Nairobi Nairobi!

Back here, again. Feels good.

Okay, so apparently I don't have 24 hours in London as I once thought. I have 6 hours. I think I thought somehow I could time travel, but that is not the case.

I will be arriving in PITTSBUARGH at 10:35 pm on the 2nd of June! Oh my goodness! I hope it is super warm there, as it is in Nairobi, as it was not in Capetown.

Also. Today I have planned to do all my shopping for everyone. Buying Kenyan things and whatever. Trolls with flags on them, whatever I can find (TIIDBIT! Kenya's flag is the only national flag that has a weapon on it! Interesting?). However, today is also Madaraka day, which is something like Independence day, I think, except that there is another holiday called Jamhuri day, which literally means independence. The few Kenyans I've talked to can't explain it, so I'm stumped. I think the slow unclenching on the colonial fist has something to do with it. I'm nervous the curio shops won't be open, but we'll see. If I can't get hand carved so-and-sos, I'll buy some cheap ass spices and delicious alcohol.

Speaking of the colonial fist, I'm reading an incredible book. It's called Britain's Gulag: the brutal end of empire in Kenya... or something. Caroline Elkins. Affirmed yet again that the British sucked/suck.

But I have trinkets to purchase! Curios! Cheerio! See you soon!

All sides of Africa

About a year ago, I was in Egypt. A few months ago, I was in Mombasa, swimming in the Indian Ocean. Two days ago, I was in Luderitz (umlaut over the u--the first place I've been with an umlaut!) on the Namibian coast, dipping my feet in the icy clean Atlantic. Today, I'm in Capetown, South Africa.

Capetown is our final destination. Sure, we're flying out of Johannesburg, but this is really our end point. And we've got here. I think tonight we'll take some time to reflect on that. It's hitting us, hard, that in about 9 days we'll be back in the US, and this will all be behind us.

So, from Windhoek, we took an overnight train to Keetmanshoop. From Keetmans, we hitched in a petrol transporter to Luderitz, this weird little Bavarian town in Namibia. I wish I knew more about architecture, but it was very bizarre. The houses were painted extraordinary colors. We stayed in this huge mansion that had been converted to a guest house. We made fish n chips, spent a lot of time looking at the ocean. It was a vacation that a middle-aged couple would take, and it was wonderful.

At the gas station back to town, we met Rashid, a peace corps volunteer. We hitched back with him, and hung out at his house with his girlfriend for 10 hours or so, until our bus came. It was nice. We drank South African box wine, I read part of this really sick book. It's called Africa (or some shit), and it's by the dude who is the Africa editor for the Economist. The dude covered stories all over sub-Saharan Africa, and he's extremely knowledgable and a good little writer, too. Some highlights--his chapter about genocides in Rwanda and Burundi, his explanation of the Goldenberg scandal in Kenya (an absolutely convoluted, evil genius money-laundering scheme that until now I've only had a faint understanding of. He untangled it all, showed how absolutely fucked up the president-kings in Kenya have been), devastating discussion of HIV in South Africa (made me remember Ukwala real hard, also never sighed so much in a 30 minute span), and his personal anectodes about Idi Amin. He was teaching English in Uganda when Amin came to power. He went to one of his rallies, and saw Amin driving himself around Kampala in a Jeep. Crazy!

And helpful, too. He described communicating with Africans south of the Sahara, how you don't get to the point immediately, you don't get angry, you work indirectly. The exception, he noted, is Afrikaaners. So, in Capetown, we don't bullshit around, hum and look away for a few seconds until we get closer to what we want. We say what we want and when. I don't like it.

Another thing I don't like--the lack of extended greetings. Everywhere else we've been, interactions start with a lot of questions. How are you? How is your day? How's business? Even at kiosks, just buying a coke, these are the questions you ask. Here, I've been tripping over my tongue, trying to be brief.

