COASTIES BECOME COASTIES.

So CLEARLY I’m laxing in my commitment to blogging (and journaling) which is a shame, but you understand.  I believe that last entry was at least three weeks back, when I returned from Mount Kenya? So let’s start there.

That following week, I spent some time at friend’s houses in the evenings, mostly cooking dinners. In particular, I made the best guacamole of my life one night for Mexican food Thursday. It was incredible. I used to not even like the stuff, but this was seriously one of the better things I’ve tasted since abroad. (Go figure). Which brings me to a new discovery, I LIKE COOKING. I knew that I wanted to learn about a year ago, but with the gift of a cookbook for my birthday and the subsequent moving in with the Sister, cooking did not happen. Why should it when you have a passionate veggie chef at your fingertips? But Kiley and my deal will not last much longer, because when I get back to Minneapolis, I shall cook. So that’s exciting news. The following night we went to a neighbor’s house for a dinner, to which she invited about 20 young people, which was awesome. We all sat around for five hours drinking wine and eating the most plentiful Kenyan meal I’ve had to date. It was really good to meet a bunch of teenagers and twenty-somethings, who later invited us to an event the following night. THE SIX A.M. PARTY.

So the Six A.M. party is a monthly dance party held at various outdoor locations around Nairobi that has a theme (and a fat cover charge). Long story  short, its basically just a rave that goes until the sun comes up. This one was themed Kikoy culture, which is a linen like sarong that can be wrapped or worn in about a thousan different ways by men and women alike. Upon hearing this, the 7 or 8 girls that were left in the city for the weekend, committed ourselves to this crazy party and all got Kikoys the following day. It turned out to be such a fun night and we danced until six, as promised.

The next week was our last week of school, which included surprise Swahili exams, earlier and more thorough than we had been informed. After the initial shock of having to do an oral interview the following day, it seems my class all did pretty well. We haven’t gotten scores from that or the written portion yet, but that rounded out our academic classroom portion of the semester. My friend Mwende and I got tattoos that week, and that too was a bit of an impromptu decision. I was just going to be there for moral support, since it was her first and she wanted someone with tattoo history to be there to check that everything was kosher. But, as you may know, once you are inked, its kind of addicting. So as I sat there, I decided to get one too, but a tiny simple one at that. It says Amani, which is my Kenyan name, which means peace. Its about an inch long on my right side ribs (super painful) but only took about five minutes and was real cheap. And regardless of the doubt about getting a tattoo in a foreign country, the artist had been working for 12 years, and I inspected the new needles, ink and sharps container, and looked as his work before agreeing. It was a bit of a risk for all those paranoid people back home, but I felt good about it, even with my tattoo skeptic hat on. It’s all healed up now, and really petite and hidden, and I like it a lot. There’s a picture in the recently uploaded Facebook album if you’d like to check it out.

On the last day of classes, we were taken out to lunch by our director and wonderful professor, Doctor Jama, to this fancy schmancy Indian restaurant in Westlands. Holy buckets, so good. It seems this blog post is going to be filled with all of these ‘best meals ever!’ comments, but I promise you, they all really felt that way. We were so spoiled that day. He is the bomb. Then the following night, almost all of my classmates and I met up at a bar in Langatta that we had been to before with an outdoor patio, to party for our last night in town. It was so good to be with everyone as we all celebrated being down with school and danced out our nerves of moving and separation. They also had a big screen, which was playing sketchy music videos all night, that was hooked up to some sort of text message song request system to the DJ. So needless to say, as we got a little tipsy, the odd text messages and shoutouts kept finding their way onto the screen. We had so much fun, and reveled in our last night as a group.

My new friend Ashley, and my friend Laura and I treated ourselves to really awesome lunch and coffee and ice cream on our last day in the city. The food was a bit of a splurge ($7) but totally worth it. Then we found an awesome café called River Café in this lush green valley in Gigire, and I got my legs waxed for the first time. Thought I might as well try it sometime, and if I’m going to try it I’d rather pay eight dollars than 80 in the States. And my friend Robin goes there every months so it was a good referral.

The next morning, we were all off to our meeting points for the departure to our prospective new towns. Nine of us to the Coast, with two other groups heading toward Mount Kenya and Lake Victoria, around Kisumu.  The  bus ride to Mombasa was a nervous one, during which I read my new favorite book, The Brothers K, almost the whole time. Then when my friend Embe (Ava) suddenly got off the bus, it really hit us that we were pulling into town and she was off with her new family. We all alighted in town, and met up with our Mamas there. My mother, Kate, was so enthusiastic to see me, I could tell immediately that we would click. She is so warm and has a really good sense of humor, and its nice to be with a younger family. Something about the fact that we are only ten years apart in age changes the whole vibe. SO Kate’s awesome.

