Backpacking Part II

I can't believe I'm coming home in a week and a half! Time has absolutely flown, and it's so weird to even imagine being back in the U.S. so soon. It's finally starting to hit me though... This morning I had to say a final goodbye to my host family in Shanzu, which was harder than I ever would have imagined a few months ago. It's so weird to count down the days....

Kari's here though and we're now off on the second part of our month-long adventure! After spending a couple days on the coast near Mombasa, we took a bus down to Dar Es Salaam this morning to check out more of Tanzania. We'll spend the day exploring the city tomorrow, and then head to Zanzibar for two days of beach and relaxation. On our way back to Nairobi we're planning to stop and camp in Arusha, Tanzania for a couple nights, near Mount Kilimanjaro. It's supposed to be absolutely beautiful. Then we'll have a night or two in Nairobi before we say our final goodbyes to the people, country, region, and continent we've come to love so much... It's so hard to imagine.

Well, that's it for now... I'll be back in the U.S. in just 10 days!

Backpacking Adventure Part I

So...it's been a while. And now I'm in Rwanda. I'll start from the beginning...

I arrived back in Nairobi from Mombasa two weeks ago tired and not ready to study. I spent a night at my friend's host family's and then all of us students moved in to this guest house and conference center for three days and nights of cramming, exams and 20 pages of last-minute paper writing. By the end of the week, I was absolutely exhausted. But everything was done!
So on Friday morning I got up early, turned my papers in, met up with Joice (the house help at my first home, who finally left the family) and the two of us hopped in a matatu headed for Nakuru. I stayed with her family in the rural area of the Rift Valley for a night and two days, and it was so much fun (aside from the sheep intestines we had for dinner Friday night). Then late Saturday night I boarded the bus headed for Kampala, Uganda that my friends had caught in Nairobi. We stayed in the capital city of Uganda for 3 nights, but unfortunately the first night I spent in the bathroom of a traditional dance center with my head over the toilet. Thankfully, whatever I had only lasted about a day.
We're now in Rwanda, which is absolutely beautiful! It is such an amazing country, and it's been so interesting to learn more about its history and the genocide in '94. We spent two nights in Kigali, the capital, and then boarded a bus to Gisenyi, a city on the boarder of Congo. We talked to a couple locals and they all said Goma, the DRC's city right across the boarder from Gisenyi, has been very safe lately... so we decided to go for a little adventure. :) So Friday we crossed the border and spent the day in the Goma. (Side note to mom: YES, we were safe, YES, we knew what we were doing beforehand, and NO, we did not step anywhere outside the city or where it would not be safe. Oh, and we won't be going anywhere dangerous again, so don't worry). It was really cool to see the city after the volcano erupted in 2002 and buried most of the place in lava. We saw rocks of lava everywhere, and the city was pretty empty in terms of infrastructure cause not much has been rebuilt yet. The coolest part was walking and talking with the UN peacekeepers from India that are currently on a mission there. It made all my studies on international security really come to life.
Tomorrow we're starting our voyage back to Nairobi though, cause we need to be back by the 14th in time to pick up my friend Kari from the airport. We're planning on taking matatus to Lake Victoria tomorrow, then a ferry across to Muanza, Tanzania, and then another long bus ride back to Kenya. But once Kari arrives, Backpacking Adventure Part II begins!

So long for now... See you all in just a couple weeks!!

A mix of emotions (and pictures)

My host family on Easter!! Well, most of them anyway. This is outside our house in the compound.
The beautiful beach at Lamu island (from the post a few weeks ago).

The sun setting at Lamu island (Mom and Dad, I was walking through the sand barefoot on my cell phone with you guys when I took this picture... remember??)

The beach on the northern coast of Mombasa on Easter day.

My bedroom! And blue mosquito net, that's less than perfect, and the sheet that never comes out from under me thanks to the heat. Unfortunately this picture doesn't quite do it justice... you can't see the cockroaches and 5-inch long milipedes. Really though, I'm gonna miss this room. Especially when I go back to sharing with 4 people, including two kids, in Nairobi...