So, Capetown will be historical and hedonistic. Both Kat and I love love love museums, and Capetown has a shitton of them. We're also going to hit up Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela and Jacob Zuma, among others, were imprisoned. We will also maybe eat sushi. Kat really wants to see penguins, and I'm down. I think we'll do a wine tour, catch a movie, climb Table mountain.

Again, the world is an oyster. I will be home late on the 2nd of June, tired, most likely. Wanting to come back, definitely. But how do I do it?

Like German, but if you're dying

Is what Afrikaans sounds like.

Yes! It's true! We've reached the south of Africa!

Not South Africa, but Namibia, birthplace of Shiloh Jolie-Pitt and a bunch of other people.

We're in Windhoek now, the capital and largest city. We blazed through Zambia in a few days. It was an adventure. Spent a night in Chipata, then Lusaka, then we broke down on a bus from Lusaka to Livingstone--the six hour journey took about 19 and we had to sleep on the bus.

Then Victoria Falls, where we were soaked to the skin. Who knew! I have a funny story but only 11 minutes left on this computer, and I want to tell you about Namibia.


Namibia: the strangest place I have ever been.

For a while, while we were coming through East Africa, and then even down Malawi and into Zambia, I was starting to feel a little worried. We were heading out on this big expedition, but each country felt the same as the last. I mean, sure, in Western Kenya the huts are circles, and in Zambia they're more like triangular prisms, but still there's ugali, or nsima. There's dirt. The transportation is the same. I was worried that I wouldn't find anything that I couldn't have found in Kenya.

And then we got to Namibia.

I wish I could give it justice. Let me just tell you about last night, maybe.

We made some friends at the place where were stayed last night. They live in Namibia, but it was a mixed group. One of the dudes was from Uganda, two were Kenyan, and a third was Namibian but grew up in Sweden, came here a little after independence--which was, mind you, in 1990. We spoke Kiswahili, which felt so good.

In anycase, they showed us Windhoek. We were barred from a bar while every white face passed, no questions. In the next bar we went to, a man came up to us. He was tall, very blonde. From Johannesberg, but, as he said, "basically a local." He made conversation with all of us, just chatting about where we are headed, where we've been.

He went away, we kept drinking. Some 20 minutes later, he came back, leaned over to me, and said, "Beware."

It was incredible. I guess I've never been in a situation so overtly racist. This place is soaked with it, everywhere.

And then, a few more days in Namibia and on to South Africa.

On the long rides between places, I think about coming home, and I get very scared. I'm excited, definitely, but how am I going to do it!

Oops, or mea culpa

So, I realized a few moments after pressing publish on that last pot that it had actually been only three days since I had checked my email. I am very sorry. Down to the good stuff, though.

I am in Lilongwe, Malawi. One time I had a conversation with Miriam about cities that had beautiful names, and Lilongwe is one of them. Unfortunately, Malawi also has a hot election coming up in about a week, so it seems like it's not exactly the safest place to be at the moment.

So what happened between the last blogpost and this one? About a billion things.

From Jinja, we hightailed it to Kampala. Kampala is huge and crazy, hot and hilly. We were only there for a few hours, and didn't do much to really feel the city. We went to the white mall, saw a movie--Duplicity, which was surprisingly okay, but maybe that's because I've only been watching Nigerian movies--and drank beer and ate ground nuts on the roof of the white mall.

From there, we took an overnight bus to Kigali--sorry Mimi, the overnight buses are jut too convenient to miss out on. We got to the border a little after dawn. It was chilly and misty. The most striking thing about Rwanda, I think, is how clean it is. Besides outlawing plastic bags, there are cleanup crews all over the place. My friend Peter peeled an orange while we were waiting at the border. Like he would have done in Kenya, he dropped the peel on the ground. A man came over with a piece of paper, picked up the peel that had dropped, and put it near Peter's feet for the rest of the peel. Bizarre.

