’t been processed until now. Anyway, we went on Monday to get them and they said come back Tuesday, which made me think they were just putting it off more and they wouldn’t really have them Tuesday, or if they did have them, would want a bribe for them, as is common here. But everything went fairly smoothly and we left with the passes and without paying anyone anything. So that is good news because now I won’t have to pay $50 to get back into Kenya when I go to South Africa.
I then went up to campus and hung out outside and read for a while because it was such a beautiful day. The weather here has been great lately, sunny and hot, and I thought it was supposed to be the rainy season! I’m sure now it will pour for days since I said this. At 2 I walked over to class and when I got to class, went to silence my phone, and realized it wasn’t in my bag. So I realized I must have accidentally left it where I was sitting and ran out of the classroom, down two floors, and across the green to where I had been sitting 15 minutes before, but my phone wasn’t there. Olungah happened to see me looking frantic and I told him I couldn’t find my phone so he called it. It didn’t ring, which meant that someone had already taken out the sim card, meaning it had been stolen. So that was kind of sad, and I am frustrated with myself for not paying better attention to where it was because I usually do. So I paid 2000 shillings for another phone, but they said they would be able to transfer the credit I had on my old sim card to this new one.
In class (Culture and Communication) we were talking about gender roles and how advertising plays into them. My professor was listing all the things a woman should do like cooking and cleaning and that men should be strong, independent, etc. Of course all the men in my class were agreeing out loud and the class erupted in laughter every time the professor introduced a new characteristic. It got irritating after a while, but I think I was already in a bad mood because of the phone.
Wednesday is the final exam for Psychological Anthropology--we are now finished with 2 of our 3 university classes, which is insane because we are still here for another month. And Thursday I go to Capetown!! I can’t wait! Apparently Zoe and I are going shark diving which scares me out of my mind, but how many people can say they’ve been shark diving?? I think it’s an opportunity I should take advantage of. My dad, who lived in South Africa when he was younger, said Capetown is where all the great white sharks are! Ahhh!

ninapenda nairobi

I am over hating Nairobi and starting to fall in love with it much to my surprise. I was realizing on my matatu ride home today that the things that bothered me so much about the city are the things I am starting to admire now-like the crazy crowds, matatus, etc. Of course this always happens when you know you have to leave a place or person that you have spent significant time with, no matter how much you think you might not like it/them, you start to find the little things you love and will miss. It is unfortunate that it took me so long to adjust, I consider myself to be a pretty adaptable person, but now that I feel adjusted, I find myself with one month left and the thought that I might never come back to this city that I called home for 4 months of my life and walked in and around every single day for 120 days or so.
And I have another thing to discuss. I am embarrassed to be talking about the Tyra Banks show in my blog while I am in Kenya, but Chipa and I watch it almost every day and it really bothers me. The goal she always talks about is getting women to be strong and empowered and to feel good about themselves. So all these girls and women come on her show and their whole life is “horrible” and “ruined” because they have some physical deformity like one small breast or acne or whatever. So you would think if Tyra was trying to promote women being empowered or proud of who they are, she would talk to them about that. But instead she gives them makeovers or plastic surgery and then everything is “so much better”. It drives me crazy! She even had an episode where women talked about their flaws and then they had the option to “flaunt or fix” them and every single woman chose to “fix”, or get some kind of surgery or makeover to change their appearance. I think Tyra could do better at empowering women by making them feel better without these transformations. She always says things like “Stephanie has low self esteem because she has acne”. Stephanie does not have low self-esteem because she has acne, she has low self-esteem because she hasn’t been taught to be proud of who she is! Lots of people with acne have self esteem. I guess that is what you have to expect from a supermodel.

