From Nairobi to Naitiri...and back.

Whew, this weekend was crazy and incredible! I apologize if this post gets a little long, but it was such a great experience.

Peter and I left work a little early on Friday to buy ourselves some extra time. We took two matatus to his home on the other side of Nairobi. Traffic is really bad in Nairobi, especially during work commutes, so it took us a little over an hour to get to his place. He lives with his brother (who is studying in a university), and his sister lives next door, so I got to meet a few of his siblings, eat dinner (the first of many rice/stew/chapati meals), and take chai.

We had purchased bus tickets to take us from Nairobi to Kitale in western Kenya, and the bus was to leave at 8:30, so jumped on a matatu and hurried downtown hoping we would make it to the bus station on time. We got there at 8:15, and after enjoying a little Dido playing in the lounge we boarded our bus (it was like a big tour bus - it was really nice!). We left at 9:30ish, so by Kenyan standards, we were right on time! :) The bus to Kitale (I'm not sure about distance, but it's a 7 or 8 hour trip) was only 850 shillings, which is only about 14 dollars.

We left Nairobi and I quickly fell asleep, only to suddenly awake to the sound of...well, I don't know, but something mechanically not good. The bus pulled over to the side of the road, and for the next four hours (I think, I slept through a lot of it) we hung out on the side of the road while they "fixed" the bus. Apparently there was a problem with the gear box - not that I know what that is, but that was what I heard. I didn't find out until the next day that the place where we broke down was a pretty sketchy part of Nairobi...and by that I mean really dangerous. It was an area of the Mungiki, a sect of the Kikuyu tribe and essentially a gang that is known for really violent crimes, beheadings, and other things that I would prefer not to experience on a broken down bus at 2am.

So the bus finally left again, and our next stop was in Eldoret. We drove all night (yes, Bobby, I drove all night) and got to Eldoret around 7am, and stopped for a bit to use the restrooms (not very restful, let me assure you). Then we made the last few-hour leg of the journey to Kitale and arrived there without a problem. The countryside was beautiful! Some parts looked like I could just be driving around in rural Pennsylvania. The road was dotted with many small villages along the way, and the best way I can describe how they looked is the African version of a old Western town. A long row of buildings on either side of the road, some roadside stands, people everywhere (Kenya is always alive, I've decided), and then all of a sudden you're back in the countryside. The roads were good at some points and pretty rough at others, but driving in a big bus made the bumps less noticeable. Most of the roads were paved but some sections were worn down to the reddish dirt.

So when we got to Kitale we unloaded from the bus and boarded a Matatu to head towards Naitiri, the village where Peter stays with his pastor. The matatu didn't go the whole way to Naitiri, so we took a boda-boda the rest of the way. Boda-bodas are either motorbikes or bicycles that you pay to ride on. We took motorbikes (they're called piki-pikis here). I was a little concerned for my life, especially when we had to stop so the driver could put some of the spokes back in the wheel that had fallen out, and when Peter's bodaboda nearly took out a roadside chicken. But we got to Naitiri safely and walked the short distance to Peter's pastor's home.

It was on the bodaboda ride to Naitiri that I first realized just how out of place a mzungu (white person) is in the rural areas of Kenya. The western Kenyan areas are home to the Luhya tribe (to which Peter belongs), and they just don't see white people there. Driving by any group of people, I would hear the word "mzungu" in some conversation as they commented on my being there. The only word that I could think of to describe being white in rural Kenya is that I felt, although I wasn't trying to be, very obvious and ostentatious. It was as if literally every person on the road would stop to stare as we drove by. It was the first time in my life that I was actually uncomfortable about my race, and wished to blend somehow. Some children had never seen a white person before, and a mother even said she was going to bring her children to where we were staying so that her children could see a mzungu.

Peter's pastor and his wife were incredibly hospitable while we were there. They had a two year old son, Baraka, who was adorable. They live in a housing row shared by maybe four or five families. We talked with them for a little bit when we arrived and took some breakfast (Kenyan meals tend to be later than American meals) . I got to have my first cultural experience with a "shower" - a bowl of hot water in a cement stall, and a "long-drop" - the outhouse that was just a hole in the ground. Peter and I walked over to his church so I could see the facilities. There is a boarding and day school that meets there, and there were a few classes there on Saturday preparing for exams. Some of the teachers saw us and brought us into their classrooms to say hello, and again, I couldn't help but feel kind of...ostentatious. Like they were stopping their classes because there was a mzungu outside, and that warranted some kind of special event.

After interrupting a few classes and meeting a lot of the administrators of the school (and having some Black Currant Fanta, a soda we badly need in the US), we continued on to Peter's family farm. It was a pretty lengthy trip for walking so we took some bodabodas (bicycles this time). About five minutes into the trip the one I was riding broke/died/failed somehow and we had to flag down another one.

