Lake Nakuru

Nakuru is the fourth biggest city in Kenya: the perfect place to drop off the face of the earth, and still have easy access to modern conveniences. Nyos and I went in August, while I was still doing my homestay with the MSID program.

It took us about two hours from Nairobi to get there by matatu. In the average matatu, my butt lasts approximately 45 minutes before the onset of pain. It’s a jolting, bumpy ride. Seat cushions are usually well-worn. Luckily, Nyos is usually willing to offer up his jacket as a cushion.

Nakuru is best known for Lake Nakuru, a lake dyed pink by the number of flamingoes that inhabit its shores. I'd probably seen too many photos of the flamingoes, though, because I was most fascinated by the pelicans. They're some of the most sophisticated, coordinated group hunters in the world, as you can see in the photographs. They systematically herd fish into the center of their group, then dive down all at once to capture them. It was also exciting to see troops of baboons, and a White Rhino.

You can only go through the park by car, and can only get to the park by private vehicle, so we negotiated with a safari company once we got into the city. The ride to the park was fun in itself. We passed tenement houses, which have a long, rich history in Kenya, painted with beautiful murals. Once in the park, we had a great guide who had gone to school in Wildlife studies, and knew all about all the animals and birds we saw. And, I only had to pay 10 dollars to get in, since I'm a student/resident, as opposed to the usual 30-50 tourists have to pay to get into national parks (always a perk).

Follow the link to my Picasa web album. I'll caption the photos with more details. Just scroll over the photos to read the whole caption.

https://picasaweb.google.com/115145304472513953366/LakeNakuruToUpload?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCOP0h-yQruPzCQ&feat=directlink

City Park in Nairobi

I'm gonna try this slideshow deal. And, if you want to see the photos individual, larger, and/or for longer, you can click on the symbol on the bottom right-hand of the slideshow.

City Park is a park in Nairobi, just a short matatu ride from city centre. The main reason one would go there is to feed the many overzealous monkeys. People are always there selling peanuts, precisely for that purpose. They monkeys eat right from your hands. I plan to go back to see if I can coax one onto my shoulder.

In the photos, you see both the common grey monkey (don't know if that's its name, though), and the rarer colobus. Even Nyos, notorious monkey-hater that he is, got a lil bit excited about the colobus.

How to Write About Africa by Binyavanga Wainaina

http://www.granta.com/Magazine/92/How-to-Write-about-Africa/Page-1

The Kenyan reaction to poprocks... and marshmallows... and froyo

I was shocked to find froyo had come to Nairobi! Of course, it was in a crazy bougie mall, but nonetheless.... I'd gone to that mall to buy "Simplified Swahili" a much, much, much, much, much, much, much better book than the Hinnebusch one we'd used in earlier classes.

Kenyans generally dislike eating/drinking anything cold. They even drink lukewarm beer.

They had tree tomato froyo! So weird.... I didn't try it. Figured it might not mix well with chocolate and mango and such....

Nyos eating a marshamallow on Safari. We also gave one to our guide who said, "She's come to bewitch us with these things!" Sometimes, I think half of the talking Kenyans do is joking.

Mashmallowwwwww

Nyos' adorable little cousin + poprocks

Nyos+ poprocks

Nyos performing whatever silliness he always does to that little one, this time in reference to poprocks.

My favorite: despite all appearances, he did enjoy them.

Return to Muranga, Nyos' rural home

Goats swinging around the bundle of brush as they chow down on it.

To get to Nyos' rural home from Nairobi, you take a matatu about an hour past Thika to Muranga, then ride a pikipiki (motorcycle) over beautiful hills and valleys to the little village. The pikipiki ride is always one of my favorite parts of the trip. It's exhilerating. The two of us fit on one behind the driver. I remember last year, heading straight towards and through and road block and some kind of 'no roads beyond this point' sign. That's the beauty of bodabodas (and pikipikis: passenger bicycles). They can swerve through stopped traffic, and ride on roads that aren't roads (not that cars don't do that here too). Nyos lost his hat this time, so we had to stop next to some people laying stones to fix the sides of the road by hand, while he ran back down the empty highway for it.

When you ask a Kenyan where they're from, they'll tell you their rural home; not where they live, or even where they were born. The rural home is the ancestral home of the father.

 We rode tons of pikipikis in Thika. They're actually a bit scarier than bodabodas, but probably some of the most skilled bicyclists in the world. My favorite is when they have loudspeakers attached to their bikes, blasting music.

