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.