We landed in Nairobi around 7pm and in a tired, excited, nervous fog we were greeted and driven into the city. I don't remember much, but I do remember that our hotel, was above a night club, which until 4:30 am blasted music that shook my room's window panes... With two hours of sleep I awoke and began getting ready; we were going to be picked up and begin our in-country orientation.
Now before leaving Canada everyone spoke of "African time", this mythical time zone covering all of Africa which operated well behind the "accepted international time zones", so when our driver had said the night before, "I'll pick you up between 7:00am and 7:30am", I thought, "he should get here in African time, lets say... closer to 7:30". But no. At 6:50 I get a call to my room informing me that our driver is downstairs waiting... Chaos ensued, clothes went flying, and Meghan, Nikhil and I rushed out the door.
We met with AKF staff and sorted out some of the smaller details, and then we were given the afternoon with our, unusually punctual, driver. In what Canadians would call hot weather, we drove around Nairobi, with no AC and the windows rolled up tight (just in case...). Soon enough it became obvious that no one, well almost no one, actually lives in Nairobi. So I asked our driver if he could take us to where the people live. He mumbled something about how he didn't think we would have enough time... I pushed a little more saying, "We came to Kenya to be where the average Kenyan lives", even if we could go to the closest suburb we would be satisfied.
He paused, and said "Ok, I think we can make it". And as we left the downtown core we entered the neighbourhood, if you can even call it that, which we all knew existed but in our hearts had hoped hadn't.
Kibera, the largest slum in Kenya, the 2nd largest in Africa. Millions, not hundreds or thousands but millions, of homes constructed out of scrap metal and whatever else people could find. Everywhere people walking to and from work. Working, repairing, selling, stealing. And our driver pointed to each proffession as we drove through.
On the sides of homes, the word "peace" written... a reminder of the election violence not so long ago... We asked questions and he answered them, and then we drove back to the city, and I was reminded of why I had chosen to travel so far from home... and it all began to sink in.
.....
The next day we flew to Mombasa, my home for the next little while.
The Kenya crew spent the day with an NGO that works in the rural villages outside Mombasa... and that is when I realized more than ever that Rogers and Bell are just toying with us. Because, hours outside of Mombasa, in the middle of corn fields, with no signs of power for kilometers, NGO employees, rural farmers, school children, were picking up calls on their mobiles (that's right I have to call them that while I'm here). The funnniest thing is that when I drive to my cottage on Georgian Bay, about 1 1/2 hours out of Toronto, I have no cell reception, but out in the middle of the Kenyan bush, somewhere where you haven't seen any people for hours, poor farmers are receiving calls on their cells (it blows my mind! Damn Rogers!).
While out visiting the rural projects, I got my first taste of what I can only expect to be my daily reality for the next 8 months. People staring, and pointing, and yelling, "mazungo" (i.e. white person)... I guess we don't really travel out to their villages very often ;). Everyone was happy to see us, and some had waited all day. We were given gifts of tomatoes and corn, and introduced to each and every person. And even during my first ant attack the generosity continued...
We were walking through a corn field with about 50 swahili women who were fascinated by the strangers who had come to their village... when I stepped on an ant hill and about 20 ants, (probably a conservative estimate), crawled up my pants and started bitting my legs (and a few large ants about the size of a quarter somehow got into my shirt and started biting my back)... Needless to say it was rather unpleasant, but I tried to act calm, seeing as 50 people were starring straight at me... but eventually I couldn't take it anymore and tried lifting up my pant legs and trying to get them out, once I did this they understood what was happening, and a few old women started putting their hands up my shirt to get them out... At that moment, it didn't matter that we didn't speak the same language or that our skin colour wasn't the same, at that moment we weren't that different at all.
