Nairobi Adventures

This weekend was jam packed with adventures!  On Saturday I spent the day with the other KEMRI/University of Nairobi interns.  These girls are so wonderful and I feel so lucky to have them to help me navigate life in Kenya.

My awesome fellow interns

We started the day early with a sunrise safari at Nairobi National Park. The park is a beautiful nature preserve tucked right into the city, and it's an incredible juxtaposition of wildlife and city skylines-- recently some lions even escaped and were caught lurking about in Nairobi! One of the highlights of our safari was witnessing a hilarious ostrich lovers' quarrel.  There were a pair of ostriches minding their own business when we saw a male approach the couple and do a ritualistic dance.  After that he started chasing after the other male (ostriches can run up to 40 miles per hour!) trying to beat him up so he could win the female.  It was like watching an episode of Jersey Shore.

Quintessential Safari

Ostriches are dramatic actors & extremely gross looking

After our safari we headed to the David Sheldrick Elephant Orphanage to meet the baby elephants that have been rescued.  The orphanage cares for the babies and then releases them back into the wild after a couple of years- it's a really neat organization and the ellies are absolutely adorable!

Collective "awwww!"

Our final stop of the day was at the Nairobi giraffe center, one of my favorite touristy activities in Kenya.  Giraffes are my favorite African animals (I think because we've both got the height thing going on :)) so I loved the opportunity to plant some kisses on them!

Sunday was another big day-- I went hiking to the Mount Suswa caves.  There's a group of about 15 American and Canadian interns working at various companies and NGOs around Nairobi who get together to take weekend trips and I went with them to this hidden gem.  Despite being a gorgeous crater and having awesome caves to explore, Mt. Suswa is totally un-touristy (we didn't see another group of people the entire day!).  We found out why on the drive there-- even though it's only 3 hours away from Nairobi, the roads are CRAZY.  We had to hire two Kenya Wildlife Service rangers to come with us and show us which paths were passable, and they had everyone get out of the van and walk for portions of the drive so there would be less weight in the car going over some of the intense bumps.  We still ended up pushing the van when it got stuck 3 or 4 times.

When we arrived we were greeted by two Maasai guides who took us spelunking into the caves.  It was my first time ever going into caves like this, and it was quite the experience.  I could have done without the huge amounts of bat guano, but other than that it was a very fun time.

Our guides leading the way

About to enter the caves

It was a wonderful weekend!

My new favorite Nairobi trick

When someone approaches me on the street and starts harassing me, I break into rapid-fire Vietnamese.  "Xin lỗi, tôi không biết tiếng Anh!" Gets 'em every time. I'm not your average mzungu!

Mentor Mothers

I'm loving the time I've been spending at the Mathare North City Council HIV Clinic.  To say it's been an eye-opening experience is a complete understatement.  Mathare, one of Nairobi's slums, holds over half a million people living in some of the most abject poverty imaginable.  To put things in perspective, the average monthly rent that people living in Mathare pay is around 500ksh, or about 6 US dollars.

The City Council provides free HIV and tuberculosis care to the residents, and I'm lucky enough to have the chance to go to the clinic a couple days each week.  The building is dark and in a state of disrepair, but its services are so desperately needed that women and their children fill the waiting room each morning with dozens more overflowing outside into the hot Kenyan sun.  I was so surprised to find that there's a ray of hope inside the HIV clinic-- in what should be the most desperate, hopeless place in the building there is laughter, friendship, and sunshine.  This is due almost completely to the Mentor Mothers, the lifeblood of the slum's HIV program.  The Mentor Mothers are all HIV positive and spend their time counseling newly diagnosed HIV+ women, showing them living proof that surviving and thriving with the virus is possible.  They are especially focused on helping their patients have HIV negative babies, which is the part of the program I'm involved in.

Without the support of the Mentor Mothers, many of the HIV+ women would be completely and utterly alone-- the disclosure rates are heartbreakingly low at Mathare; almost none of the women have told their partner or any of their family or friends that they are positive.  This makes the Mentor Mothers program such a crucial support system-- the Mothers are often the only people that the patients feel they can talk to and trust about the roller coaster they've just been thrown on of a new HIV diagnosis.

I am so inspired by these women!

Making the Most of Myself

I'm trying to become more of myself.

When I see abject poverty at the slum clinics I work at, witness children with bellies outstretched from malnutrition, little ones wearing nothing but rags... I want to be more. I feel so hopelessly inadequate.  I'm simply not enough to fix these problems.  What's the point of being here if I can't make a difference?

