Epic Party of a blog post....

Since I haven't really actually described details of my time here, I'm going to do that. It might be a bit (very) (just finished-very, very, very) long, so feel free to read in shifts. My apologies for pulling a Geithner on the blog so far(long on generals, short on specifics).

Kwa hivyo(so). This weekend, I was supposed to go to a tour of a coffee farm in Nyeri (the farm where Alterra gets their Kenya AA) but plans fell through at the last minute (we'll go sometime soon, don't worry). Instead, nilikaa katika Nairobi (I stayed in Nairobi).

This week was busy, in a confusing way-looking back, I did a ton, but no single day felt very busy. First, my sister Yvonne (18) was sick. I just realized I haven't talked about my homestay or family at all, so indulge me briefly.

My house: I live in Fort Jesus Estates, which is on Kibera Drive, in between the Karanja and Olympic matatu stage. My house building is split between 3 families, with four doors opening into a smallish central courtyard (10x15 feet). My home is split into two parts-1 door opens into to medium bedrooms(both around 10x10), and across the courtyard is the other door which leads into a TINY kitchen (3x6) with a stove, fridge and sink(no oven). Then there is a bathroom, living room (9x10) and my mom's bedroom. We have running water 2 or 3 days a week, and power outages are frequent and unpredictable-there were 3 this weekend and one during the week. Next door lives a family of five-Father, mother(both early 30s) , the house help, and two children, Adrienne, 4, and Nathan, 4 months, They have a living room and bedroom, and their kitchen and bathroom are across the courtyard. They rock.

Matatus are the craziest form of public transport. They are basically 14 passenger (allegedly-I've been in one that had 21 peeps in it) Nissan vans. There are a bajillion different routes, and are one of roughly 7 forms of transportation here, the others being bus, taxi, personal car(rare), tuk-tuk, boda-boda and bicycle. In Nairobi you mostly see the first four, with the rest becoming more frequent in the more rural towns/cities. Anyway, matatus are almost always decked out with crazy lights and super loud hip-hop or reggae, decals featuring big American celebrities and/ or slogans. They go almost everywhere you'd want to go, including many hours outside the city and into all the major slums, Kibera, Kawangware, Mathare to name a few. Price is subjective, and the first couple of weeks I always got ripped off, but I'm gradually finding the swing of things and almost always know what the price should be (somewhere between 10 and 40kshs.. or 12-50 cents).

My family: I have four sisters, all of whom I have finally met-Faith, 24 goes to college and works full time, and lives at home; Phyllis, 21, goes to Kenyatta University and lives there during the week and comes home some weekends; Sini(yvonne), 18, just finished high school and has to wait a year before going to college-she wants to study broadcast journalism; Tracy, 15, is a sophomore in high school and stays at school full time- she came home for the first time this week, and I finally got to meet her, which was great. I also have a brother, Bisi(Emmanuel) who is 13 and just started high school a month ago. He stays at school full time. My mom runs a weekend orphanage/feeding program called Mother's Love at Africa Inland Church-Kibera, which was completely burned down in the post-election violence, and is now rebuilt. She also runs a women's support group for poor mothers, many of whom are HIV+ and all of whom are jobless and living in Kibera. My father died in the 1990's US Embassy bombing.

Now onto my week. Tuesday, I went to the Airport to try and get this lens situation sorted out. It was a total nightmare, and fraught with customs corruption insanity. Two hours later, and out $30 in the bribing of some officials, I am still without my lens. I'm going back tomorrow or Tuesday to bribe the customs deputy commissioner the equivalent of $35 to get the lens, which is far below the $450 they wanted from me in the first place, and still less than the $200 our friend asked me for in bribes just before we left the airport.

Then Wednesday I got my haircut by a man who allegedly knew how to cut white people hair(he was a friend of a friend). That turned out to be a lie. He never once touched a pair of scissors, but was practically shaking out of nervousness the first 20 minutes. Anyway, I have roughly 1/3 in. of hair left, and my scalp is getting a nice tan. No harm done, but it did cost me 500kshs. which is 400 more than I could have paid around my house, had I known I was just getting a buzz.