And into Kigali. Rwanda is mountainous, and incredibly cultivated. It seems like every inch of the mountains is covered with farms. A few kilometers in, I saw the first memorial of the genocide. It was a sign fixed into a rock wall, with some words in black letters in Kinyarwanda, and "Jenocide" in red.

So Kigali is beautiful, Milles Collines or whatever. But really not worthy of an "or whatever."

I don't know how Rwanda has done it, really. Kigali is clean and beautiful, and in the countryside, people plant gardens that are just for beauty. There are decorative gardens! We couldn't find any foreign banks in the city--maybe that has something to do with it? All of the motorcycle drivers--motos are a legit form of transportation here--wear helmets, and carry a helmt for their passenger. They're also only allowed to carry one passenger.

Went to the genocide memorial in Kigali. Peter asked a man on the street where the museum was. The man said, "there is no museum in Kigali." Peter said, "the genocide mueum," and the man replied with a "gai gai gai," which is the noise you make when you're surprised.

The genocide is something I've been interested in since high school, one of those obsessive fixations people have, but I still can't understand it really. I've read that there's a culture of obedience, that people who didn't participate were risking their lives, but it still seems unimaginable. I told my friend Kat that I wish I could go back in time and stop it, and she said that I should think about how to stop things like that happening in the future. Hello, Kenya 2012.

IN ANY CASE then we went to Tanzania, where everyone lied to us and we were tangled in transit for 5 suckful days. Tanzania sucks.

And into Malawi. Where there is not much of anything. We were going to take a ferry down the lake, but we got to the launch point and the price had gone up $150 since our Lonely Planet was published. So we said no way and got a room for 400 Kwacha, about 3 bucks, (100 Kwacha too many in my opinion) and spent the night in Chilumba. Chilumba, Malawi, where there are two things to do: drink and watch people drink. I had a beer, it started to pour, we sprinted to our room.

Next morning, we walked to Chitimba, had a weird interaction with a girl named Grory which I won't forget and which made me feel angry, and terrible for feeling angry.

Everyone--and I mean everyone--asked us for money in Malawi.

We stayed by the beach in Chitimba for 2 days, which was perfect. Lake Malawi, despite having some raging Billharzia, is beautiful. The waves were big and pushed you around, but they weren't salty, so we didn't mind.

So yesterday we hitchhiked to Lilongwe. The very first car we saw stopped, and lo and behold, was heading to Lilongwe! So we jumped in.

Our companions were two men. One named Rafael, from Tanzania. Short, bulgy eyes, talked fast. The other was the most massive man I've seen. He turned around in the drivers seat, pronounced some deep syllables that I think were his name. He had a scar over and under his right, bloodshot eye. He was wearing a green, leopard-print shortsleeve shirt of indeterminate slinky material, along with a gold chain around his neck, and some serious wrist bling. Rafael exlained that he was from the DR Congo.

They said they were going to Mozambique on business. When we asked them what kind of business, they laughed. Turns out they do some hustling of diamonds and other gem stones and precious metals around DRC, South Africa, Mozambique. We didn't have the guts to ask if what they were doing was illegal.

And now we're in Lilongwe. It's been ages since we've been on computers, so we decided to do it, finally.

Also, I understand that my phone isn't working. I haven't had service since coming into Malawi, but I am alive, and hope to get some service in Zambia. If not, South Africa will hook me up, I'm sure.

In any case, I'll leave you with a joke. In Kenya, when you call a person whose phone is off or out of range, you say they are "Mteja." This word just means "customer," but it has to do with the message you get when you call the phone, which goes somthing like, "Samahani, mteja ya nambari uliopiga something something iko sasa." Since we've been out of range, Kat and I have been making jokes about the most terrifying Samahani (which means somthing like excuse me) messages.

Samahani, your daughter has been kidnapped by diamond smugglers.
Samahani, your daughter's night bus has rolled somewhere between Lusaka and Windhoek.
Samahani, your daughter has decided to marry a Kenyan.

Kwa heri!

There's no word for yes in dholuo, there's no word for no

There are just tones.

