One Month In

And what a busy month it has been. I apologize that I haven’t been updating as frequently as I had promised – I’ve had a lot to do with schoolwork, and now with my internship at Al-Taawon Trust.

I guess I’ll talk about that first, since it’s the most exciting! Al-Taawon is a community development organization that is doing a lot of awesome work in Korgocho, a slum in Eastern Nairobi. Right now, I’m only working there one day a week, but starting in three weeks (after our AU Abroad class ends and we have two more free days) I’ll be there three times a week, which will be awesome. We’re working on two major projects: one is setting up a computer center in the local government school (but first we have to figure out how to get them some electricity). That includes teacher and student training programs, which hopefully I’ll be able to help out with a bit. The second one is a reproductive health awareness project that’s geared toward Korogochoians around the ages of 12 and 15. This week, I’m supposed to be writing a script that will be performed by some actors in another of Korogocho’s community groups. I’ve only been there three days so far, and things are pretty unorganized, but hopefully things will start rolling soon – I’m excited!

Classes are still going along – I’m loving my Swahili class (even though it starts at 8 am and is a half hour walk away). Swahili’s an awesome (and pretty easy) language, and it’s just the AU Abroad group, which is fun. Also, Fred, the professor, is wonderful, and class is just really fun and relaxed. We have our first quiz tomorrow though, and I’m sitting here looking at my stack of 200 notecards (and that’s just the beginning… I had to send my roommate out on an index card run, so I’m waiting for her to return to add some more…) wondering how I will ever remember the difference between nimelewa (I’m drunk), ninaelewa (I understand), and nimeolewa (I am married). We’ll see how that goes. Politics of Culture in Kenya, our other AU Abroad only class – the one that is ending at the end of the month – is interesting, but I’m pretty much over the three hour classes twice a week. Also, did you know that Nairobi was originally divided into three residential zones, based on race? I didn’t upon my arrival here, but since then, I must have read about it in every single thing we read in that class. Then there are the USIU classes. Don’t get me wrong. I was warned about these classes by previous Kenya participants before I left, but the United States International University is just not a place I want to be on Mondays and Wednesdays. First of all, it’s such a trek to get there… first there’s a matatu to town, which usually takes about 20 minutes on a decent traffic day, and then there is the USIU bus, which leaves from town at 10:30 and occasionally reaches the university just in time for the 11:00 class. Once, we arrived at 11:40, because of some traffic jam. No one really seemed to mind. And on top of the trip, the classes themselves are just… not my favorite part of the semester. My International Humanitarian Law professor explained the structure of a research paper to us last week: Introduction, Body, Conclusion! Some of my friends in a literature class have to write a book report, complete with a paragraph on whether they would recommend the book to a friend. I’m pretty stressed about my law midterm coming up, because I’m pretty sure I don’t know anything about humanitarian law. We’ll see how it goes. My French class is a lot better, mostly because the professor loves tangents, being side-tracked and storytelling with a lot of mimed actions. Classes are certainly never dry, and I do feel like I’m learning some French (even though I still don’t understand why half the word is silent…).

Pomegranates to Pineapples: Transitioning from Tajikistan to Kenya

It actually seemed like only a few days had passed since I had left Tajikistan – and those of you who were with me there, and who saw me immediately afterwards, know how hard it was to say goodbye to Dushanbe – before I was boarding yet another plane back to Kenya, and my feeling was that I hadn’t given myself enough time in between. I was still suffering from some serious reverse culture shock – not to mention severe and extended jet lag – and to be honest, as I sat at the gate at Newark Airport, I didn’t quite feel ready for yet another adventure. Which isn’t to say I wasn’t looking forward to returning to Kenya. It only took me about two days after my last return from Nairobi (almost exactly one year ago) to start searching for a way back. So I took off with pretty mixed emotions about the semester ahead.

My two weeks in the US were a lot rougher than I was expecting. I arrived in DC overwhelmed by everything from the highway to the grocery store, and while I was thrilled to be around my friends again, a lot of me was only wishing to be back in Tajikistan. Central heating blew my mind. When I got home, I had a few of the most hectic ever trying to cram Christmas preparations into the three days left, visited grandparents, and was visited by other grandparents, all while trying to see everyone and do (and eat) everything I’d missed over the past four months. When I was sent out to buy soup and crackers (with no other instructions), the rows and rows and rows and rows of soup left me standing open mouthed in the aisle of the grocery store for a couple minutes, until someone asked what he could help me with. Who knew soup could be so debilitating?