Wednesday evening was my friends 21st birthday, so we all went out to a bar in Hurlingham, which is a pretty nice neighborhood West of downtown. It was sort of silly, since we had class the next morning at 7:45 am, and the drinking age here is 18. Plus, I had a lot of homework due the next day (sort of-I turned it in on Friday and some tomorrow, with no consequences, so no worries). It turned out to be a lot of fun, and they may have let us play flip-cup for 30ish minutes, though they probably didn't.


Thursday in class we took a field trip all over-we visited a dispensary (medical institutions are broken down from national hospitals with top of the line medicine->regional hospitals with most fixings->dispensaries, which are staffed daily with nurses and specialty doctors like dentists, opticians, etc. making monthly or twice monthly visits. Then we went to the site of half of Kenya's windmills (all 4 of them). They were high in Ngong hills and the view was crazy beautiful. One of the two windmills there was broken...the blade broke 2 years ago, and the Belgians(who donated the windmills and require that replacements come from them) have not yet shipped a new one. Thursday evening I went with some friends to a place called Casablanca-its a really swanky bar that reminded me a lot of Miami. That was a strange place, so I want to devote an entire post to it. Coming soon.

Friday I had no classes, so I spent the day catching up on homework I hadn't been doing during the week. I also went to visit my friend at her homestay. She lives in a development called High Rise, which was built in the last 20 years as part of the slum rehabilitation program. Initially, the buildings were constructed on area that used to be slum land. The residents were cleared off, and secure and clean, if small, apartment complexes were built, all with electricity and running water. They were intended to be replacement housing for the displaced slum residents, but they were priced out of the former land tenants income bracket, so wealthier people moved in and tens of thousands were displaced. Its an ENORMOUS series of buildings that sort of remind me of the projects right near La Guardia. Its also extremely photogenic, so I will be going back soon.

Friday night I went back to Carnivore-this time, it was Coast/Swahili night, and it was a blast. The music was great, the food was incredible-lots of nyama choma, or roasted meat. I had some msikisha(shis-ka-bobs) which were amazingly delicious. Then, some of the peeps on the program decided to get themselves crazy drunk and get sick and pass out. We made sure they got taken care of and home ok, but it was a pretty embarrassing spectacle. I might sound like a jerk, but I was really upset, and I thought it was really frustrating and annoying.

Saturday(almost done I promise) was fairly uneventful-I went to my mom's orphanage and played with the kids. It was great because they recognized me even without most of my hair. Plus, I remembered the words and dance to one of the songs they sing called Munga Wetu, or Our God. Saturday night I cooked dinner for my family. I made chicken fettuccine alfredo, which they loved. Oh, and we also had garlic bread. It was pretty tasty.

Then Sunday, I went to a photo exhibit called Kenya Burning. It was a collection of photos from 6 photogs documenting the post-election violence. This week marked the 1 year anniversary of the grand coalition government, which has accomplished absolutely nothing since its creation. The exhibit was phenomenal-some really really beautiful and haunting photos from some excellent photogs. I wrote this entry away from Internet, but I'll try to post some photos from the show this week. I bought the exhibition book and its very powerful.

Politically, Kenya has a long way to come from the violence of a year ago. The coalition might have bought some time, but the same issues still exist and are in some ways being exacerbated by the Global Financial crisis. Plus, more and more officials are being intimated in all sorts of scandals. The show gave me hope, however, because Kenyans seem have come a long way mentally from those days of violence. Time will tell, but there seems to be more and more people gravitating towards the need for a national identity, rather than uniting along ethnic lines. Ethnic heritage should play an important role in Kenyan life, but it has no place in politics.

Relevant links:
info on matatus
Kibera
Recent NYT article about the past year