Then I have two little sisters who are around two years old, and an eight year old brother named Eddy. The transition to having younger siblings has been an interesting one, especially since growing up I was always the youngest child. But I have my own room with two beds and a big wardrobe so I feel pretty spoiled here. My house help, Salome, doesn’t speak any English, and I can hardly understand her Kiswahili so we don’t communicate much. But the girls are a joy, and I’m surround by a constant sing-song chant of a-TI, a-TI, a-TI, which is what they call me. Kate and I were joking earlier tonight, about how I have to be careful about picking up Swahili words from them, since they are barely two and their pronunciation or the words themselves are usually very off. But I’ve gotten used to being peed on, or getting a little barf shower during dinner, which is a necessary preparation for me to make as I approach the childbearing decade myself.

My internship has been the most challenging and frustrating part of my stay in Mombasa so far.  There is no work for me to do, and I spent my entire first week wasting time and asking for remedial tasks to do. I am just really bummed that I am wasting so much of my time, and they don’t really have any project going on that they need assistance with. I think I was just poorly placed, so I am in the process of meeting with a few other organizations in the area to see if I can be better utilized. I don’t want to be a brat, because I know its not uncommon for Kenyans to read the newspaper or take tea during the day for hours instead of working but on Thursday I just wanted to scream ‘IM WAY OVERQUALIFIED TO BE TYPING RIGHT NOW’. It’s just kind of a bummer, since we only have six weeks on the coast.

I had a wonderful weekend at the beach with my friends, and lots of plans for the week to come. The water is so warm here, its incredible. White sand beaches, and not too far from where I work. I can take a matatu to the beach for about 50 cents anyday. So I think I might be making it a regular stop on days that I ditch work early for lack of things to do. Remind me to tell ya’ll about the accident in the next post, but my computer is going to die soon. That’s all for now! Love from Mombasa.

-amani

Camping x3

I can’t believe this is the first time I’m writing on the blog since the Superbowl Victory of the Century. So much has happened since then, so I will try to be as comprehensive as possible. But I’ll probably leave a ton of stuff out so, Sowwy.

The weekend after that post we went to Simon’s resort in the Rift Valley called Savannah Sunset Resort, outside of Ngong. It was not actually camping though, since the tents had beds and sheets and pillows! Plush. We had a wonderful hike, and got to go to Simon’s compound at the bottom of the ridge. We met his Mom and Step-Mothers, and a couple of his little siblings. I really bonded with a little girl named Sarah who was five. We were in love. I gave her one of my Silly Bandz and took a bunch of pictures with her. Such a little angel. The rest of the time there was very relaxing, and good to have all of us in one place for a trip. We spent the night on a clearing beneath the bluff drinking and dancing around the fire. It was so much fun getting tipsy off of really warm Smirnoff Ice’s and attempting to dance along with our friend Kamou. The best part was that Jane, Simon and Abdul-Aziz joined us, so it was a blast to dance with them and hang out in a semi-social setting. The music was immensely random so we were rocking out to African music, Cher, Aqua, Enrique Iglesias, all mixed together. A great time, really. I hope to bring Kiley back here when she comes to Kenya.

Then the next week we had midterms in Kiswahili and I got a 92% which I was really proud of. The classroom phase has been flying by and I am having a hard time believing that we only have a week and a half of classes left before we move. I really hope that my Kiswahili gets a lot better when I move to Mombasa, because although I think I’m doing well, I just don’t feel like I know very much still. Next weekend is when we will all relocate for our individual internships around the country, and I will be moving to the coast. My internship situation has changed since I last wrote about it though. Right now, I’ll be having two internships with coalition organization in the city of Mombasa. The first is with an organization called Peace Net and the other is the Coast Interfaith Council of Clerics. Both will be around peace building and cross cultural community dialogue. Kenya has dealt with endless ethnic conflicts in the last half century, and the post-election violence of 2007 really intensified that. There is a huge issue in Kenya with a lack of nationalism, because most people identify first as their tribe (one of 42 in the country) and Then as Kenyan. This also means that everyone is either bilingual or trilingual, first in their Mother Tongue, then Kiswahili, then English. So my internship will likely be leading community workshops and dialogue in peace and justice work with Christian leaders, Hindu leaders, Muslim leaders, and leaders in Traditional African Religions. The strategy is to tap these leaders as social resources for the communities to encourage cultural understanding and diversity. I’m really looking forward to it, and I am the only student here with two internships. I’m really proud of that fact though, and will stay busy, because one of the continuous MSID complaints is that since NGOs don’t function in the same way as non-profits back home, there is often not a lot of work for MSID interns to do. Both of the organizations approved me as an intern so hopefully there will always be things to do.

The following week after Simon’s, we had a field trip to a farm, in which we got to tour the greenhouses and hang out with the animals. I made so many Cow friends. Its been really nice to get out of school at least one day a week to go on various field trips. We also got to visit the US Embassy last week, which was apparently the first time that’s been allowed in 13 years. I hated it. The whole place was so grossly clean and smelled like Pinesol. Everyone seemed like they had a stick up their butts. It was so bizarre to look around and see not one, but eight trash cans within sight. That’s more than I see on my 45 minute walk to school each day. The way our hostess was treating the Kenyans was so rude and degrading, which has been a big issue for me since I’ve been here. There’s so much white privilege here, and I can’t stand when people are so demeaning to locals here. Its such bullshit. Then there was this store that you could only go into if you had a certain Official Status that has imported items from the states. Lots of wine and Doritos, etc. It really pissed me off when I say Purina dog food though, as if dogs can’t eat the Kenyan dog food!? All the employees live in a gated compound with a tennis court and swimming pool and bar and restaurant, Rent Free. Their kids all go to the International School for whites only, all funded on the American taxdollar. I was so agitated the whole time we were there, because there were all these offices and no one doing any work. Plus the security to get it was really overkill. It just felt so self-important and like they had imported an American building into Kenya and made sure to keep it as exclusive and Western as possible. Ugh, I just really hated it.