____________________

Aside from the fact that I want to break this computer right now because I've spent about an hour trying to upload pictures to the blog and it's still not working (gotta love technology in Kenya), this week has been a crazy mix of emotions. Here's yesterday morning for example. I wake up at 6:30 a.m., an hour before my alarm, and can't go back to sleep because I'm thinking about all the things I need to do and people I need to see and gifts I need to buy and errands I need to run and papers I need to write before I move back to Nairobi on Saturday. I eventually just get up decide to get an early matatu into town to get a start on it all. Then in the matatu I start thinking about how I don't want to leave my family and my village and Mombasa and even that dirty, sweaty matatu because I love my life here right now, and once I leave it will never be like this again. But then when I get off the matatu, I realize there's a brand new giant hole in the sole of one of my flip flops (which I've worn exactly every single day since arriving on the coast), so I'm going to have to add that to the list, which is continually getting longer. At lunch break I grab a matatu to the market near north coast to try to get a new pair of sandals, which was a huge wrong turn on my emotional rollercoaster. I don't know if I've written about this before, but these are the things I won't miss about Kenya:

1. Getting marriage proposals and "I love you baby"s from complete strangers at least every other day.

2. Having to hide my phone in matatus so that when the guy next to me asks for my contacts I can say I don't have a phone.

3. Hearing "hey mzungu (white person)" or "jambo mzungu" from about every other person on the street in Mombasa.

4. Having to know exactly how much everything costs or should cost beforehand so that when they tell me something's 400 shillings, and it's really supposed to be 50 shillings, I know they're giving me a mzungu price.

5. The old man who has kids my parents age who waits for me on the street outside of my internship and tries to give me presents and take my picture and take me home with him.

Now, this is just what I won't miss about a normal day. Going to the market, alone, as a blonde white girl is not good when your patience and emotional energy is already running low. When guys are literally grabbing your arms, pulling you to look at their items, shouting "mzungu" and "hey baby" at you from all directions, you better be ready to hold your ground. After about 20 minutes of that, I quickly realized this was not my day for bargaining. I gave in, took a matatu back near work, and bought a pair of sandals for twice the price at a shoe superstore.

But that's not the end of the story...

For the past week I've been dreading going back to Nairobi. The city in general is more dangerous, more fast-pace, more stressful, more dirty, more over-populated, and on top of that I have about 25 pages of papers to write and research for when I get back. Plus two exams.

But then I met up with two of my friends from the program for lunch, and before we know it we're talking about going to our old hang out in Nairobi when we get back, and sleeping in Carolyn's host family's soft beds (with real mattresses, not foam!), and having running water, and faster Internet, and seeing my friend Rachel again who's been across the country, and starting our traveling journey... and suddenly I'm excited to go back to Nairobi! But I don't want to leave here! But I can't stand the "mzungu, I love you mzungu" here! But I don't wanna leave life with my host family! But I have 25 pages to write and two exams to study for and no computer! Ahhhhh!

Kinda get the picture?

Anyways, Mama's taking me to the bus station Saturday morning at 10 a.m. and shipping me of to Nairobi whether I like it or not, so there's no need putting too much thought into deciding how I feel about it. The good news is, because my other two friends on the coast have been experiencing similar bipolar episodes lately, we've unanimously decided that our 28-day journey next month will include at least a couple days back here in Mombasa. So this isn't goodbye for good, Mombasa. Just goodbye for now.