Also, the word for ndengu, greengrams or lentils, is olayo. The word for he or she is urinating is olayo. The tone is what differentiates the meaning. I'll never know it, but I'll always make people laugh.

I left Ukwala, went to do my exams in Nairobi, wrote three of the worst papers ever, and then came back to Ukwala. I was there for two days, two two two days, and then I left with some friends for Uganda. Which is where I am now, in an internet cafe, after eating Indian food and tasting spices for the first time in weeks. We're in Jinja, and this is the beginning of the great adventure south. Next is Rwanda, then Tanzania, Malawi, then some countries starting with Z's, one starting with an N, and SA, and then Nairobi, then home.

One thing, people, friends. How can you expect me to want to come home if you don't send me letters or emails or messages or anything? I understand that I've not been good at communicating, but really. When I go for three weeks without checking my emails and have nothing but admin stuff from the Philosophy department? It makes me feel like there's nothing left for me. I guess I'm just confused and sad. Who knew leaving Kenya would feel like this?

Concoction

Last night I opened a bottle of Coke with my teeth. Sorry ma, it's just too much fun.

Then mixed it with Guinness, and some liquor distilled from sugar cane. Then spent the night with friends watching one of the hilarious DVDs they have here that are compilations of music videos. Britney Spears, Westlife, Lionel Ritchie, Celine Dion, Bonny M, Backstreet Boys, Boyz II Men.

Just wanted to let you know there's fun too, along with the rest of it.

the sugar capital of kenya

is where i am, Mumias if you want to look it up on a map. Huddling inside from the torrential downpour, hoping the rain doesn't knock the juice out of this place.

in Kenya, you have your house and your home. Your house is where you kukaa, where you stay. Your home is where you come from, where your family probably lives, where your relatives are buried. Im on a weekend trip with a friend from Matibabu. We're in her home.

So much has happened in the past four weeks, I know even highlights are impossible, and maybe not as telling even as the lowlights.

The first few days in Ukwala were some of the hardest I've had. Everything felt impossible, but I started to carve out a place for myself, despite feeling completely illequipped to contribute
anything really.

I started going to secondary schools after work to meet with small groups of girls. I talked to them about boys, sex, family. I taught them what their menstrual cycles are, how to use condoms. They want female condoms, they really really want female condoms. They also have no money to buy sanitary napkins.

Ive also been working in the HIV clinic here, seeing some very sick people, and some not so sick people. I did some home-based care two weeks ago, so I went around on my bike and visited patients in their homes. It doesn't have a word to go with it.

In addition, I went to the shamba--farm--and planted maize and maharague--beans--with my mama, who reminds me so much of bubby. She's maybe the most amaing woman I've met, Mama Lucy. I learned a word there--khomo, in dholuo, which means planting. The shamba is along a main road, and people would lean out of matatus, trailers, yell from bikes, Mzungu! Mzungu khomo!

I also killed a chicken yesterday. And opened a Tusker with my teeth.

And I have been very treyf, so so treyf and I was reading Exodus today and Im pretty sure that my soul will be cut off from Israel.

Dudes

Leaving soon, so post here your snail mail addresses for postcards.

Also, I'm going to be traveling overland to South Africa at the end of this trip. More details to follow!

Nitaenda to the West

It's been a very long time--I'm not sure if anybody is checking this anymore. I've been to Tanzania. Lushoto in the Usambara mountains, the most beautiful place I've been, I think, ever. I went to Mombasa last week, stayed with a Dutch man who owns a resort called Melrose Place, home to Europeans of the over-60 set and their "local partners." Saw a strange side of expat life, and felt the entire weekend like I wasn't in Kenya, or maybe was in Kenya, maybe a little too much in Kenya.

Just a warning. On Sunday, I'm going to my internship in Ukwala. I'm two hours outside of Kisumu and almost in Uganda. I've been told that the closest internet cafe is in Kisumu, so communication will most likely be minimal, if at all. Internet has been so unreliable in Nairobi, and it's only going to get worse. A friend made a joke the other day--she told me that I might as well say goodbye and I love you to everyone I know. So, so there.

