an uplifting conversation

Boda-boda drivers outside the "hotel" (which, confusingly, actually means restaurant) and butchery just down the road from my house. This is the primary form of in-town transportation - 10 shillings (12 cents) anywhere in town. I'm totally mastering the side-saddle ride in skirt - although I got a round of laughter yesterday when I sat facing the wrong direction. Woops.

Today, while in line at the post office to collect a package (THANK YOU JOHN AND NANCY!) the girl behind me got my attention and asked where I was from. This is a pretty common question, but the ensuing conversation was not.

She told me that she now lives in Britain, and is back in Bungoma for a couple weeks visiting her mother and younger brother. She went to university in Nairobi and has been working with developmentally disabled children in London for eight years. Her plan is to stay a few more years until she has sufficient management training and finances to open a similar organization in western Kenya. There is a definite lack of resources for children with disabilities here, she explained, and that was something worth changing.

I was immediately impressed by her big achievements and goals, but equally appreciative of her discussion of Kenya in general. Kenyans so often seem confused by why I would leave the US to come here, without realizing that Kenya is giving so much more to me than I will ever be able to give back. (Which sounds ridiculously corny, I realize, but it's true. I'm giving 5-6 short months of small contributions in exchange for a perspective that will shape the rest of my life.) This girl didn't ask what I was doing or why I had come; instead, she made a comment about how hard it would be to leave Kenya and return to the lifestyle and winter weather of Minnesota.

She's right - I miss my family, sometimes our water/electricity/internet don't quite work, and I can't get good gum or beer - but Bungoma has beautiful hills, a relaxed pace of life, ultra-friendly people, and of course great weather. In the end it's not a sacrifice; it's a trade-off. Which is something I never thought about in those terms until my post office conversation - a realization instigated by a Londoner who can't wait to get back here.

life before & after Kenya

Looking backward

I just heard from Carolyn, my co-teacher from last fall: massive changes have entirely shifted the role of foreign teachers at TESS. Six of the long-term expat teaching staff were relocated from our apartment complex into the dormitories. The two teachers from the Philippines, who were generally agreed to be the two best teachers, will not be asked to return next year. The two Canadians who led the public school English department and International Student Section (both of whom have been in China for several years and have Chinese wives) are both leaving in June. My co-teacher John, at the International School, has already packed up and moved back to NYC.

My insight into the situation is limited, as I know only the facts and nothing of the background forces that have prompted an overhaul in the entire school dynamic. I had really considered staying for an additional semester - to the point of recurrent fleeting regret that I did not - and I was shocked and disappointed by the news. I do feel lucky that I was able to be there when I was, but regret that (1) my friends who are still there will be leaving with a dark shadow cast across their teaching experiences, and (2) a little window seems to be closing on future opportunities for others to experience what I did.

Looking forward

Now that my financial aid package and New Haven lease are making everything a bit more real, I am officially getting excited for law school in the fall. Especially the housing component: I will be in a 4-bedroom house with three other first-year law students, one of whom I became friends with during admit weekend. They graduated from Harvard together in 2008, so they are already well-acquainted, and I am definitely looking forward to imposing my Bucky-loving self on them in the fall.

It's going to be hard for any group of girls to live up to my Madison roommates, but so far it's looking hopeful. We are currently scattered across the world, enjoying a collective year of a deferrral: Japan (or somewhere in Southeast Asia, by now), the US, Australia, and of course Kenya. August 15 will bring us to a little yellow house in New Haven for a new adventure. Life is looking pretty good.

east african travels

Airport arrival: SMILE UR IN ZANZIBAR

My trip in numbers

• Days of travel: 14
• Countries visited: 2 (Kenya; Tanzania, both mainland within the Maasai Mara wildlife reserve and my flight to the island of Zanzibar)
• Flights taken: 4 - since we had to touch down in Mombasa to pick up/drop off passengers. Between the bumpy propeller-plane ride and the stop, it was a bit more like a bus than a plane...
  
• Books read: 2
• Other American tourists encountered: 3 - our friends who we met for a portion of our Zanzibar trip. Otherwise, zero. Remarkable.
• Number of cheetahs (my favorite!) encountered: 1
• Number of lions encountered: Too many to count.
• Fiber pills taken (again, apologies, but it is a necessary component of a veritable travel experience!): 50
• Possessions lost: 2
1. My cell phone, which I left on a daladala - open-air overfilled public transportation - and was later returned to me for a reward.
2. My credit card, which was lifted from my checked luggage on the return trip to Zanzibar. Luckily due to my predisposition to separating myself with my belongings I now carry my most valuable items separately; i.e., credit card in a different place than debit card and cash - so my loss really wasn't serious. Also I caught it just a couple hours after my flight, which was helpful - although the ultra-efficient thief still had time to attempt to use it over 20 times!

