Wazungu Waenda Safari

So this is definitely an image-heavy post, but I think it's kind of necessary. I went on Safari this last weekend, and it was SO great! We spent three days in Maasai Mara. I saw more elephants than I ever dreamed possible, and saw some amazing sights. From a lion eating its prey to a pair of hyenas mating... I definitely saw a good portion of the animal kingdom. We saw four out of the big five which are lions, elephants, rhinos, buffalo and leopards (or cheetahs). The rhino was the only one to give us the slip. But we were super lucky to see both a leopard and cheetahs. There's not a whole lot else to say, so here are some of the pictures I snagged!

Mulembe Mno!

Well it's been an extremely busy free weeks, which would explain my lack of updates.

At ICA, we've been busy getting ready for our director, Tonny, to go to the States. He's giving some talks at AU, and I've been helping set up some presentations for him along with the other guys at the office. Even though we're busy, I am absolutely LOVING every minute at my internship. Those are the days I look forward to most during the week. I'm so happy we're interning full-time now.

Right before we started interning three plus days a week, we had rural week! We went to Luhya country near Kisumu on Lake Victoria. The village I stayed in was called Ebusubi, and is right by Luanda. I stayed with a mother, Pamela and her six children. I've had so many more firsts since that week!

I saw a chicken get killed - we all g

ave live chickens to our families as a present on the first day, and we ate it that night!

I ate my second fish head... it's still weird after two times.

I ate termites...

I pruned a maize field! (Be proud, Uncle Wayne!)

I carried a banana tree branch on top of my head from Luanda to my village! Talk about something for the locals to point at.

I witnessed a shooting! Well, kind of. My mama was getting her hair done in town, and all of a sudden, there was a huge commotion. Apparently, there was a guy in who was selling illegal Ugandan alcohol. The police tried to arrest him, and he was resisting. It almost reminded me of the old Wester movies that we see. People were standing on the side of the road watching. That's when the alcohol salesman called his friends, and the police called their friends. The friends started to throw rocks at the police, and the police weren't going to take it. I was sitting in the back of the store, and all of a sudden I heard gun shots and screaming. That's when about twenty people ran into the store and they slid the doors closed. And there I am, a lone white girl, hiding in the back corner with all of the potato sacks. More gun shots fired, and people ran to the back of the store. I was so scared the entire time, I didn't know what was going on because I really don't speak Luhya, and people were running around, freaking out. Shortly after, the shots stopped. Unfortunately, a little boy was hit by a bullet as he was watching on the side of the road. He was shot in the leg and taken to the hospital.

I was so shaken up after this, that my mama decided she should get me home as soon as possible. So she called her friend, the pikipiki driver. A pikipiki is a motorcycle taxi that people take short distances for the most part. So we hop on this motorcycle and fly through the hilly roads of Ebusubi.

What a day that was!

Other than that, I had a fairly tame rural week. No more guns fired, and no super strange foods eaten. I had a super great time and I'm so glad that it was a part of this trip.

Up next: I'm going on safari tomorrow!! Cross your fingers that I see some elephants up-close and personal!

The Good Life

Well I've had a lot of firsts in the past week and a half!

Last weekend, we had our first experience with a long-term power outage. No power for 48 hours! Thankfully the generators let us charge things, so we were still able to do work, but after 6:30, we were doing it by the light of flashlights.

I also saw my first camel! I was walking away from the ICA office, on my way home, and right there in the street was some guy just hanging out on top of his camel! I was walking with Tush from the office, and he didn't seem surprised at all, but I was so excited!

I was on Kenyan National Television! Jessie, Margaret, Nathan and I went to the Safaricom Kenya Live! concert, which was an all-night event with some really cool Kenyan artists. We had a really great time. And then, I was walking with Ken from ICA on Thursday, and he told me that he had been watching the concert on his TV when all of a sudden, they showed Jessie and I dancing and then announcer commented, "And even an international crowd graces the event". I'm also 90% sure that they filmed us while we were making fun of some of the other people's dancing... so that's not embarrassing at all. Now Jess and I will have to be careful about dancing in public. We might be recognized!

This week is going to be very hectic and busy. I have two USIU midterms on Wednesday, as well as a Swahili midterm that day. I also have a 6 page single spaced final exam due on Tuesday for my Politics of Culture in Kenya class, and on Friday my final project and presentation are due for that same class. After this week though, we go to Western Kenya where we'll learn about rural life here and I will learn how to walk with water on top of my head!

