A trip to Kenya

Before Easter I was able to travel with Christen and Caroline to Nairobi, Kenya. They had already begun their mid-term break, and I had a few days before my students took their exams that I would need to mark. James, one of the Jesuits, also needed to go to Nairobi to renew his passport, so we were able to drive up in one of the Jesuit vehicles instead of taking a bus. What an adventure it ended up being. The rains had still not come, so it was very, very dry and dusty. They are still constructing the main road between Nairobi and Arusha, so most of our travel was on very dusty, very bumpy dirt roads. They were rough, so rough in fact that we ended up with a flat tire outside of Arusha, in the middle of the bush. As we were gathering the equipment to change it, we discovered that we had no jack. Luckily a car stopped and a few men came out to give us some help. Crossing the border took quite a bit of time, and then we stopped to repair the tire, which also took awhile. While we were waiting in the car, many Maasai women approached us, trying to sell us their beaded jewelry. They would not take no for an answer, it was non-stop. Once we were all patched up we headed out for the Kenyan side of the journey. The Kenyan side was a bit greener, but it was apparent that they were also hurting for the rains to come. On the trip up I saw Thompson gazelles and zebras all along the side of the road, my first experience of seeing African animals in the wild! We finally made it to Nairobi, and I was astonished at how big it was, it’s a real city. The traffic was absolutely nuts, pseudo five-lane highways with no lines and people moving anyway they please. Slightly terrifying. Christen, Caroline and I were staying with the director of the East African branch of Catholic Relief Services, and when we finally reached his house it was close to 7:00pm. We had embarked on this so-called five hour journey at 9:00am. The family and the house were amazing. I felt like I was catching a glimpse into what I wanted my life to be in like in 20 years. He has worked for CRS for a long time, and their family has lived all over the world. As a result, their house is filled with art and furniture and different things from all of these places. The four children ranged in age from 15 to 4, and were so much fun to be around. The two teenage girls loved having us there, we did everything from chat about boys to help them with their algebra homework. When we sat down for dinner and there was a real salad and spaghetti with cheese and meat, we all thought we were dreaming. Then after dinner that night before the family went upstairs to go to bed they showed us how the television worked and we were able to watch tv! I even was able to record one of the Pitt games and watch it the next morning during breakfast! Needless to say, we were in heaven.

The next morning we got up early to wander around Nairobi. We wanted to go to the wildlife reserve and see the baby elephants, so we headed downtown via matatu (like a dala dala, the vans for public transportation they stuff a million people into). We were running late, and not exactly sure which matatu to get into next, so we decided to grab a cab. Shady business. We bartered with a guy over price for a few minutes and then Caroline and Christen hopped in the back and I got in the front seat. Thank God I did that. We were in the cab a second before the driver and Christen says, ‘Um, do you guys have handles on your doors?” Thankfully I did, because neither of the backdoors had handles, so if we would have all been in the back seat we would not have been able to get out. Then the driver gets in and puts the car in reverse, but only moves a few feet before a group of men come running up yelling, reach in and grab the keys out of the ignition. We had no idea what was going on, but it didn’t take long for us to decide we did not want to be in that cab and I got out and let the other two out. We took a few seconds to re-group and then found another cab. He claimed he knew exactly where we wanted to go and off we went. Turns out he had no idea where we were going. He was asking to see our guide books and looking for a map. I was in the front seat again, and I ended up giving him directions the entire way. I’ve never been to Nairobi before. Anyway, the baby elephants are only out from 10am to 11am. We arrived at 10:55. When we got there we went in anyway to see if we could catch the last one, and they said there was a baby rhino still out. We started going through the gate and the woman stopped us and told us if we wanted to go in we would have to pay the 3000 shilling donation. So um, not a donation if it’s mandatory. So no baby animals for us. Defeated, we started walking through the park towards the entrance, the last thing we wanted to do was get back in the cab, and there was no public transportation in the park. So we’re walking through this wildlife reserve, looking at baboon tracks, hoping we don’t get eaten by lions and breathing in crazy amounts of dust from all of the cars passing us, sun beating down, not feeling especially happy. We were told that the Karen Blixen museum was only one kilometer from there, so we were headed there. After awhile, a Hummer with all tinted windows pulls over and asks us if we need a ride. It’s an old English gentlemen and two younger guys, all who were very polite so we hopped in. They quickly informed us that the museum was much farther than a kilometer, but drove us there even though it was no where near where they were going. The air conditioning was fabulous.

So now we are in the town of Karen. Karen is named after Karen Blixen, who the book ‘Out of Africa’ is written by and the movie is about. The Karen Blixen museum is actually the house that she lived in that the book is about and where the movie was filmed. It was really cool to be there, and it was really beautiful. After exploring there for awhile, we walked to a place called Kazuri Beads. This is a bead workshop that was started to create jobs for single mothers in the area. They make all of the beads by hand, they make the clay, the form them, they dry them, they paint them and they fire them. The jewelry was beautiful, and all of the proceeds go to the development of the place to create more jobs. I bought lots of stuff and I love it all.

After the bead place, we hopped into a matatu that was blasting reggae music and had black lights in it. It was awesome. We got onto a bus that took us back into downtown Nairobi and finally made our way back to the house we were staying. We hung out with the kids for awhile in their backyard on the trampoline and then went in for another delicious dinner of pad thai. I love pad thai. Then that night we hung out in the girl’s rooms for a little girl talk, they wanted us to never leave.

The next morning we left and went downtown to check into a hotel for that night. We were meeting some of Christen’s friends that she knew from when she studied in Kenya and going out to a club, so we didn’t want to come in really late at the family’s house. We wandered around downtown all day and bought some really beautiful fabrics and clothing. We went into a place called Nakumatt and I was speechless, it was a real supermarket, they had everything there. We bought all sorts of treats for dinner. We went to a coffee shop and hung out for a little while and had some delicious coffee. We also went into the Hilton, it was one of the most beautiful hotels I’ve ever been in and I couldn’t believe for a minute that I was still in Eastern Africa. This was the hotel that was bombed in the 90s when the US Embassy was bombed in Dar es Salaam. It was just a weird feeling to be in a city that was so developed and so westernized after living for four months in an area that isn’t as much. That night we went out with a bunch of Christen’s friends to a club called Florida 2000, and we had a very good time.

The next morning, on very, very little sleep, we packed up our things and met James at the cathedral to head back to Moshi. We saw some baboons on the way home that were mad ugly but cool to see. Again, outside of Arusha, we ran into some trouble. Mary Beth called James’ phone to talk to us, and when he turned around to hand it to Caroline, he took his eyes off the road. The car started heading off the road, straight up an embankment, luckily the other priest sitting in the passenger seat had enough presence of mind to grab the wheel or we probably would have slipped over. There was some damage to the undercarriage and we were leaking transmission fluid all over the place. We started driving, hoping to make it to Arusha. We barely made it, and rolled into a service station to get fixed up. Three hours later, we were back on the road, on the way home. When we finally made it back to Moshi, Mary Beth was thrilled that I was home, she had not enjoyed staying at our house alone, especially with no electricity for two nights and with the creature that has taken to crawling around on our roof. We don’t know what it is, we have a new guess each night. The latest guess is a bush baby.

So that was my trip to Nairobi! I was very excited to get out and travel around a little bit, there is so much that I want to see around here. I’m looking forward to my next adventure to Mwanza for retreat in June, we’re thinking about traveling up to Uganda afterwards where I may get to see the source of the Nile.