Also in Thika, I sat drinking instant coffee (yes, you heard the coffee snob right: instant coffee) across from a police officer known for myriad human rights abuses. He was sitting with a pretty young woman. Disturbing. It felt almost unsanitary sitting so close to him.

Lots of beautiful birds and trees in his yard.

This crazy fruit basically tasted like a cucumber, with quite the bizarre texture. Not the most appetizing thing ever.

Emaciated cat and its baby. The mother was too sick to give the baby any milk, and having a tiny litter and only one surviving kitten isn't a good sign. But they were adorable, cozying up a few inches from the cooking fire.

Nyos picked flowers from the yard and arranged me a beautiful bouquet.

No electricity reaches Muranga.

Illnesses

1. For the two weeks spanning a week before the MSID program started (while I was staying at Nyos') through the first week of it, I was basically sick nonstop. I think I got food poisoning twice, which was crazy because last semester I was the only person who didn't get sick a single time (other than an 80 degree weather cold worse than I'd ever imagined colds could be).

I actually thought I might have malaria, and took 50 cent malaria cure drugs, which did seems to cure me for about 24 hours. But, that was just because they have painkillers in them. Turned out I hadn't been in the country long enough to have malaria, and hadn't been anywhere with the type of mosquitoes that carry it.

I'm all better now, though, thank goodness.

2. Scientists have apparently bred male mosquitoes without sperm. They may be able to fool female mosquitoes into laying unfertilized eggs their entire lives, since they only breed once in a lifetime. That would be great, since mosquitoes are the number one killeranimal, followed by hippos.

3. I'm taking the malaria drug that's supposed to give you nightterrors, which it seems to be succeeding in doing. Last year's hurt my stomach. I'm not sure I think people should take malaria prevention drugs, especially over such long terms. They're less than 80 percent effective, create immunities, have horrible side effects, and can make the test come back with false negatives if you're part of the 20 percent that gets malaria despite taking the drugs.

4. I went with Nyos to visit his Aunt and her baby in a Thika government hospital. The little baby, his little cousin, was sick, but has gone home now. Nyos' mom packed food for us to bring them. His Aunt and her husband, a priest, were so welcoming and happy that I came to see them. They were really sweet.

It was full of people. They were sharing a twin bed with another baby and its family, in a room of dozens of twin beds.

Less than a week later, the same hospital was all over the news because four babies on oxygen in the same room died within minutes of each other. Their parents had been lobbying for attention from the nurses, knowing something was wrong. Nyos' family was still there at the time, and his Uncle was a leader of the people demanding something be done. There's a thin line here between negligence and simple overextension of human resources. I don't know that blame can be placed on individual caregivers, though they are investigating. The hospital was packed so far beyond its capacity, there's no way the staff could deliver adequate care. But, those deaths should have been avoidable.  

Tumblr blog

I was thinking I would switch to blogging via tumblr, but I didn't really like it, so there's a link to the few posts I made.

http://towanderalotistolearnalot.tumblr.com/

Birds and Views in Thika

Dead bat on a tree-- we went on a little nature hike through some neighbor's shamba (farm) and some factoryland.

Sakuma Wiki in the making! "Sakuma wiki" means "to stretch the week." In other words, it's what you eat while you're waiting for the next paycheck. People plant it everywhere, even by the side of the road, so it's great for urban agriculture. It's actually kale, which people cut into tiny pieces and cook with tomatoes, carrots, onions, salt (the basic seasonings for everything here). If you want to make it a little fancier, you can mix it with spinach. I'm a big fan.

 Nyos' neighbor kids, playing on what looked like the most fun playground equipment of all time i.e. a giant truck! I was pretty jealous. They also played the most adorable game of hide and seek ever. A little boy Nyos calls Chinaman lives over there. Apparently, he looks slightly Chinese. In other news, our bodaboda driver asked me if I was Japanese the day before yesterday....

Another day, we sat on a wall with this view, and the views below.

A box of chickens in a matatu.... PETA doesn't have much of a presence in Kenya. Nyos bravely snuck this picture for me, but refused to sneakily photograph the matatuconductor wearing the pink Carolina shirt (who I actually remember fistbumping a year ago for wearing the same shirt)

Giving Oscar a Second Chance

I despised Portrait of Dorian Grey at the time that I read it, mostly because I found it disgusting morally, but I think the moral complexities of Oscar's heart and actual life are less so. Thus, I've decided not to hold it against him; also because this quote is beautiful.