After rural week, we come back and start working full-time at our internships (at least three days per week). I could not be more excited for this. If I could drop USIU and work at ICA full time, I would do so in a heartbeat. I'm having trouble resisting working on stuff for them and working on my finals instead.

Aaand the power's out again. Third time this week!

In other news, I love it here. I may not come back.

Nimechoka

Okay okay okay. I know I haven't written in a while but I was sick and I've been so busy! But, here's my update:

I started my internship, and it's been so great! I've worked on designing pamphlets for the Jumia Zalendo Project (patriotic society), worked on a grant proposal for the Eagle Project (such a cool project!), and taught some of the boys the cupid shuffle. Success, no?

Today was an especially good day. I worked with Thetu on the Princess Project today, which is a program they have with eight mentors that go around to 100 girls each (4 groups of 25 each), and teach financial planning and reproductive health, since it's not taught in the schools on their own.

So we went to visit one of the lessons that w

as being taught, and before we began the lesson, we went in to meet the headmaster. We were walking into his office and there was a line of girls outside of it. They started giggling and whispering (because there was a mzungu at their school!), and one of them tapped me on the shoulder. I turned and said hello, and then she told me that my shoes were very beautiful. I said thank you very much, but was surprised because they were my beat-up TOMS. Then, I walk into the headmasters entry area, and there were boxes full of TOMS waiting to be distributed!! I was so excited to see things come full circle like that. When I came out of the office, they were getting their shoes. They were so excited that they had the same shoes as I did! It really made my day.

In other news, we went to Kitan

gela last weekend and visited Maasai Lodge and the Kitangela Glass Factory. We got to see some giraffes and even baboons!

To get to the Glass Factory though, we had to cross a gorge on this super flimsy bridge. Luckily, I braved through it and came out alive both times.

This weekend will be fun, I'm going to my internship Saturday day, and then at night, I'm going to a Safaricom Live! concert (safaricom is the Verizon of Kenya). It should be great, and we have VIP tickets. There's going to be a lot of Kenyan music, and we've made friends with some of the guys who are working it and they say we'll get to meet some of the bands! Other than that, I'll be doing a lot of work on my research project. It's about higher education in Kenya, and working on some other papers for USIU. We're in the homestretch for my Politics of Culture in Kenya class. It ends the third week of October, and then I get to focus on my internship 3+ days per week!

Uko Shambamba

Today was one of my favorite days since I've been in Kenya.

One of the boys from ICA (the organization in Kibera that we visited and I am interning with) coaches some football teams in Kibera and invited us to go watch a game. (Well, he invited one of the girls in the program, and she took along some extra people).

We met up with Bone Face (yes, that's his real name) and he took us into Kibera. We swung by the ICA office and convinced the rest of the guys to come to the game with us.

So we walk through Kibera among the shouts of "Mzungu" and "Hi how are you?" from the hoards of children on the street. And ended up at the dirt soccer field in the heart of the slum. In no time at all, we were surrounded by dancing and laughing children, posing for our cameras.

For about 2 hours, we sat at the fields, learned sheng (local slang) from the ICA boys, and played with the kids.

After today, I am so incredibly excited to work with ICA. I had so much fun with the boys, and basically was in a continuous laughing fit the entire time. They're going to teach me how to be cool by the end of my time with them. We'll see how that goes. I do know that my cool factor increased by ten just today, so anything is possible.

Don't Throw Off My Groove!

Three weeks in, I think the initial shock of simply being in Nairobi has worn off, and I'm getting into a good rhythm. I'm getting comfortable going around the city, I have a regular place to eat at school, and I'm making friends in my classes at USIU! There's a lot that's happened in the past week, so let's start at the beginning:

On Saturday, I woke up at 6 in the morning from a very intense pain in my chest. It felt almost as though the malaria pill I had taken the night before was still stuck in my esophagus. I got up and drank water, but it was super painful. So then I took a shower hoping that gravity would do it's thing - no change. I got out of the shower and drank some tea and tried to have some oatmeal - my last apple cinnamon from the states :( - hoping that would help. Nope. That's when it started getting hard for me to breathe. So I did what any sound minded American would do: I pulled up Web MD. After being told that I probably had one of 6 different cancers, I ended up calling my mom and subsequently the advice nurse through my health insurance. She told me that it was probably a rare reaction to the malaria meds I was taking that had either irritated or burned through the mucus layer in my esophagus. Regardless, I needed to go to the doctor.