wikendi yangu

On Friday after Swahili class, Whitney and I met Olungah and his wife at his office and were going to go see this guy Toni who is a famous Luo singer (Luo is the tribe that my family belongs to as well as Olungah). We had gone to see Toni a month or so before, but Toni never showed up. It turned out that this time he didn’t show up again and I told Olungah that I didn’t think Toni was a real person, but he insisted that he was. So after we danced a little, we left that place and went to another one called “Deep West Resort Club” which Whitney and I found pretty funny. They were playing Luo music there too so we hung out for a while, then went home.
On Saturday we came to my house and made chocolate chip cookies. They don’t sell chocolate chips in Kenya, but we bought some baking chocolate and crushed that up and it worked pretty well. The cookies turned out to be amazing, despite some difficulties. We didn’t have a measuring cup or spoon and we had to convert all the measurements to mL or grams or Celsius. My oven is also very small so we could only bake 6 cookies at a time and until we got the temperature right, they were taking 15-20 minutes per pan. So it took us about 3-4 hours to bake the cookies, but they turned out amazing and we both felt like we were home for a little while. Between baking and afterwards we watched movies with Chipa, including Memphis Belle which I had never seen, but liked a lot.
On Sunday we met up with Olungah again at school and on the way I had a man reach out of a matatu and grab my chest, which has never happened before, but was quite an interesting (bad) experience. When we got to school Olungah took us to Kibera (the biggest slum in Africa) to a place called Carolina for Kibera which is an NGO founded by a student from UNC Chapel Hill. Whitney is hoping to volunteer there so we talked to a guy about that. Their teen girls’ program was having a photo exhibition of photographs that the girls had taken with disposable cameras they were given. It was really cool to see their photographs, and teaching underprivileged kids how to use cameras is something I really want to do, so it was a pretty awesome coincidence that that event was taking place right when we got there. There was this little boy who ran up to me while I was standing outside and held out his hand for me to shake. I said hi to him in kiSwahili and he smiled and said hi back and then called to his other little friend “mzungu!” and his friend immediately came over with his little hand stretched out to shake mine. It was adorable. Afterwards we went to another part of Kibera where Olungah got his car washed and the windows fixed while we had a beer and talked at a little restaurant nearby.
And that was my weekend (wikendi yangu). Today my mom is going to Israel for two weeks and we are going to be in the same time zone for all that time! I wish her safe travels and fun times in GMT+3 : )

Njenga wapi?

So Thursday, Njenga-the man who usually gives me a ride to school, didn’t show up at 8:45 when he usually comes and didn’t answer his phone when we called him. I had an exam at 9 am, which I had previously not been stressed out about, until it got to be 9am and I was still sitting in my house. So Monica called someone else who drove me to school. I walked into the classroom 15 minutes late to about 80 people all being quiet and writing away at their exams. The exam was a one hour timed exam which started at 9, but luckily it only took me about 35 minutes to do. Whew. That was kind of nerve wracking. After the exam I met up with Hassan who is the guy making the movie about Terrorism that I was interviewed for on Sunday. He needs help with the production of the movie in terms of recruiting people for interviews and asked if I wanted to be part of his team and I said yes. He is a cool kid and we talked a lot about his movie and then bought me lunch. Some things about Kenya being old fashioned in terms of gender equality annoy me, but I have to admit I enjoy men paying for things all the time.
On Tuesday when I was at Masaai Market I was saying how I wished I could shop for the things at Masaai Market without the constant hassle of bargaining and people following me and offering me things. One man actually said to me “Do you need a zebra?” I couldn’t stop laughing. Almost every person comes up to me and says “My seestah I give you good price!” which usually means starting at 10x whatever they would charge a normal, non-mzungu person. So anyway, I was walking slowly down the street Thursday killing time before I went home because class was canceled and it was early, and I came upon this shop called “Zanzibar Curio Shop” and decided to go in. What do you know, this place was huge and sold everything Masaai Market sold at fixed prices that were a lot lower than I could get as a mzungu at Masaai Market! My wishes were answered and I spent the next hour or so there exploring and buying some presents for people at home : )

Ethiopian men

Happy Birthday to one of my lovely mothers, Joy : ) I hope you are having a great day!