I've been wondering how much I need communication. Yesterday, I was in Nakumatt Junction (how many posts have I mentioned Nakumatt? It's a huge part of life here). The Junction is shopping oasis for foreigners and wealthy Kenyans. It has a coffee shop with Heinz ketchup on the tables, a movie theater showing Benjamin Button and Revolutionary Road, and a little Apple kiosk where you can stock up on ipods that (probably) haven't been stolen. The Nakumatt in the place is suitably posh, like Market District to the Lawrenceville Jiggle. I walked in, and I had an overwhelming feeling of loneliness. I wanted to talk to someone, maybe anyone, really, talk so I didn't have to put on a face. But I didn't have any airtime, and the feeling wore down. Instead of the bobby pins I was looking for, I found aisles of weave.

I've also bought a bike. It's a quirky Marin mountain bike. The shifting is a little off, the front tube is a Presta valve and the back is a Schraeder, and it's probably hot property from Europe, but it's mine and it handles the crappy roads in Nairobi like a dream. We'll see how it handles Ukwala.

Yesterday I biked along Ngong Road to the Lenana Forest Center, looking for a bike shop where I can pick up a little pump, some tire levers, and a few spares. The place had moved, so I called a friend who I thought might know where they were. While I waited for him to call back, I sat at a roadside kiosk and had a Fanta Orange--no baridi, so I had a warm one. There are roadside kiosks everywhere here, mostly fire-engine red and Coca-cola, with low, red and white picket fences enclosing enough territory for the kiosk itself, a table and a few chairs. I put on my don't talk to me face, sat at a table where I was joined by two high school boys, and sipped, was stared at. It's a place where you don't see a lot of white people, in an area with a lot of furniture workshops. I watched a man plane some wood for a bed frame. I could hear some metal work going on. Welding here is done out in the open. You might see someone wearing a mask, but probably not.

Quickly, an askari is a guard. Every apartment complex is guarded by high walls, many topped with barbed wire, electric wire, broken glass, or a combination of the three. Each complex has a guard. In some areas, like Jamhuri, where there are more houses than apartments, estates will be closed off, one from another with guarded gates. You learn who lives where by the gates, and which gates are safe at night and which aren't.

Kitu kidogo means something small. It's what you give a police officer when they stop your taxi driver. Also known as chai, or tea.

My feelings have been very confusing recently. I think I'm sad about leaving Nairobi and my host family. I'm apprehensive about this internship--the word underqualified is probably most suited. I've just found out that Matibabu has a VCT center, Voluntary Counselling and Testing, meaning, if I wanted, I could learn how to break it to people that they have AIDS. I could also end up working in their lab, or doing community development in the field.

I've also been wondering about coming back here. Leaving Nairobi is like a practice for the big game. What happens when I get home, look around me at a confusing summer followed by a quick last semester, and ask, "what next?"

I don't know. Maybe I've been eating too much sugar, not enough sukuma wiki.

Na wewe?

A good week, and a busy weekend.

Saturday, a few friends and I went to Kibera, or really the outskirts of Kibera, to volunteer at a feeding center for orphans. My friend's host mother runs the center, which feeds about 20 or 30 kids one day a week. How can that be a feeding center, really? I enjoyed my time and I learned some fun games, but I'm conflicted about it. Maybe it's the magnitude of the problem, or the fact that I'm not really committed to this organization, or maybe because I don't believe in its effectiveness. I didn't walk out of there feeling like I feel after a tutoring session at Arsenal. There are around 700 organizations working in Kibera, the biggest slum in Africa. Wouldn't they be more effective if consolidated? Better able to get money from donors, and make sure it goes to the right places?