"When first I was put into prison some people advised me to try and forget who I was. It was ruinous advice. It is only by realising what I am that I have found comfort of any kind. Now I am advised by others to try on my release to forget that I have ever been in a prison at all. I know that would be equally fatal. It would mean that I would always be haunted by an intolerable sense of disgrace, and that those things that are meant for me as much as for anybody else - the beauty of the sun and moon, the pageant of the seasons, the music of daybreak and the silence of great nights, the rain falling through the leaves, or the dew creeping over the grass and making it silver - would all be tainted for me, and lose their healing power, and their power of communicating joy. To regret one's own experiences is to arrest one's own development. To deny one's own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one's own life. It is no less than a denial of the soul."

De Profundis

Oscar Wilde

 

I'm loving my experience here. I've been upset I haven't had time to blog, but we have crazy amounts of work and I'm trying to make the most of my time. I plan to go on a blogging spree on the plane home.

Nairobi Gallery and nightlife

Friday, after class let out at 12:45, we went to town to see a photography exhibit at the Nairobi Gallery. On the way we stopped for Ethiopian at Club Soundd. It was good for the crazy cheap price, and had delicious potatos that were sort of like french fries but in more of a potato form. I've never had them at any Ethiopian place, but Kenyans are fairly obsessed with potatoes, so they must be catering to their customer.

We left Maria at a coffeeshop, and went to the exhibit. Later, I got a text from Maria saying her waitress said some guy asked her for her number. Kenyan men are something else, but it can be hilarious sometimes. Almost all sign are handpainted in city center, often faded, crumbling, cracked. The ticketbooth we went to for our tickets into the museum was a dark booth with idle men surrounding it. It didn't really look in operation at all, and there were no other people at the museum, so we were wary of giving them money, but they had tickets so we did. One of the idle men held out his hand when we walked up, so I took it, and he says, "Look! I'm with a mzungu!" and everyone laughed. Typical, but funny. I prefer it when they make a joke to when they just point and say "mzungu" or yell it repeatedly to get my attention. They succeed, of course, because people say it enough that it does practically become your name, but I'd rather it not.

The museum is next to the Nyayo House where they used to torture detainees and political prisoners under Moi, which is ironically named after Moi's supposed philosophy of peace, love, and unity. It's still a government building.

The museum was small with an interesting layout. You walked down a hallway into an atrium with maybe eight doors covered by black curtains. Every single door and window was covered by a black curtain, but some of the doors were closed, so you'd push aside the curtain and not actually be able to go through. Inside the rooms behind the curtains it was dark with more curtain-covered windows and doors to fool you. It was like a dream.

Each room had one or two projectors scrolling photos by one of seven Kenyan photographers, meant to show different perspectives on the country. There were a few photographers I really loved. One did a collection called "Nairobi Nightlife" which contrasted the vibrant singers and danceclubs in Nairobi with the poor warming themselves by fires by the side of the road, and children sleeping on the street.

This is the advertisement used for the exhibit, and another one of my favorite photographers from it. He took photos of Nairobians wearing glasses handmade by a local artist from recycled materials. There were beautiful high fashion sort of photos, and photos of regular people, and smiling people, and old people, etc.

The third that I loved was called "Colors and curves," and was very artistically done with partial pictures highlighting the curves and geometry of the human form holding a child, buying groceries, etc, and the diversity of colors.

There was another called "Concrete Crystals" in which the photographer used an algorithm to expose the complex and beautiful geometric shapes of Nairobi architecture.

After the gallery, I went to Sarit Center for coffee and to get some work done on my laptop with the free wireless. Dennis joined me when he got off work, and announced that we would be going to town. So, exhausted, I had another cup of coffee.

It's really annoying when people come over, because they're not allowed in after 9:30 pm unless you've gotten permission beforehand, and they make them put down a ton of information on a sign in sheet, and leave their id with the security guards. It's awkward, because they pretty much only make Africans leave their id. They don't know all of our faces. They just assume we live there when we walk up to the gate and let us in because you're white. You can get away with a ton here by being white.

The guards also sleep every single night, so you have to have your cabdriver wait and honk while you knock and literally yell at them over the gate.

Anyway, we ended up going to Simmers. It's outdoors under tents in city center, which was very pleasant. The music was a live Congolese band, I think, and there were great dancers. I was the only mzungu. I've been told that's where all the prostitutes who cater to African men go, but there are prostitutes everywhere you go here.

Then we went to another place... but I don't remember what it was called. It was upstairs with great dancing, great African music. I think I was the only mzungu there, but Dennis says he saw some Italians.

All in all, another great Nairobi night.