So Wednesday on my matatu ride home a man came and sat down next to me. People sit next to me all the time on matatus as they are not known for being spacious or not completely filled to capacity. People, however, do not usually start up conversations with me. Only two people in my daily matatu rides have ever started up a conversation with me like this man did. His name was Abush and the other was Araya. Both talked to me and introduced themselves and then invited me over for tea sometime. Interestingly, both were Ethiopian as well. Another interesting thing is that usually when men talk to me I get a bad feeling and can sense that they are just talking to me because I am a white woman and they want to have sex or marry me or various other things they suggest. But both of these men seemed genuinely nice (although it’s possible that they are just good actors). I think it is really interesting that both were Ethiopian. Are random Ethiopian men generally friendlier than random Kenyan men? Is it just a crazy coincidence and I am stereotyping based on two people? I mean I am positive that not ALL Ethiopian men are like this because that is a lot of people to generalize. I do not know, I just think it’s interesting. Anyway, Abush wanted me to come over to his house for tea sometime and I said maybe we could meet in the city for tea. He also paid my matatu fare, which was really nice.
Other than having yet another pleasant experience with a guy on a matatu, my day was uneventful. I was supposed to meet a friend in the morning, but once I got to campus she told me that her aunt was sick and she had to go to her place, so I spent the hours between 10am and 2:30 pm reading a book and studying a little for my test on Thursday. Chipa showed me this little book he has of test taking tips, which I read. I told him that after I read it I felt a lot more nervous for my test than I had before reading it. He said “yeah I usually read that before tests in high school instead of studying”. I asked him how that went for him, how he did on those tests, to which he replied “not very well”. It was pretty funny. So I am going to review the material as well as reading the little book.

making trades

Happy Birthday Tia Julie!! I hope those little cousins of mine are being nice to you.

Tuesday we met at Masaai Market for the first half of Swahili class. As soon as I got there, I had an entourage of 3 men who said they wanted to show me their shop and that they would wait for my other friend to come and deliver her to me. They did in fact do that, and they also wanted to give me some very bad deals, so eventually I got rid of them when I told them I wouldn’t pay what they wanted. I did end up getting some cool stuff. I was buying a painting from one lady and she wanted more money than I had left so she asked what else I had in my bag. I told her I only had a pen and some hand sanitizer (besides my water and notebook, which I needed), so she ended up selling me the painting for 150 shillings, half a bottle of hand sanitizer, and a pen. What a bargain. I also got (for free) a cool sunburn on my back with a white line from where my bag strap was. Just picture a “no” symbol, but instead of a red slash with a white background, I have a white slash with a red background. Cool : )
The second half of class we sat in a park and learned Swahili and talked about our purchases and showed each other what we got. After class we were going to make our bus reservations for Mombasa on Thursday but the news has been showing clips of people wading through water waist-deep in Mombasa because of flooding there, so we decided to put it off for another weekend and bake chocolate chip cookies at my house this weekend instead.
We have our first test, which they call a CAT here- something that starts with “c” achievement test?- on Thursday in Anthropology of Infectious Diseases, which should be interesting.
OH! My sister had her baby on Friday! It is a boy and his name is something that sounds like Shay or Oshay, I am not sure. I will have to find out more about that. So now I am the proud Aunt of two little boys : )

leo

Today was a National Day of Prayer and Mourning for the victims of the Kenya Airways flight and their families. There was an interfaith prayer service that was televised as well as a National moment of silence at 11:05.
I went to Swahili at 2:30 and Daniel let us have class outside instead of in the dungeon, I mean basement, of the building we usually have class in. So we went to a park nearby and sat and had class. It was nice to be outside for a change. Our classroom has one overhead light and a few small windows along the top of one wall. It’s pretty dismal. We learned a lot. I am really starting to feel like I can speak Swahili. After class Daniel and I walked towards our respective matatus and had a conversation in Swahili. It is a cool feeling to have it all come together and be able to talk in sentences and paragraphs.
Other than that, the day was pretty uneventful. I watched the Tyra show with Chipa when I got home, as I usually do if I am home before 6. My mom sent me her sermon from Mother’s Day, and in it was this quotation about “home” that I really liked, and made me really miss my home in the U.S. This is the quotation:

“home is … an emotion, a deep-rooted sense of welcome and permanence and belonging. It’s the safe, intensely personal realm where you can permit yourself to throw off everything that isn’t fundamentally, essentially you. It’s a complex, messy stew of throat-catching slants of light, kitchen smells, and déjà vu. If you’re lucky and the place has been around for a while, it can connect you – with people you never knew. Some people have a home from childhood; others spend a lifetime looking for it. Once you recognize it, you’re bound to it forever – even if it sits in an extreme locale. Even if it disappears.” -Dwight Young