I had kind of assumed that arriving in Kenya would feel a lot like returning to a place I was used to – something more like what I had grown accustomed to in the fall; after all, my first thought upon my arrival in Dushanbe was that it smelled like Nairobi. And as I had already been to Kenya, I wasn’t expecting such a period of adjustment. As it turns out, Kenya’s not as much like Tajikistan as I remember.

For one thing, say what you will about the Soviets, but Dushanbe has paved sidewalks – at least along the two main streets, which is where the majority of walking near cars happens anyway. It’s taking me some time to get used to just hugging the side of the (dirt) road as I walk to school to avoid the cars driving by on any and every side of the road (this Kenya and Tajikistan share). In terms of buildings and houses, most of Dushanbe seems more developed than most of Nairobi (oh those Soviets…). Dushanbe doesn’t have the hastily constructed homes that the majority of Nairobi lives in, nor does it really have the fruit and vegetable stands or tiny wooden stores that sell things like phone cards, soda, chips etc. (with a few exceptions, but even these seem significantly sturdier than Nairobi’s). On the other hand, Kenya also has some huge department stores, malls, and grocery stores that Tajikistan does not. While a lot of shopping in Kenya is from these little stands, and the markets, the country also has Uchumi and Nakumatt, huge Wal-Mart sized grocery stores that are sometimes multiple levels and sell anything you could ever need or want. Vahdat, a small grocery store near my house in Dushanbe, just doesn't compare. Things in Kenya are either tiny stands or huge supermarkets; Dushanbe doesn't really have either of these.

Kenyans are different as well. Apart from the whispers of “mzungu, mzungu!” the people I pass on the street tend to be friendly, warm, and helpful. While some of this might have to do with the fact that they speak English – and assume I do, too – I never really felt like the people on the streets of Dushanbe were ever looking to extend a greeting beyond “devichka!” In my last post I talked about our drop off in Naivasha – when we were left alone in the small town and told to find directions and meet up again in two hours – and again, as nervous as I was beforehand, I found that most people were thrilled to help me find my way, often engaging me in conversation even before I could ask.

On the other hand, Nairobi is the busy city that Dushanbe just is not. There are buildings here that taller than all those in Dushanbe could be if they stood on top of each other. Walking through the city to grab a matatu after getting off the USIU bus in the afternoon is an exercise in agility as we try to wind in and out of the solid wall of people and cars. Crossing the street on the way to the office (Kenya friends, you know what I’m talking about: right before we cross under the bridge) is nearly impossible, at least until the traffic is backed up to the point that all cars must stop, and we can (somewhat) safely weave through them. I won’t pretend that Dushanbe doesn’t have its difficult roads to cross, but the number of cars there is negligible, compared to Nairobi. And while we’re talking about traffic, some days it can take two hours to get across the city on the way home from school. The only traffic jam I ever saw in Dushanbe was when it snowed and trees were falling down all over the city. So getting used to the Nairobi roads is going to take some time. For now, they stress me out.

And then aside from all of that, the programs here and in Tajikistan are completely different. In Tajikistan, living with my wonderful host family, immersing myself in Tajik culture was effortless. I ate Tajik food every night, lived in a Tajik house according to Tajik lifestyle. I learned the language and spoke it whenever I was home. Here, however, immersion is an active process. I am living with a group of American students, in beautiful apartments definitely designed for the wealthy minority of Nairobi (and more likely, for foreign diplomats and expats and their families). Two of my four classes are with only AU students, and while the others are with mostly Kenyans, the classes are taught in English, in what appears (after only a week, so I may be prematurely judging this) to be an American style. I’m not saying I’d rather spend the next three months in Kibera, but I’m not really feeling the integration that was such an important part of the Tajikistan program. Hopefully, this will change once we start our internships in two weeks. 

Karibu Kenya!!

 I landed in Nairobi with no problems or delays whatsoever, in the morning on January 3^rd, and it only took the short walk from the gate to the customs desk – lined with Safaricom (one of the popular telephone networks in Kenya) advertisements – to get fully excited again. I had met up with a couple students in London who were on the same flight from Heathrow, and so the four of us were met by Victor (a Kenyan who works here for AU Abroad and basically helps the poor, lost Americans with their problems) who took us directly to our apartments. The AU students – 13 in total – are divided between three apartments (4 in two and 5 in mine) which all have full kitchens, living rooms, three bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a laundry room (but only one apartment – not mine – has a washing machine, and none have dryers, so I’m not really sure what qualifies them as laundry rooms). We also have a balcony, from where we can admire just how green and beautiful Westlands (the area of Nairobi where we live) is.