Easter in Kenya

Thanks for the Easter posts McConnons! I missed you all yesterday. Although Easter here was really fun too. I woke up late that morning because the night before some friends and I were out all night (bars and discos don't close til 5 a.m... either that or they don't close at all). After my host sister had tried knocking on my door and calling my name, Mama finally sent me a text about a half hour before we had to go that said "hi we are getting ready for church are you okey?" It was funny, cause no one sleeps past about 7 a.m. in my house (except for me, of course, although the heat usually wakes me up by about 8). The majority of Kenyans are Christian, so the Easter holiday is big here. Friday and Monday are national holidays and most offices and schools are closed. My host family is Catholic, so they celebrated as well. We all went to church at 10 a.m., where there were hundreds of people crammed into a church the size of...well...the size that isn't supposed to fit that many people. The service lasted until 1 p.m., with lots of singing and dancing and sweating and more sweating. It was probably about 90-some degrees in there, let me tell you. After the service we went home and had lunch and just hung out for a while before two of my host sisters and I took 4 of the grandkids down to the beach for all the Easter discos. The whole weekend is literally one big party here, with giant signs all over the place advertising party after party. One sign near my house read something like, "Good Friday Party: Go-Go Dancers at 10 p.m." Slightly ironic? When we got there, the beach was absolutely packed. It was like walking through the state fair, but on the white sand of the Indian Ocean with hip-hop music blaring and camels weaving through the crowd (of Africans, not Minnesotans). We went to a disco called Surfside where people danced all night, even the kids. It was nice to be on the edge of the ocean, where we could catch some cool breezes and have some relief from the heat. We eventually grabbed a matatu home at around 9 p.m. because the 3-year-old fell asleep (miraculously, amid the blaring hip-hop and noisy crowd).

The previous weekend some friends and I caught a bus, and then a ferry, to Lamu -- an island off the northern coast of Kenya that's one of the oldest and most preserved Swahili towns in Kenya. It was absolutely beautiful, with over 12 kilometers of beach and old, traditional structures from hundreds of years ago. There are only two cars on the whole island -- instead everyone uses donkeys for transportation. Everywhere you walk there's donkeys just chilling by themselves, not tied to anything, or wandering along the beach without anyone with them. A couple guys we hung out with there said that when they're not using them, people just let their donkeys wander and eventually they'll come home again. It's so sweet how they treat them almost like pets. There's even a donkey hospital on the island! And trust me, that's pretty amazing in a country where it's often hard to find a decent people hospital. After a late night swim one night I rode our friend's donkey named Beyonce to get some nyama choma (barbequed meat) in the wee hours of the morning along the coast of the Ocean. It was amazing. His other donkeys, among them Obama and Shakira, were already at home asleep for the night. It was a pretty relaxing weekend in all, filled with lots of swimming, fresh fish-eating, and boating on a traditional dhow (like a sailboat).

Before I go, I have a quick note for the Bye-Nagels... The other day I was packed in the back of a crowded matatu when an old Backstreet Boys song came on the radio. For a moment there, I almost thought I was in the back of your mini van, squished between Kyla and Kyri and Katie and Krista in Germany, not in Kenya. :)

I've found that the longer I'm here, the harder it is to write blog posts. Everything that seemed new and different before no longer seems so new and different anymore, and it's hard to remember sometimes what I should explain and what's different from home. It's a good thing, really. I feel so comfortable here in Kenya, and more specifically on the coast. Today the program director came to visit me at my internship and reminded me that I only have three weeks left here, which made me so sad! I don't wanna leave my host family or Shanzu or Old Town or the Indian Ocean or anything. The comforting thought is that I'll only have a week to stay in Nairobi and then I'm free to roam wherever I want for my last month here in Kenya.

Tuesday was Maulid, an Islamic celebration to mark the birth of Mohammed. The women in my organization had their celebration on the patio of their restaurant overlooking the Indian Ocean just before the sun set. Because it was a special religious holiday, the girl I worked with suggested I wear a hijab, as all the women there would be wearing one (of course). So that day I dressed in a long black skirt and brought a scarf that she helped me put on my head. I was a little nervous at first, but all the women seemed to appreciate that I dressed for the occasion, and many shot me smiles from across the patio. For the ceremony, we all sat cross legged on mats in a big circular huddle around a finely decorated rug with different bottles and incense and ornaments on it. The women sang song after song, each leading a different part, with intermittent readings in between (that I could not understand whatsoever). Then after about an hour we stood up and a few women came around and poured rose water on our heads and painted scented oil on the back of our hands. I'm not really sure what everythng meant, but I sure came out smelling nice. I asked one of the aunties what the rose water symbolized, and she said she didn't think it meant anything, but that it was just tradition. We finished just as the sun was setting, and then we all had samosas and fried potatoes and donut-type things together, still sitting on the mats. It was really a beautiful ceremony, and it was so relaxing to be sitting outside in the breeze of the ocean surrounded by peaceful, loving song.