I am starting to like Nairobi a lot better and starting to think that I will miss it when I go home, but I often look forward to returning to feeling what Dwight Young describes in that paragraph.

wikendi

Friday was pretty uneventful. We had kiSwahili and went to Java House afterwards. We ran into Matt and Kevin there, two of the guys we hiked with from St. Lawrence. It was good to see them again before they go back to the states. Friday night I hung out at the YWCA with my cousins and Whitney.
On Saturday, Whitney and I went to Njuhi’s house because her older sister was having a get together for her birthday. When Kenyans have get-togethers, it means two things: good food (and lots of it) and good company. So we hung out with a lot of people and ate some great food and laughed and talked. We met a friend of Njeri’s (Njuhi’s sister) who went to school in the U.S. so we compared culture shock stories of being American and going to school in Kenya and her being Kenyan and going to school in America. It was really interesting to hear what she had to say and to see how much we had in common. Njuhi’s mother is adorable and a great cook and I spent a lot of time talking to her and listening to her stories of when she was growing up with 7 siblings. She’s pretty funny. It was great to see Njuhi in her element. She seemed to be glowing, she was so happy, despite her being so tired from end of school craziness and traveling. She told me that this is what she misses most when she’s in the States and I can see why. At one point in the middle of the party, Njeri turned off the music and said we were going to have a talent show and everyone had to go around the room and share a talent. It was pretty hilarious. Mine was popping out my shoulder blades which made the whole room gasp and a few people ask me to do it again. Njeri and another girl, Kate, sang songs. Njuhi did some freestyle poetry, which was really good and nice to hear, as that is something I really miss from the U.S. The party died down around 9:30 and Whitney and I stayed and had some wine with Njuhi and her mom and talked with them and Njeri and her friend Brian. We left around 11:30 and went back to the YWCA. It was such a fun time and so nice to spend time with Njuhi and her family in her house and eat such amazing food in large quantities. That is my kind of party : )
Sunday was Mother’s Day and I went to Nakumatt to buy food to make Chicken Masaman Curry for dinner. I also bought Monica some flowers, which the vender initially tried to sell to me for 1,200 shillings but quickly lowered the price to 300 when he realized I wasn’t brand new to Kenya because I answered him in kiSwahili telling him I wouldn’t pay that much. Then, as I carried the flowers to the matatu, I had at least 4 men ask me if the flowers were for them, etc etc. Ugh. Can’t a girl just get her mother flowers on Mother’s Day?? I was actually thinking it was pretty funny because I hadn’t showered in two days and was wearing my glasses and feeling pretty disheveled, but these men just do not give up : )

Happy Mother's Day!

I realize that with my host mother here I am now the proud child of 6 mothers. SO happy Mother's Day to Mom, Joy, Vicki, Mary, Meredith, and Monica. : ) You guys are the best and I wouldn't be where I am with out you.

Thank you.
Love
Sarah

what do may showers bring?

On Thursday I met Njuhi in town for lunch! She called me on my way back from Mount Kenya and we met up on Thursday and hung out for a few hours. It was really cool to see a familiar face from the U.S. She filled Whitney and I in on all the madness that has been happening at Bryn Mawr and it made me very grateful for the boredom I have been complaining about.
After we hung out with her for a few hours we took a bus out to Karen for “the last supper”. We were walking through Karen and talking about how we felt like we were in a different world-all the houses have huge walls outside of them with electric fencing and it’s shady and spacious. Then we walked into the St. Lawrence compound and there were all these white tents set up and catering bars. It was pretty nice. So we had dinner there and then there was a performance by this group of a bunch of drummers and dancers who were awesome. Watching the dancing and listening to the drumming was almost intoxicating. Then some guys came out and were juggling fire and others were doing acrobatics. It was really cool. At the end they played some songs and everyone got up and danced including some adorable little kids. After the dancing stopped I was playing on one of the djembes and a couple of the drummer guys said I should come over to where they play because it’s in Kariokor and I could play with them. So that will be really cool.
On my way home this morning I got stopped by some people making a documentary film. They were interviewing expats (foreigners) living in Kenya about their views on terrorism. So they asked me a bunch of questions like “Do you think all Muslims are terrorists?” and “What does a war on terror mean to you?” It was pretty interesting. Hopefully it will be a good movie.
In other news, I just booked my flight to Capetown to visit Zoë! I am really excited. I am leaving the 24th and coming back the 29th of May. May is turning out to be a really busy month, but in a very good way : ) Tomorrow Whitney and I are going to Njuhi’s house for her sister’s birthday party. I am excited to finally meet her family.