One of the staff members here is Maasai. On Sunday, I woke up early and met with friends at Nakumatt Junction. We took a matatu to Ngong--one of the best matatus yet, by the way--and then another matatu to his family's land a few kilometers from Ngong. We hiked down the escarpment and sat on some rocks halfway down. It was beautiful, the Ngong hills to the left, some huts and brush, but mostly nothing until the horizon. We ate, saw the dam, played with some kids. I practiced my kiswahili, which is about good enough to communicate with a four year old.

I've tried for the past five minutes to construct a coherent thought about how beautiful it was there, how I'd like to put a house down, how I couldn't live as a third or fourth wife in a roach-crowded hut, but everything felt like something terrible, something I couldn't sign my name to. My feelings and thoughts have been paricularly difficult to organize.

On the language front, I just had my first lesson of Dholuo. I'm going to be working in a Luo community, so I figure I should know how to introduce myself and ask how things are going. Which I can do now.

Last week, every morning walk to school, I couldn't stop smiling.

But here's something I've been wondering about. In Cairo, every day I felt overwhelmed. Crossing streets, sitting and having tea. Here, I haven't felt that way, except maybe my first day in Nakuru town. I wonder if it is because I'm living here, because on my walk home, I can see what dresses the second-hand kiosks have sold, and which they haven't. Or because the askari who used to yell hakuna matata at me every time I walked by now responds when I ask habari za leo, or habari gani. But I've been worried that it could be some kind of tiredness that comes from traveling. That I'm worn out and nothing will surprise me, nothing will have the same wonder.

I've got to head to Yaya center to pick up some paint. My mum is having the house painted, maroon and orange. She's a very stylish lady--I'm sure it's going to be bangin.

Mahindi choma

Means roast corn. Which is what I'm eating right now. I'm sitting in the MSID office. Abdul Aziz, on of the on-site staff, brought it--it's delicious!

This weekend I went on my first adventure outside of Nairobi. On Friday morning, four friends and I took a matatu into town. We walked to the River Road district to pick up another matatu to Nyeri. The staff here told us never to go east of Moi Avenue into the River Road district. There are two problems with this. First, if you want to leave Nairobi at all, you have to. Second, the River Road area is the coolest place in Nairobi. Hectic, loud music--very different from the rest of downtown Nairobi, which is mostly boring and very clean.

So we picked up a matatu to Nyeri. It took us about two hours to get up there, passing farms along the way. The Rift Valley is the most fertile place in Kenya, and we passed through it on the way up. The land on the left side of the road is steep, so we passed tons of terraced farms.

In Nyeri, we picked up a taxi to Aberdares National Park. The taxi driver wanted us to pay 2000 ksh, but I got him to 500. He was pretty cool, told me about Kikuyu food and his children. We got to Aberdares and it turns out that we'd have to pay a ton of money to get where we wanted to go. So we took the cab back to Nyeri town, about 10 km back. On the way back, we were stopped by the police. The cab driver got out, and I watched him hand the police officer some money. When he got back in, I asked him, Something kidogo? He laughed, and I said that the police were just robbers. He laughed again and said that now he is good to drive for a week.

In Nyeri, we picked up a hotel room, ate, got some beers at the bar. Some old men taught us how to dance to real Kikuyu music, and we went to bed.

Next morning, bright and early, we took a bus to Nyahururu, or Thompson's Falls. We set up camp, walked to the falls, which were beautiful. Back at camp, we talked with two Bulgarians who are traveling Kenya and Tanzania by bike, and two Brits whose Mt Kenya trek had just been interrupted by some nasty altitude sickness. We went to see some hippos in a pond. They're huge! Back at camp, we had dinner, sat around the fire and slept.

And so on Sunday, back to Nairobi.

What else? The government is corrupt. People are starving in the north, and the First Lady is on the board of a company that's been illegally buying grain from emergency supplies. In town the other day, I saw two policemen kicking a man in the mouth. When everyone watches, I get out of there quick. I'm getting good at taking matatus, and I'm navigating the city well.