Last night when I got home my host mama's second oldest son's wife, Mary, one of the many relatives in the compound who have readily adopted me as part of their family, told me her younger sister was here to measure me for an African dress. Mary said she brought back cloth from Tanzania that she thought would look nice on me and she wanted to give me the dress as a gift. She also told me to tell her when I had about 3 hours free so she could do my hair (she runs a little streetside salon on the edge of the compound). I'm really excited about the dress, but the hair could be interesting... I'm not quite sure what she has in mind, and if she realizes how different my hair is from everyone else here. But I guess we'll see! Either way it will be fun. She's such a sweet woman.

Last week Patrick and Carolyn came over to attempt what is nearly the impossible in Africa: making homemade pizza. It took us about an hour at Nakumatt, the largest supermarket around, to search for ingredients that resembled food from back home, but we eventually made do. The main problem was that we could only find individual dough/crust-type things. And I have a very large family. So we arrived home ready to make a dozen pizzas, only to find that the oven, which mama hadn't used in over a year, was broken. That also complicated our plans for dessert: brownies. We ended up using a round frier-type thing that they use for chapati to grill/fry the pizzas, and once one was on the frier we threw a pot over the top to try to melt the cheese. One by one, we made a dozen pizzas! Well, nine edible ones...three were burnt to a crisp. The real problem came after... no one liked the pizza! I know, it's hard to imagine anyone not liking pizza, but almost everyone hated it! My teenage host brother and cousin, who will eat just about anything, were hilarious to watch -- they literally were almost gagging over it. All the kids said they'd had pizza once before and hated it. Thankfully mama liked it (we originally decided to make it because she had said she liked it and wanted it), but that's because she used to work in a hotel or something where she ate it a lot and got used to the taste. After dinner, and after Mama finished eating not only her pizza but the boys' as well, she helped make an over for the brownies by heating sand really hot... I'm not exactly sure how she did it but I know she heated the sand and then we put the brownies in a pot inside the sand with charcoals on top. They turned out to be delicious, and cooked in only about 25 minutes. Thankfully the brownies were a big hit! By the time we were finished it was getting late so Mama insisted Patrick and Carolyn sleep over. The three of us and my host sister, brother, cousin and Auntie (the house help) stayed up until past 2 a.m. playing different card games and laughing and chatting. It was so much fun. Everyone was tired the next day, especially the boys who had to get up at 5 a.m. for school.

Well, that's all I've got for now. Until next time!

Mombasa Madness

Now that I'm here on the coast, I can't believe that I ever complained about the heat in Nairobi. To give you an idea of what I'm talking about, people on the coast call Nairobi COLD! And Nairobi weather I'd say is comparable to midwest summers. I had been warned it would be hot here, but I had no idea how hot and humid and unrelenting it is. We usually "shower" (bucket bath... remember the no running water part?) twice a day just to wash off the sweat. Then as soon as you dry yourself, you start sweating again! And fans are few and far between. We have one in our main room, but that's it (and don't even ask about air conditioning). It's a good sign that it's hot if Kenyans complain about the heat -- in Nairobi you'd walk down the street in a tank top and capris and pass by Kenyan after Kenyan in full suits and long pants and long sleeves and sometimes even jackets! It's unbelievable. Even more unbelievable is that, amidst all the heat, people continue to drink hot tea throughout the day! At my house we drink it at least twice a day, steaming hot tea made with whole milk instead of water, and lots of sugar. Not to mention the fact that all meals three meals a day are hot as well. The food is good at my new house though, which is nice considering the quanities they like to serve me. :)