Standing Above the Clouds

Climbing Mount Kenya was an incredible, challenging experience that I could have never imagined before going. I was not prepared at all to go in terms of gear or physical shape (I should have been running 10 miles a day with a backpack on). I didn’t have gloves or hiking boots, both of which would have made the climb 10x easier. I was actually the only one in the group of 20 who climbed the entire mountain, up and down, in sneakers. Despite some discomfort, it was absolutely amazing. Here is a little recap:

Sunday
On Saturday night I spent the night at Whitney’s because we were getting picked up at the YWCA at 6:30 am on Sunday morning. Whitney’s host mother is away and it was our cousin Maxwell’s birthday, so there was a “no parents in the house, let’s have a party” birthday party for him. It was fun and I met a lot of fun people, but didn’t sleep much that night. We got picked up in the morning and drove a few hours to Chogoria, which is a town at the base of the mountain. We met our guides there and piled all of our stuff and ourselves on top of and into two Land Rovers that looked like they were at least 20 years old. From there we started to make our way up the dirt road to the entrance gate of the mountain. There were 11 of us in each car with the guides and drivers and there was nothing to hold onto as we bounced up and down over the bumps and mud pits. Both cars kept getting stuck in the mud and after pushing them a few times, the drivers decided that they couldn’t go any further and we got our backpacks down and hiked 2 km straight up to the base camp at 2900 meters. It was only 2 km, but it was absolutely exhausting because of the incline and the weight of our bags, which we weren’t used to yet, not to mention the altitude change. We got to base camp and explored the land a little, which was beautiful. We then made dinner of pasta and beans and afterwards were briefed on the dangers of altitude sickness. Apparently 50% of altitude sickness deaths happen on Mt. Kenya and Mt. Kilimanjaro. I didn’t realize how serious altitude sickness was. The guide told us that if we started to feel the effects of it, we had 3 hours to get down before it was too late. Whoa. After that we went to bed. I slept in a wool sweater, hat, fleece jacket, and sweat pants, under three blankets and was absolutely freezing.

Monday
Monday and Tuesday might have been the longest days of my life. Monday morning we woke up at 6, had breakfast of oatmeal, which I tried to force down, and set off for the climb. We started through some beautiful forest and I saw a wild chameleon in the bushes along the trail. The hike was absolutely beautiful. I don’t know if words can describe it, but I took a lot of pictures. I saw everything from enormous waterfalls to amazing rock formations, to crazy plants that only grown at high altitudes on free standing mountains like Mount Kenya. The hike was also extremely physically challenging. We would climb up for hours only to reach the top and realize there was another peak twice as big right behind the one we had just climbed. We climbed down and up through a crater, which was really cool. Breathing was really difficult the higher we climbed. We ended up hiking 17 kilometers (10.5 miles) before we got to camp at 4200 m (14,000 feet)-and all this with 30-40 pound on our backs. Once we got to camp I was absolutely exhausted as well as absolutely freezing. I put on every piece of clothing I had and wrapped myself in a wool blanket. We had dinner of pasta and beans again and went to sleep around 9, but I didn’t sleep more than 30 minutes the entire night because I was so cold. One girl in our group was having some pretty bad breathing problems and ended up getting really sick and not being able to climb the next day.