So after that ride we walked a short distance to his family's farm. They grow maize (aka corn) and a little bit of coffee, and raise some cattle and chickens. Peter is one of the older children (he's 24), and he has a large family, so there were five or six of his younger siblings and his mother and father. The houses were mud walled (incredible that they stay, but he said that even with the hardest rains they don't leak or crumble) with a tin roof. It reminded me a lot of the houses that we see in the Haitian villages of the DR. There were four houses - his father's house, another house where they did the cooking (I think maybe it was technically his mother's house?), a house Peter's older brother built, and then a house that Peter built.

We walked around his farm a bit and met some of the neighbors that hadn't seen Peter in a few months. I had never seen how coffee grows, so he showed me these huge trees/bushes that were Arabica coffee plants. They were full of berries which turned red when ripe, and then the coffee bean grows inside the berry-ish thing (maybe it's the seed?).

My thoughts on all of this: who was the first person to ever say, "Hey, if I take this disgusting tasting but tantalizingly red-colored berry, pop out the thing in the middle, burn it to a crisp in the fire, grind it up into a powder, and then pour boiling water onto the powder, throw the powder away, and drink the hot burnt bean/seed water...it just might be good."

Whoever he is, Starbucks should thank him. What a strange person.

We had supper in his small house on his family's farm - another round of rice, kuku (chicken) and stew. Kenyans are very hospitable and Peter said that you really can't go anywhere without someone offering you food. And it's the polite thing to do to finish it all, no matter how much you are served. It began thundering, so we grabbed a motorized bodaboda to make it back to Naitiri before the threat of rain caught up with us.

When we got back, we had another meal (so.much.rice.), and after talking with Peter's pastor (Solomon) and his wife for a little bit, I headed to bed.

Sunday morning we prepared for church and then went to the service at Deliverance church. It was just how I expected an African church to be - lively, loud, and joyful :) At the end I was introduced to the entire church as a mzungu visitor (again, feeling a bit ostentatious), but they were incredibly welcoming and happy to have me there. Peter and I left the service a little early, needing to take lunch and get on the road as quickly as we could.

Several Kenyan traditions have stuck out to me as something that I wish we did in the US. When you are a guest in someones home, you come with a small gift for them in a bag, and upon entering you give it to them and they take it away and say nothing about it. It doesn't have to be extravagant, just something from your area or something useful. And then when you depart, your host brings back your same bag containing a gift from them to take with you. It's all very subtle but so nice. Also, before leaving, everyone sits down and expresses thanks - the host thanks the visitors for coming and the visitors thank the host for their hospitality. It can be a long process, but very thoughtful.

We left Naitiri on bodabodas around 3pm yesterday and traveled back to find a matatu to Kitale. On this particular stretch there were probably 20 people in this little 15-passenger van, and I was cramped between Peter and a chicken. :) Since it was daytime, it was safe to take matatus for longer stretches (when we traveled overnight we had to take a bus because it's just not safe to stop and switch in the middle of the night), and so we took another matatu from Kitale to Eldoret, and I was able to sit in the front seat for the first time. It was great to actually see where we were going (in the back you can't see anything but the person's head in front of you and perhaps the person who is basically on top of you), but it also made me relish the thought of keeping my life, especially when we were weaving in and out of traffic and racing over speed bumps.

From Eldoret we got into a shuttle to Nairobi. They are more expensive (600 shillings/$10) but they go straight through without stopping (matatus stop anywhere and everywhere for passengers) and are more spacious. The five hour journey to Nairobi went without any problems, and we arrived back in Nairobi around 1am. A radio station from Nairobi (Easy FM) was having a "Diva Sunday", so we had some quality 80's and 90's diva music (Madonna, Bonnie Tyler (she needs a hero), etc), and then listened to the World Cup Game (Espana!!). After arriving, we grabbed a taxi to Peter's house, had some chai and butter sandwiches (traditional breakfast/late night food) and we went to bed around 2. Then it was up early for the matatu ride in morning traffic to the hangar, and we are currently back for another week of work!

A note on matatus: the drivers decorate them with anything and everything, and sometimes I'm positive they have no idea what the stickers mean. One of the two we rode this morning had a large "REAL MEN LOVE JESUS" sticker, and next to it was an even larger "PIMP UP THE UNIT!" decal. When we were stuck in traffic, the matatu next to us had a HUGE decal on the back window of Condoleeza Rice standing in front of the American and Kenyan flags. Random? Ndiyo. Yes.

So, in short, the weekend was a crazy adventure but it was incredible. Everyone says that "upcountry" is the real part of Kenya, and I appreciate so much being able to see how most of Kenya really is. It was beautiful.

I'm sorry for how long this is, and if you made it here and didn't skip parts I'm pretty proud of you.

For those of you who prefer to the movie to the book, I'm going to try to post pictures tomorrow :)

Kwaheri!