Crying out to God at night after a long day in the Kibera slum, the answers start to come to me.  At the bare minimum, I am bearing witness.  By giving myself awareness of how the least of these live, they are making an indelible mark on my conscious that will follow me and shape my path for the rest of my life.  I am learning.  I am shifting within myself, becoming uncomfortable with the status quo.  If I simply left, didn't continue to see all that I can see, that would be denying these people the power to change my life.

Maybe I'm not much yet: just an undergraduate student with a big heart and a sense of purpose that lives mostly unfulfilled.  But I'm already becoming more, I can feel the marks being made on my soul.  Each day of my internship awakens me a bit more, every night under the Kenyan stars I go to sleep feeling just a little more alive.  I can imagine the things I'll be capable of once I have more education and experience, and it takes my breath away.

In the mean time, I can love.  This is no small feat, you see.  To give myself completely when the sights around me threaten to reduce me to tears, it's not the easiest job I've ever undertaken, but its certainly one of the most important.  My heart is changed by this outpouring just as much as the children I love on are changed by it, all of us becoming richer in the process.  It's teaching me what this thing called life is all about.

Swahili Wedding Weekend

I just got back from Msambweni, where I attended my 4th Swahili wedding.  They never fail to be fun-filled experiences!  The bride was from my aunt's family from Diani Beach, and the groom was the step-son of another aunt of mine from Bomani, so it was a wonderful family affair that involved many of the extended relatives I'd met during my previous visits to the coast.

On Saturday, Mama and I went to Diani to join the bride's family (and well over a hundred other relatives and friends) in preparing for the wedding.  There was food to be blessed, coconuts to be grated, and dancing to enjoy, all made sweeter by the company and community gathered together.

On Saturday evening, we returned to Bomani to join the groom's family in dancing that lasted well into the night.  I got to practice my Taarab dancing, the traditional Digo/Swahili style, and enjoyed the evening of friendship and laughter.  Shangazi, my auntie who is the groom's mom, even made sure I got my feet painted with henna so I would fit in with the other guests who were all done up beautifully for the celebration.

Sunday morning everyone from the groom's family gathered at Bomani and took a group of matatus to Diani Beach where the wedding ceremony itself was to take place.  We brought our gifts, which were a mix of practical things like pots and pans for the couple's new house and some more decorative things like traditional Swahili ornaments for the house.

The ceremony itself takes place in a small room, and most of the guests just celebrate from outside.  After the vows, the guests take turns entering the room to give their blessings to the bride and groom and take pictures.

We then returned to the groom's home in Bomani for even more celebrating, eating, and dancing.  Even the littlest children were invited to this part of the ceremony and Suleiman LOVED seeing me dressed up in my Swahili finest.  It was truly a wonderful weekend!

Mombasa Morning

I woke up with Mombasa today, and said my prayers in thanks in Kiswahili.  

I took the night bus from Nairobi to the Coast, something that would have been unfathomable to me only a year ago.  Turns out it wasn't so scary.  We reached the outskirts of the city at 5:30 am, just as the sun and city alike started to awake from their nightly slumber.

It was such a unique experience to see the Mombasa morning.  First, I watched as the earliest school children scampered along the side of the road in their uniforms, headed toward classes in the city center.    Gradually, as the sun found its place higher in the sky, the hustle and bustle that I associate with the city came into full bloom.  Matatus started their morning commutes, their honking alerting me that the day was now in full swing. You don't just honk at a car that's doing something wrong here, it's more of a greeting: Can I squeeze in here? beep beep // Of course! beep beep // Thanks, beep // Hey! You're my cousin's friend, aren't you? beeeeep // Sure am, beep beep // Have a good day, beep beep.

When we pulled into the bus station I hopped on a piki piki to go the final hour to Msambweni.  Even though the sites of the South Coast are familiar to me now, I am still rendered as breathless by the beauty as I was the first time I made my way to my internship over a year ago.  Palm trees reaching skyward as far as the eye can see, the occasional peak at the ocean waves hitting the shore, and smiling faces eager to greet the mzungu visitor-- the South Coast highway welcomes you like none other.

Upon reaching Msambweni I was thrilled to find that the local kindergarten teacher was sick, so Suleiman, Huzeid, Abdulley, and Lukman were all at home eagerly waiting for my arrival.  Such a treat!  Sule's 3rd birthday is this weekend (I can't believe that I've now known this little man for over half of his life! I met him when he was just a tiny little 1 year old, learning how to walk and terrified of my whiteness.) so I had a soccer ball for him. SUCH a big hit.  We played with it all morning, stopping frequently for mango and chapatti breaks.  

It was the best sort of day.  

Shel Silverstein's Wisdom