So I pulled my wonderful friend Jessie out of bed, and she escorted me to the local health clinic where they confirmed that I basically had a small hole starting in my stomach-throat area. They gave me meds, and after 3 days of a liquid diet (lots of yogurt thanks to the power of lactaid), I feel so much better! Now to just figure out how to remain hole as well as malaria free...

Next order of business: my internship! No surprise from my previous post about Kibera, but when Lynsey (the program director), talked to me about where I wanted to work for the next four months, I couldn't say enough wonderful things about ICA and Kibera itself. I found out a few days ago that she put me with ICA! I couldn't be happier. I get to work with those wonderful people for the rest of my time here and I couldn't be more scared/nervous/excited.

On a sadder note, I'm sure some of you saw in the news that there was a pipeline explosion in a slum here in Nairobi. It was a huge tragedy. The hospitals are full of burn victims, families lost loved ones, and many more are wounded after the explosion. It's extremely unfortunate that it could have been avoided had the correct precautions been taken by various parties involved. I could rant and rave about who to put blame on for hours, so I won't go into it right now. But it's a very sad way to start my time here in Nairobi, although it's extremely realistic to the area. Feeling almost helpless, my friends and I decided we wanted to do something to help, and found out that the Kenyatta National Hospital was taking blood donations for the victims. We set out today after an excursion in Kileleshwa (a colonial era slum - also extremely interesting) to the hospital. We had filled out all the paperwork and were waiting in the queue to get our fingers pricked when we discovered that, having been immunized from Yellow Fever in the past 6 months, we were unable to donate blood. It was really disappointing, but I'm still hoping to find some way to help those affected by the explosion.

All in all, it's been an extremely eventful week and a half. I have my internship, I had my first experience with the Kenyan health system (not as bad as you would think), I'm getting used to making my way through Nairobi as well as USIU. I really feel like I'm getting a groove here in Kenya!

New Perceptions

Today was the day I've been nervous about for the past few days. Today we went to Kibera. If you don't know, Kibera is the largest slum in East Africa, and the second largest in all of Africa. It is home to about 3 million people according to our guide, which is staggering considering the metropolitan area of Nairobi houses about 2 million.

I went in expecting to find rows of shacks and terribly depressing sights at every turn - but that wasn't the case at all. Kibera is literally its own little microcosm. An informal settlement in its most developed form.

We went through Kibera in small groups - two students and one guide. I was paired up with Margaret and our guide's name was Wicliffe. He has lived in Kibera for 17 years and works with an organization called Initiative for Community Action (ICA), which is based in Machimoni in Kibera. Wicliffe took us through the entrance near the District Commissioner. We met up with another girl and paired up into two's. I walked with Wicliffe and Margaret walked with Ruth. As we walked with Kibera, carefuly navigating the mud, I was surprised at what I found. There were vendors and stores everywhere we went. Internet cafes, butchers, candy stores and clothing shops were at every block. Wicliffe told me that, in lieu of taking a loan out from the bank, people start businesses by borrowing money from each other. That way, social pressure acts as a sort of collateral.

Another big surprise were the people that we met along the way. The entire time we've been in Kenya, I've felt the need to put on a cold exterior in the city so as not to be jipped, taken advantage of, or cheated. I've been extremely conscious of my purse and have mostly cared about myself while walking through the city. But in Kibera, I felt more comfortable and safe than I have the entire week so far. Of course I was walking with a tall, broad Kenyan, which probably helped, but the people I passed smiled at me and the children waved at me. I felt like I was back in a small town where everyone knows everybody else and takes care of each other.

Wicliffe took us to his house at the end of the tour. He explained that each block was like a family. Nobody did any harm to anyone else because you would have to face the wrath of them later on. Everyone celebrates birthdays and holidays together and in a big way. There's a huge sense of community throughout this expansive slum.

After the visit to Wicliffe's home, we ended at the office of ICA and joined the rest of the groups. We then traveled with the guides in tow to our abroad office for lunch and a debrief.

In the end, this trip sparked my interest in informal settlements and the development of these areas. I still have a lot of questions about how things work, but if things work out the way I hope they do, I'll be working in an area in or near Kibera for the next few months so I'm sure I'll come to understand the organization of these areas more as time goes by.

On a semi-tangent, Margaret and I got along extremely well with our guides, Wicliffe and Ruth. They told us about all the celebrations for Wicliffe's ethnic group - the Lwo people with traditional food and dancing. Wicliffe promised to take us dancing sometime soon, so let's hope that happens soon!