The scenery around the airport was just like i expected Africa to look like. Big open area with those trees that rise up tall and at the top flare out with all their branches and leaves just like in the Lion King. However the scenery changes rather quickly. In many commercials you see on TV they show these people living in huts and in the middle of nowhere. That isn’t really Africa, or at least not the bulk of Africa. Nairobi, Kenya is a huge city, but it isn't modernized like large cities are in the west. Buildings made of concrete (which will be a topic of interest in a later post) seem to come out of nowhere, some streets are paved, but those that are have no sense of lanes, people walking to work on the side of the road and off in the distant fields, carts being used to carry goods along the road, and furniture set out in the open all across the sidewalks for people to buy. How they were kept safe from the elements i do not know. The whole place although “modernized” was still very dirty. They have people paid to go around the city and sweep dirt off the sidewalk in vain as the next day there was still dirt. Some buildings looked as though it was starting to fall apart, signs everywhere saying to recycle or to at least through trash away keeping the streets clean, but not many people pay attention to that with trash being thrown anywhere.
Driving there is an adventure in its self. Our forms of transportation were walking, taxi's, motorcycles (story later), buses and mainly these "party vans" called Mtatu's that would not leave until the van was full, played super loud music, and often had a TV screen that played the music video that was currently playing. Each van had a driver and a conductor who would switch with other conductors while driving. This became one of my least favorite forms of travel over the time that we were in Africa because, being white, Africans believe we have a lot of money, so they jack up the prices for us. The roads outside of the main part of the city were mainly dirt and every so often would had a massive speed bump across to prevent people from flying down it and creating more accidents that the lane-less roads already produced. Even so, drivers were bumper to bumper traveling at 40km/h forcing their way. The first time in one of the Mtatu, I thought I was going to die. I thought to myself "I would never drive like that in the US", but this wouldn’t be the last time that I would experience something I would never do.
When we arrived in Nairobi, we quickly searched for a cell phone place, bargained down the price of the phone (which again she said to ask me for more money because i was white and all white people have money) and made a call to one of the members in Nairobi. As we were waiting, we went to an internet bar to send emails and check things. We stood on the street and waited after finishing our emailing and a while later a young woman runs up and starts messing with Jordan. I had absolutely no idea who she was and thought she was trying to rob him, until Jordan said "Ahhh Eve you're trouble".
Eve is an amazing woman. She is beautiful, in her early 20's, knows how to joke, has lots of energy, and can dish out sarcasm like nobodies business. Shes takes care of things around the house with her mother, and sister, all while working at a restaurant and studying at university. She has a very kind caring heart, but takes no nonsense from anyone when they are trying to mess with her or take advantage her or her friends.
When we met up with Eve, she took us to her home. I never expected the living places to be like it was. They are not super small but they definitely are not as roomy as the homes are in the US. Her home had a gate in front that led to a concrete courtyard shared by a few other families where cloths could be hung to dry. Inside was a living room about 15'x10' or so, a bathroom where you had to take a bucket bath, a small kitchen 6'x6', and 2 bedrooms that were about the same size as the living room. It was a very cozy place. At her home we ate bread and butter with her mother, with hot cocoa as the drink of choice. I never really understood the "hot drink in a hot climate" concept before i went there. I figured out that with drinking hot drinks it warms your body up and makes you perspire to cool it off. Although it makes sense, I definitely still like a nice cool drink on a hot day.
Finished lunch we decided to visit Jordan's mission office up at the church. The church wasn’t too far from the city, but since we had to walk it seemed a lot longer, especially since it was up the hill a ways. It was great to look at where Jordan had served, and the "Book of Life" that chronicled all the Missionaries who served in that mission. Eve had to go to work and we had told her that we were leaving that night to go to Kampala, Uganda. She was not too happy about this (In African cultures, if you come to visit you are expected to stay a while, no hurry in Africa, and half a day definitely was not long enough), but we had a tentative schedule that we wanted to follow. We wanted to spend the last few days in Nairobi before leaving so that we could make sure we were did not get stuck in one of the other countries unable to travel. This ended up being a very good plan as for what happened in Tanzania. Before we returned to Eve's house, we enjoyed a cool drink at the restaurant where she worked at, stopped quickly to visit a friend of Jordan's and then made our way by motorcycle to pick our things up. After a short dinner, we said goodbye to Eve and ran off to take the bus to Kampala.
One thing I have learned about Africa is that there is no such thing as "on time". By this I mean, unless you leave extremely early for an appointment, you may or may not make it for that appointment at the schedule time. As i stated above, most of the transportation does not leave until the entire vehicle is full or stuffed beyond capacity in many cases. Sometimes the vehicle fit enough people to fill the amount seating available, other times we were squished in there like sardines. If you had any luggage or bags, those bags had to sit on your lap. Luckily we had hiking packs so this was a little easier but still all together uncomfortable when you have to have a full bag on your lap.
We had left Eve's restaurant at 8:15pm on one side of the city and were expected to leave at 8:30pm on the other. This made for a very interesting trek since Nairobi's nightlife offers an arrange of activities, pulling young adult residents and a few older adults from their homes to participate in all the fun. The walkways crowded with people forced our movement in non direct patterns, weaving around, in between and through groups of people, on and off the sidewalks as well. Traffic become very dense as well making it a little easier for us to cross the streets while cars were supposed to be moving. Upon arrival at the stage (as stations are called in Africa), we noticed a bus trying to leave. Thinking we had missed our bus, we talked to one of the bookies. Lucky for us the "on time" concept worked in our favor as he told us the bus we were supposed to leave from was late and was just about to load up passengers and luggage. The bus we had seen leaving was the bus scheduled a half an hour earlier leaving at 8pm. Inside the bus we went after loading our bags and it was off to Kampala, Uganda at last.
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