The following weekend, I had my favorite weekend since getting to Kenya. Me and some of my girlfriends left on Friday after school to head to Hell’s Gate National Park in Naivasha. It was the most beautiful place I have been on earth. I loved it so much. This is allegedly the place that the Lion King is based off of, and I believe it. The whole weekend was so surreal. We got their really late, after a really stressful and long journey to Naivasha from Nairobi and arrived at the gate right before sunset. We were escorted to our campsite that was 6 kilometers away as the light disappeared. We took a shortcut up a cliff while there was lightning overhead. It was amazing, to be standing in the center of this giant valley as the sky lit up with electricity. We set up camp that night and woke in the morning to go on a hike through the gorge. This was so incredible. We ended up walking almost 30 kilometers that day on a three-hour hike through the gorge, which is around 20 miles. We had a guide who took us through the gorge, and painted our faces with traditional Maasai paint that he mixed from a rock we found in the gorge. There are geothermal hot springs and wonderful geological sites. Plus the rest of our class came the next day and we partied all Saturday night. It was really great to wake up on the cliff surrounded by peeps. Some people went mountain biking and climbing the next day, and overall it was an incredible weekend. DEFINITELY taking Ki there for a few days in May.

Then this past week, my close friend Cal and I planned a trip north to the area around Mount Kenya. This is the location of a third of my classmates’ internships and it’s the second tallest mountain in Africa. Kilimanjaro is the first which is also only 3 hours south from Nairobi, so Cal and I are hoping to go to Tanzania from the coast to hit up that mountain too. We stayed in a tiny town called Nanyuki on the equator, which is about the only notable thing about the town. It was really great to just travel with one other person, especially Cal, who is just as wild and nonchalant as I am. We got into town around noon and just bummed around looking for the highlights from our guidebook. Turns out these didn’t really exist, and we covered all of Nanyuki two or three times in a few hours. We did find an awesome handmade Scrabble Board and an awesome box. TREASURES. When it got later we walked about 4 (or 10) kilometers out of town to head to the Nanyuki River Camel Camp. This was a small campsite that is home to almost 200 camels and allowed us to camp there for $6 a night. One of the most interesting things about the weekend was meeting a woman named Kassie at the campsite the first night. She has been living in Namibia and travelling around Africa for thirty years by herself. She is a pilot and a potter and a painter and made a million dollars in Africa selling her watercolours. She also photographed for National Geographic, so that was a really awesome thing for me. We talked about photography and travel and she officially converted me to her lifestyle, which makes so much sense to me. I’ve always wanted a truck since I was little, and couldn’t really ever explain why. My real passion is photography but I’ve never really thought about pursuing it for a career. If money didn’t exist, I think I would just travel the world in a 4x4 and see new places and study cultures and communities around the globe. If I didn’t need to support myself financially, that would be the exact fusion of all my goals and passions. Kassie was very generous to us and fed us, and gave us nicknames, and left me with a really wonderful hardcopy of Life of Pi. She was a pretty hardcore Christian Scientist, so the conversations were very interesting all weekend, but when she made us watch The Secret with her, Cal and I had a rough time. She wasn’t perfect, in any way, but she was definitely a fascinating travel acquaintance to meet for the weekend. Our host Mohamud made us tea from camel milk and we had camel stew that first night. The camel pretty much tasted just like goat, if you know what that tastes like. There was a wonderful dog named Sheban (‘Very Smart’) who was so amazing. He was like an African Lassie. He would communicate, and lay by our tent at night and follow us all around camp. We rode camels on Sunday morning for a bit, which was really fun. They really hurt your crotch bones though, if crotch bones exist. The second night, we slept in this great little tree house over the Nanyuki River, after a small campfire and a bottle of wine. Cal and I had a really incredible weekend overall, and managed not to get lost, robbed or ripped off at all. Such a good weekend.

In all, I’ve been getting along with my family really well, and its going to be tough to leave my little sisters in two weeks. This coming week I think I am going to lead a mini-retreat at my house for some of my classmates before we all split up. Leave it to the social worker / community organzier to plan some ushy-gushy time before everyone parts ways J I’ve been finding a lot of cute clothes and started doing research for the 55 pages of papers we have due at the end of term. Money is really tight, but I hope that doesn’t limit me from experiencing Kenya while I’m here. I’m trying to keep up with all the Political Schtuff back home, and my heart goes out in solidarity to all the public union workers in Wisconsin organizing for their rights.

Amani, haki na mshikamano,

arf.