Tonight, I'm cooking real American spaghetti with my host family. I've got to go to Nakumatt to buy some supplies, and then the produce market on my way home to pick up some tomatoes and onions.

This is one of the most boring blog entries ever. I'm sorry! The next one will be filled with poetry, I swear.

Super Stupid Bowl

Well some first things first. If you want to send me some snail mail, I'm this:

Gillian Goldberg
c/o MSID Kenya
PO Box 66731-00800
Westlands, Nairobi, Kenya

If you want to call me, I'm 254716392311

Second things second.

The internet situation here is truly abysmal.

Another situation that is terrible--last night, I headed to the 24-hour bar in Prestige Plaza on Ngong Road to watch the superbowl. This really awful shopping mall with a 24 hour Nakumatt--think Wal-Mart but with merchandise that looks gently used and things you only find in the third world, like giant jugs for storing water on the days it isn't rationed.

My mom dropped me off at the mall at 9:00. The game was meant to start at 2 am local time. My friend Kat and I wandered around, met a Canadian and an American. At 1, after worrying about whether the bar carried ESPN, the highlights show came on. At 1:50, ten minutes before kick off, all the tvs went dead. The cable channel had gone down.

So we waited and waited. By 5 am, we realized nothing was going to happen. So we took a drunk walk through Nakumatt, tried on wigs.

There was a fire in a Nakumatt downtown a few days ago. The fire hydrants didn't work, the emergency exits were blocked, the security kept the people inside from leaving because they were afraid the customers inside would steal merchandise. Something like 30 people are dead so far. On the news, I watched people from the Red Cross in a line, tossing cases of Fanta from the burning store into guarded piles outside. They turned their hoses away from the fire and toward the people trying to get the food they were rescuing.

And two days ago, a gas tanker rolled outside of Molo. The police who were supposed to be guarding it were charging people to fill their jerry cans. Some guy lit a cigarette, and 111 people are dead.

But I guess these are just things from the news. In church on Sunday, the preacher warned about Kenya being consumed by fire. I don't know.

I guess that since I've been here, I've seen a few lions, a few rhinos, some zebras, giraffes.

Today's not a great day, but we'll see how tomorrow goes.

Karibu

Well, the internet is unreliable and my group is about to leave me in a 5th floor internet cafe. Things are sort of weird--I'm not used to traveling like this. "Like this" meaning "with a huge group of people."

Last night we slept in a hostel next to Nairobi National Park and we could hear lions roaring as we fell asleep.

We're heading to Lake Nakaru park for a few days. Things are hectic--when will it normalize? Writing in my journal is going well--writing here may not.

5 days to go!

Hello wide world of the blogosphere! Also, friends and family members dear.

In five days, I will be heading to Chicago. Then I will skip over to London, after which I will fly to my final destination, Nairobi, Kenya, home for about five months. There's a lot to do between now and then, so I'm working on slowly whittling the to-do list.

I'm traveling with a group from the University of Minnesota. My program is called Minnesota Studies in International Development, so for the four months I'm in school (my last month abroad is reserved for traveling), I'm going to try to figure out that big ol' D, Development. I've been doing some assigned reading for the trip, some of which is familiar, some of which is new and exciting. I'm finding vocabulary for intuitions I've had--for instance, I just read an article about how the term development implies a linearity, that there is one way of coming to one goal rather than a multitude of human arrangements. But I guess the point is that I'll see how my intuitions and the things I learn are bolstered and broken apart by experience.

I'm nervous about a lot of things--meeting my host family, making sure I say goodbye to everybody here, getting everything I need to be ready to go. I'm also concerned about sounding like a fool on this blog, so we'll see how that goes.

I want to let everybody know that I will probably be incommunicado for several days after I leave. Our orientation is in a national park in the north of the country, so I'll be chilling with giraffes and wildebeests or whatever, rather than blogging. I also hope that I'll find a good place to watch the inauguration, for which I am definitely psyched. Think DC is the best place to watch it? Try Kenya.