The last several days have been orientation. That first day, when only a handful of us were here, we bummed around Westlands for a while, bought some internet modems, and went to Java, a coffee house that I frequented last year, and whose mango juice brought about another burst of Kenya excitement. Afterwards, we went with Lynsey, our program director and Politics of Culture in Kenya (a course that we take only with AU Abroad, but all together) professor, to a shopping center where we had dinner and then wandered around for a while, and then all went together to the airport to collect the rest of the students as they arrived. We were waiting for two more flights, so it took a while, but eventually we had everyone (minus one student who missed her flight due to a tight connection and so would be arriving in the morning) and headed home. We unpacked (motivation!) and then fell into bed.

The next day we went to the United States International University where we will be taking two classes via direct enrollment (with actual USIU students, instead of just with each other). Mine are French and International Humanitarian Law. We filled out some paperwork, took photos for our school IDs and then got a tour of the school (lecture halls, a beautiful library, and smaller classrooms that look a bit like cabins). The campus is gorgeous – so green and all of the buildings are very open. Unfortunately, walking on the grass will earn you a fine, so sitting on it is probably not an option either. In any case, I’m excited to get to walk around there, even if the tales I’ve heard about the classes, professors, and other students aren’t all that great. After our tour, we headed to a park called Paradise Lost, where we had a picnic (with the greatest, most LITERALLY ALIVE juice boxes ever) and then walked around a bit through caves and amongst waterfalls and such.

On Thursday, we headed to Naivasha, a town about an hour and a half from Nairobi for the “Living in Kenya” part of our orientation. We covered things like health, gender issues, transportation, security etc. Mostly, things I had figured out last year, or just learned to deal with. We also had a brief Swahili lesson, in which we basically covered things like greetings, numbers, animals etc. and played fun games with Swahili vocabulary. Naivasha’s a reasonably small town, so we took a Matatu (the Kenyan anwer to Tajik Marshrutkas, or basically large vans that roam around picking up far too many passengers for next to no money) for the first time (with the help of some Kenyan orientation leaders), in the hope that this would make the ones in Nairobi less intimidating. Personally, I’m a big fan of Matatus. The evenings were filled with games (or rather, one lengthy game) of Kenyan monopoly, which is still ongoing. I’m winning, because I collected the two cheapest (Kibera and Kawangware Slums), which are the key to the whole game. Just wait. It’s really intense, and there are an awful lot of zeros on the money. We’re having some trouble working with that, but we’ve almost got it down.

Our last day of orientation began at 8:30 am, when we were taken around Naivasha and dropped off separately at different places, given three questions to discuss with friends we might make, and told to meet at “Naivas Kubwa” at 11:15. No other information, and no idea what “Naivas Kubwa” might be. I was pretty nervous about this part. Not necessarily the conversing with people, but you know… my sense of direction is somewhat shaky. For this reason, I set off with the single goal of finding my destination, determining that once I’d found it, I could take off from there to answer the questions and make friends. I actually found it quite quickly, thanks to the many helpful Kenyans around, and my impressive Swahili/Charades skills. Then I walked out of the more developed parts where the shops are, looking for people to talk to. I was pretty successful too. I got all the questions answered, and I talked for a while to a woman sweeping her porch who was pretty taken aback when a sunburned white girl with red hair approached her house. With still quite a bit of time left, I found a woman about my age with a two-year-old son and her friend, and a girl (also about two) who didn’t seem to belong to anyone, but who kept tugging on my skirt and touching my skin and hair.

And today, I started school. We had a Swahili class at the AU Abroad office (about a thirty minute walk from here, over a terrifying bridge and through a construction zone) at 8 am (luckily, my state of constant jet lag – not to mention the rooster who crows at 4 every morning – is helping me to get up early). That class is only the US students here, like our Politics of Culture in Kenya class, and our professor is supposedly really good. I’m excited, because from looking at the course syllabus, it looks like a really intensive class. Perhaps by the end of the semester, I will not be such a lost mzungu. From there, we headed to the Matatu stop to grab one to town, from where we can get a bus directly to USIU. We arrived at the bus stop close to 9:30, and almost immediately one pulled up. We figured we were so lucky and clever to arrive right on time, but sadly, it didn’t leave until 10:30. This was rough, since my first class starts at 11, but we made it just in time. Classes seem like they’ll be fine, but I suppose the first day isn’t a great judge of the class. My Humanitarian Law professor is Danish, and my French professor is Kenyan, and extremely Kenyan. She was unable to sit still through class, and kept wandering around the room dancing, explaining her ideas of why Kenya isn’t having the same development success that Europe, the US, and Japan have. I haven’t quite figured out the relationship between that discussion and French, but it was interesting all the same. Apparently, Kenyans aren’t proud to be Kenyan, and so if they get a chance to leave and learn something to further themselves, they’re unlikely to bring those skills back home, but will choose instead to stay in the West. Like Tajikistan.