Life at my internsihp is, once again, a whole separate world. I work at an organization called Old Town Development Forum (Jumbe) and, as its name suggests, it operates in an area of Mombasa called Old Town where all the buildings are protected historical structures from the Portugese and Arabs centuries ago. It definitely has more of an old, small-town feel to it, although it is nevertheless always bustling with activity. Much of Old Town is occupied by Muslims, and therefore most of the women my organization serves cover themselves completely, some even covering their whole face but their eyes. I have no idea how they survive in the heat. The woman I spend most of my time with is Asha, who's 24, and she's taken me to her house several times for lunch (which is about a 2 to 2 1/2 hour break here). She, however, has gone to the upstairs apartment to cook for her uncle and left me with all her aunties and cousins and periodic guests downstairs. It's been really fun, and interesting, to get to know these women and how they live. Lunch is great, and very filling, and all the women eat with their hands (well, one hand), which is very common on the coast. As for work itself... I don't know if you could really call what I've been doing work. There hardly seems to be anything for Asha -- basically the only person who ever comes into the office -- to do, much less work for me. For now I'm just going with it though, and perhaps an opportunity will arise. In the meantime, there's plenty of observing to be done all around me.

I'm still absolutely loving life with my host family, and already I know I won't want to leave to go back to Nairobi! Yesterday I went to the beach with two of my host sisters and brother and cousin and we took 5 of the grandkids (ages 2, 3, 4, 6 and 10), and we had so much fun! The beach is absolutely beautiful, with white sand, palm trees, blue sky and lots of sun. Too much actually...my shoulders are burnt to a crisp today. The beach was filled with young guys playing soccer, people chatting in the shade, and men guiding camels down the shore offering to give rides. We were playing in the water all afternoon until the sun started to set at about 6:30 and we had to go home. We live basically just across the road from the Indian Ocean (just far enough not to feel the breeze), so it was just a quick walk there. The water is shallow for a long ways so you can walk out really far, and because it's so shallow the water is really warm. It felt great not to be hot for a whole afternoon!

Happy belated St. Patrick's Day to all the McConnons! I missed you guys this week, and I'll be missing you even more on Saturday. I hope the party goes well, and don't have to much fun without me! (Especially with the helium balloons, Fran and Cecelia.)
And all you in Madison and Minnesota (and Iowa), I want spring break stories!
Can't wait to hear from you!

The Coast Life

After two trips to the hospital in two different cities for digestion-related issues that all started with bad water (I'll spare you the details), I am now settled and getting used to life on Kenya's coast. And I'm absolutely loving it. I feel like I'm in a whole separate world out here, with its own culture and traditions and people and lifestyle. My host family is wonderful. They've never hosted a foreign student before, so everyone in the compound was eager to greet me upon my arrival Sunday evening. We live in a one-story cement house with no running water, but we do have electricity, which is a plus (although I often wake up to my 15-year-old host brother blaring hip-hop at 5 a.m. in the morning while he gets ready for school). My host mama is a big, dark, African widow in her 50s who's sometimes quiet but very sweet. I can tell she worries that I'm always happy and comfortable and feeling at home. She has 6 children, two of whom live in the same house as us, and 7 grandchildren. The whole compound is filled with aunts and cousins and children and grandchildren, so family and friends are always passing through, sharing a cup of chai or a meal or a story. My 20-year-old host sister and I have breakfast together each morning before she heads to class and I catch a matatu to the city for my internship. We live in an area called Shanzu, which is about a 30-minute drive outside of the city (the island of Mombasa). At night after we eat dinner the family (and whoever else is over) usually congregates in the in the main room and watches TV, chats, and the teenagers and I play cards (the ones I brought from Minnesota) or other games. Last night I was sitting on the sofa during this time and I could see three rats running around the room at the same time. I thought I had just gotten used to cockroaches... but RATS! And THREE of them! When the family noticed me watching them they all laughed, thinking it was funny that I had brought my feet up on the sofa. My mama told me not to worry, that she would "put the medicine" tomorrow.
Unfortunately I'm out of time for today! I'm so sorry to all those who've emailed me and haven't gotten a response yet... My last days in Nairobi were crazy busy and since I've been on the coast I've had no Internet access at all. I'm going to try to get back into the city this weekend to write more though. Until then!