As a whole, my two-week vacation was much less travel-oriented and more relaxation-oriented than my 26-day journey through Southeast Asia. Strangely it was also a bit more stressful in other ways, which makes sense given my preference for non-touristy activities but also makes me question whether I might have a serious issue with ability to enjoy simply relaxing. I loved the Maasai Mara and Zanzibar; the experience was certainly enriching. However, by the end of the trip I was fully excited to get back to Kenya: pick up on my temporarily abandoned/handed-off projects, go running, make my own coffee, sleep in my own bed. Another reminder how much Bungoma has become "home" to me now...

Of course, the fact that we didn't move around quite as much does not preclude us from having some decent travel stories. Highlights (lowlights?) include...

1. The Big Five

**see "safari photos" entry below**

I blogged a bit about the the safari experience already, and won't add much here. But on the whole, the safari ended up to be much more valuable than my 4wd vehicle, tourists in safari gear stereotype would have suggested. The reserve is huge - click here for a map - and quite well-preserved. You can go off-road to get close-ups of animals, but much of it seems totally unexplored. The most amazing part to me was how much the animals intermingle; it was common to see zebras side by side with giraffes, ostriches, elephants, impala. We also saw a leopard preparing a sneak attack on an impala, and two lions who had taken down a zebra eating hungrily. More than I expected, it really felt like seeing the animals in their natural habitat.

Our safari guide, Charles, also told us that the "Big Six" - the sixth exciting safari component - was the Maasai people. After reading a bit about their sad history of relocation - a bit like Native Americans? - it seemed extra pathetic to treat them as a tourist exhibit, but they are in fact a fascinating group. Historically - and even today, to a lesser extent - they live on a steady diet composed entirely of cow's blood and curdled milk. They can be seen from the road wearing red blankets and carrying spears, with their cattle herds - who from my understanding they use for milk and blood but do not kill. Apparently they also have a sort of agreement with the lions: a lion will take down a weak cow who is not part of a herd, but while a human is present will never attack.

2. Welcome to Zanzibar - or "Another angry hotel owner"

On the day of arrival, Veronica and I got to Stone Town, which is the only real city on Zanzibar island. It is a charming but dirty city, a major hub of slave trave in the 19th century, filled with winding, narrow streets. That makes it pretty complicated to navigate but also beautifully unique. I kept mentally comparing it to Beauty and the Beast and Aladin - I was waiting for those laundry-laden windows to swing open with a burst of song!

View of Stone Town from the boat, after snorkeling. Painted across the bow: Safari njema - have a good trip!

Given the sizable gap between fees for public transportation ($0.25 - $1.50 anywhere on the island) and taxis ($10-$40) we had decided to navigate the island using daladalas, even with our bags at the beginning of the trip. This made everything a bit more stressful, but we managed to find a daladala going our direction relatively quickly, haggled for a price, and got aboard. We raised the issue of cash with our driver: we didn't have many Tanzanian shillings and would need to stop at an ATM before we could pay him. "No problem, hakuna matata," he reassured us, "There will be one at the beach."

Long story short(er), there was no ATM at the beach. In fact, after a 1.5-hour daladala ride, we learned there were no ATMs anywhere on the island, except in Stone Town. It was already getting dark, so we tried to strike an arrangement with the driver: we would check into a hotel, the owner would advance him the cash to pay for the ride, and the following day we would leave our bags as a guarantee while we returned to Stone Town to get cash. The matter was complicated by the hotel owner, who was both in cahoots with the driver (we learned later) and anxious to take advantage of our needy situation. In the end, we somewhat bitterly checked into a very price-inflated hotel, paid off the driver, and ate a very cheap dinner before bed.

The following day, as planned, we left our bags in the room and went to Stone Town. We got cash, went out for a glorious rooftop lunch, and caught a daladala back to Jambiani. Again, we arrived at sundown, and went to our room to collect our bags and check out.

Here is where the real mess begins: Since we left our bags in the room, and it was already late in the evening, the owner would not less us check out without paying for a second night. We were outraged: he had required this as part of the deal, and there were no other tourists there to demand the room. Not only that, but we had risen early and found a cheap little house for rent with a kind owner farther down the beach, and we had absolutely no interest in paying his inflated price for another night. (Side note: this also happened right after I left my cell phone on the daladala, so I had that concern/frustration with myself also playing through my head during our interaction. Yuck.)

Veronica was angry, and expressed it, while I pretty much sat there looking at the man in wide-eyed disbelief. The conversation was ridiculous: he told us to "leave and see what will happen." Veronica responded, "Are you kidding me?!" The man answered smugly, "No killing. Just hurting." When Veronica threatened to call the cops, he encouraged it - and in a land of government corruption I expressed strong discontent with this idea. As we started to walk away, he grabbed her backpack and wouldn't let go. He was a big guy, and this made me incredibly tense - I started losing it, yelling something like "Let go of my friend!"