Tuesday
Tuesday morning we woke up at 2am to start our climb to point Lenana, the 3rd highest peak on Mount Kenya, and the only one you can reach without technical climbing equipment. We hiked through the dark up some really steep slopes and had to stop every 15 minutes or so to catch our breaths. The ground was frozen crunchy gravel and with the light from the stars and moon it felt like we were hiking mountains on the moon. We made it to 4700 meters by about 6:30am and watched the sun come up over the mountains. At this point we were standing above the clouds and seeing the sun rise at this level was breath taking (and not just because of the lack of oxygen at this altitude). At 4700 meters we put down our packs and started walking towards the summit. I don’t think I have ever been so cold in my entire life. My feet had gotten wet from the morning’s walk and were completely numb by this point. I also didn’t have gloves so my hands were numb as well as my face. I started to walk towards the peak, but every few steps I had to sit down. I think the combination of no sleep the night before and numb feet really did me in. I kept getting up and telling myself that I could do it, I could make it those last 100 meters up after coming this far, but after I tried a few times and failed, I decided it wasn’t worth hurting myself and slowly started to walk back down. I was disappointed, but also knew that I had made it really far and that was an accomplishment in itself.
After that, there was nowhere to go but down, so we started the descent. It was somewhat terrifying to go down because it was really steep and the only thing to step on was loose gravel. Samuel, the guide, took me by the hand and showed me how to “skate” down, which is kind of like skiing (with no skis), but you essentially run down the mountain, letting your feet slide down with every step. It was pretty difficult at first, especially with the weight of the pack, but I got a hang of it after a lot of falling, and it was sort of fun by the end. We made it down to about 4200 meters and stopped to have breakfast. We had all our bags down and everybody was sort of lounging around on the ground when we noticed these oversized hamster looking things. They’re called Rock Hyrax’s and are actually the closes living relative to the elephant, but look nothing like elephants.--they are about the size of groundhogs and have brown fur. These little guys wanted our food and started chewing on jars of peanut butter and bags of pretzels. They wouldn’t give up either when we tried to poke them with a stick or toss pebbles in their direction. It was pretty hilarious.
Around 11 we headed off on our hike to 3300 meters, which was another 9 km (after the 7 km before breakfast). The hike was long, but really beautiful. I noticed that at about 3500 km, I could take a deep breath without it being painful. By the time we made it to camp around 5:30pm I hadn’t slept in about 48 hours and I don’t know how my body was still functioning. I think I was on some sort of auto pilot. We set up our tents and made dinner…more beans, and then went to sleep. Both nights on the mountain, the sky was absolutely gorgeous. I have never seen anything like it. It was almost like there wasn’t any part of the sky without a star in it. I felt like I was living in Van Gogh’s “Starry Night”. I wish I could have taken a picture.

Wednesday
I slept like a rock and woke up at 7, had breakfast, which was more oatmeal. I hated oatmeal as a kid and haven’t eaten it since I was about 7 or 8. I thought “I am an adult now, I can make myself eat this,” but I was wrong. I tried a few times on the trip, but could never get more than a few spoonfuls down. I guess there are some things you just can’t overcome : )
We hiked down another 9km and made it to the vans to take us back to Nairobi. Along the way we saw a lot of Olive Baboons. We also saw this huge line across the entire road and when we got closer, realized it was a trail of ants about an inch thick, making their way across the road. I’ve never seen anything like it and it was amazing how they stayed in this perfect strip all along the path. Who knew ants could be so fascinating?
The hike was something I will definitely never forget—especially not in these next couple days where every step reminds me of each muscle I used to climb the mountain. I really enjoyed getting to know some of the St. Lawrence kids. Most of them are really down to earth and were really fun to be around. They have all been here since January and are going home on Saturday, so they kept talking about what they were going to do when they got home, like eat real ice cream or pizza, or sleep in their beds for days. It made me slightly nostalgic for the U.S. They invited us to the place they’re staying in Karen, “the compound” on Thursday night for their “last supper” so we are going over there to celebrate with them.
At one point on the way down Samuel pointed to the highest peak and said “When you come back, you hike that one, but you need to practice in America with rock climbing”. I sort of laughed and said “okay”. I don’t know if I will ever be back to climb Mount Kenya, especially the highest peak, but I am really glad I got the opportunity to go on such an amazing adventure.