-1 cab accident
-1 9-hour matutu ride from Nairobi to Muhuru Bay (sandwiched between a sick woman and a screaming toddler)
-1 billion dishes of pilau and ugali
...and I have officially made it back from my crazy Kenyan adventure.
So much happened in my two weeks in Kenya, it is difficult to even attempt to sum it up in one blog post. I'll let my pictures speak for the majority of my experience, but supplement with a few explanations, a few tidbits, and a few short stories.
To begin, what I was actually doing there:
1. Running a Training of Coaches with Taylor Downs, an Amherst grad who has been with Grassroot Soccer since 2008 and is a master at facilitating training programs. VAP (Vijana Amani Pamoja) is our implementing partner in Nairobi, Kenya and has been running GRS programs with little to no funding since 2004!! Thanks to Egmont Trust, Tay and I were able to travel to Kenya to train 20 of their coaches in our newest curriculum!
2. Visiting and assessing WISER, a secondary school (aka high school) placed in Muhuru Bay, a rural community with 25,000 inhabitants. My job was to come in, check out the primary schools that WISER is linked to (and where we would actually be delivering GRS programs), present some ideas on how the GRS-WISER program could be formatted, meet a BUNCH of people in a very short period of time, and... get out.
The view from WISER
The drive from Muhuru Bay to Migori
A few tidbits:
What Nairobi is like: Imagine.... A greener NYC with the worst roads of all time and thus... traffic galore and non-stop honking throughout the night.
A few stories:
1. It is 3 am, night #2 in Nairobi and I wake suddenly with an enormous knot in my stomach. Sweating profusely I roll around under beneath my hole ridden mosquito net for a while before getting up to pace around my room, desperately hoping that 7am (when I'm supposed to go to breakfast with Taylor) comes quickly. Enouce (our main contact with VAP) arrives with the car expecting to pick us up and drive to the first day of training at the church venue and instead pulls up to Taylor asking urgently to bring me to a hospital.
After waving a farewell to Taylor and Enouce who head off to start training, I check in at the local clinic and reluctantly allow the nurses on duty to draw blood. The main nurse sits with me while I wait for the results and proudly proclaims, "You're the second white person we have ever treated!" Less than comforted I calm myself by chatting with her for the next hour learning all about her life and admiring pictures of her grandchildren that she pushes across the desk at me. By the end of the conversation she had officially offered to adopt me, be my mother at my baptism (which she offered to arrange for on my next trip to Nairobi), and to house me whenever I wished to visit. The nice 22 year old pharmacist comes in to inform me that my tests have come back so I thank her and head downstairs to speak with the doctor. "Well... it looks like you have typhoid fever." Hey, at least my odd stomach aches, sickness at Rockin' the Daisies, and perpetual chills finally had an explanation!
I collect the various antibiotics needed and stumble outside to call the cab number Taylor had given me only to discover that Safaricom phone towers aren't working. I ask the parking attendant if he could help me in finding a cab and he points me in the direction of a toothless man with what can only be described as a Kenyan pimp mobile. I slip into the backseat covered in cheetah fabric and ask to head back to Marble Arch.
Ten minutes later I'm sitting in the middle of a Nairobi traffic circle, surrounded by 25 Kenyan men arguing over whose fault it was that a giant bus backed full steam into the back of our moving cab. To add to the scene, it turns out my cab driver isn't even actually a cab driver, which I discover after the accident when he whips around and states, "Give me 300 shillings and I'll let you get out here OR if you stay, don't tell the cops that I'm a cab driver and I'll take you to your hotel for our agreed price".
45 minutes later I stumble into my room and sleep for the remainder of the day.
2. We got kicked out of our training venue (which happened to be a church) because the cardinals saw two of our male coaches holding hands. We had been holding hands in a circle and they hadn't yet let go... Luckily the community center across from the mosque was more welcoming.
3. After crossing the Great Rift Valley (see pictures below) where I saw zebras from the bus window we began passing through small towns filled with little more than bars and samosa shops. Nearing the end of my trip, between Kisii and Migori, we began passing women walking alongside the roads with bunches of bananas on their heads and men busily chopping up sugar cane in the ditches.
4. I rode on the back of a motorcycle with Margaret, a greater older woman who had raised three children in Charlottesville, VA and in her 50s decided to do the Peace Corps in Ghana for 3 years. She now works for WISER in Muhuru Bay and was kind enough to show me 7 primary schools before noon.
There is much more to say, but I'll leave the trip at that. By far my most eye-opening experience since coming to Africa. As always, sending lots of love to everyone back home and abroad. Thinking of all of you lots.
Love,
Charlotte
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