Finally - and who knew you could barter with blackmail? - he agreed to charge us half-price for the second night. Veronica was still fired up, but I stepped in and said I didn't care about the $15, I would pay and we should just get the hell out of there. So we did - but not before I told the man angrily in Swahili that "God is watching you" and he yelled after us, through boisterous laughter: "Please! Call Lonely Planet! ...See you next time!"

3. Shrimp, squid, octopus, lobster, crab, fish

This isn't really a story so much as a description of what we ate for literally every single non-breakfast meal. After being in very land-locked rural Kenya, we could not get enough of the seafood and the spices for which Zanzibar is so famous. Mmmm.

4. The underwater world

One day we took a daytrip to Prison Island and a snorkeling excursion. No jellyfish, but also very few real fish and not much to look at. Our time in the water thus became more focused on swimming around with flippers than actually looking at the ocean world - quite fun nonetheless. I also got to swim a bit each day, which was nice because it's one of my favorite things to do and something I'm not able to do when far from the coast. There may be a statistic refuting this somewhere, but I felt like the Indian Ocean was saltier than the Atlantic or Pacific. I was extra buoyant in the water and extra salt-encrusted afterward. Probably one of my favorite parts of vacation.

Feeding the tortoises on Prison Island.
Beach view in Jambiani.

5. Work

Last and probably least, I spent about a day or day and a half doing work during my time in Zanzibar. using Jake's laptop, I updated data and got in touch with people to oversee some of my project work going on while I was gone. It was impossible to feel resentful since as a volunteer my contract stipulates zero vacation days. However, it did help me resolve that when I take a more long-term job, vacation will mean totally severing ties with the work world. A secondary goal might be to never get a Blackberry, and a tertiary to never be so important that I can't get away from work for just a little while.

Zanzibar sunset.

Big picture conclusion: I've officially been in Kenya for over 2 months, have ceased to find things about East Africa surprising or foreign, am impressed by the several-story buildings in Nairobi. With my 11 days in the US as a too-short intermediary between China and Kenya, I am beginning to realize that July might bring some severe culture shock. I'll just have to save some of that good African patience.

safari photos

1 female lion

2 female lions + 1/4 zebra

1 male lion

3 bison

1 cheetah

1 elephant

9 vultures + 1 impala

1 giraffe

2 humans (1 Veronica + 1 Amber)

"alive and kicking"

The title suggested by my dear father for my come-back blog.

I had a bit of a rough past two weeks - it was the best of times, it was the worst of times, right? - during which I got pretty disillusioned with some of my work, and also found out that my earlier malaria diagnosis had been correct. Apparently it was just a scant trace a few weeks ago, but leaving it untreated was a poor decision, as the case escalated. However, 190 Kenyan shillings (less than $2.50) got me a hospital check-up, blood test, and medication, and I'm back in full form. Pretty fair price for a good lesson learned.

Pictures will need to be posted soon: I just finished a 3-day safari in the Maasia Mara with my co-OAFer Veronica. (Since planting season is over most of the staff is on vacation - in the US, Europe, East African hotspots...) We spent a night in Nairobi with Shravan, the photographer who visited a few weeks ago, and his family. They had a beautiful house, complete with a bathtub, parrot, and 47 doors. The next day was a 7-hour drive from Nairobi into the Mara, where we stayed in "tents" (with beds in them; what kind of camping is that?!) right outside the park reserve. We got three game drives, one of which was an entire 9-hour day drive. We saw all "big 5" animals and more. An incomplete but illustrative list:

• Leopard
• Lions (lots - we even saw the same pride of 10 female lions doing different activities each day, including eating a zebra!)
• Hippos
• Crocodiles
• Cheetah (my personal favorite)
• Elephants
• Giraffes
• Wildebeest
• Zebras
• Ostriches
• Warthogs
• Baboons

Yes, it was absolutely amazing. And the entire experience - drives, food, lodging, trips to/from Nairobi, etc - cost about $280. And one of the best parts turned out to be our friendly and ultra-knowledgeable guide, who told us stories about his wife and a group of his favorite tourists from Wisconsin. In the end we gave him the customary thank-you tip along with 2 Dr Suess books to share with his son and flowers for his wife. Bottom line: if you want to live a couple days in an episode of Planet Earth... I'll be happy to put you in touch. :)

Anyway, I'm in Zanzibar now (are you feeling sorry for me yet?) and will add pictures/stories about that too. I'll try not to let 2 weeks lapse again between entries. Apologies!

Happy Easter!! Enjoy the spring.