Back in Kenya

These make long flights endurable!

We have been here for four days so far and are just starting to emerge from the mind numbing brain fog of jet lag. I don't know why, but coming here I get really bad jet lag. I had a couple nights where I just lay in my bed awake until the sun came up at which point I would give up and get up. But then by 10 am (midnight back home), I can't keep my eyes open. The struggle to function with such overpowering drowsiness was real. 

Saturday felt like a true victory because I managed to get through a whole day without needing a nap. So far we have been just getting organized for our life here--buying groceries, getting sim cards and setting up meetings for my internship. We are back to the same 3 or 4 meals with Elizabeth making grilled cheese sandwiches late at night because she is still hungry. I have a hard time knowing what to make for dinner here, so if you have any suggestions of things I can make with simple ingredients, please give me some suggestions in the comments. For now we eat pasta, Thai curry, tacos, and stir fry. 

 The reds have been very nostalgic about everything we see here. They were happy to see Margaret, the street vendor that we buy vegies from. When we walk to the store Malachi points out so many little things asking if we remembered them ie: "remember this is where we saw the monkeys!" Things that bugged them before are charming and nostalgic like the elevator that plays Fur Elise. I'm glad they like it. The traffic is jarring all over again. I thought I had gotten used to it, but I guess not. Yesterday we went to Karura Forest and got smoothies, took silly panoramic photos, watched the monkeys and went for a long walk.

In case you didn't notice, there are monkeys on the picnic table

Today we went to church. Our uber driver couldn't seem to find it. I could clearly hear his navigation telling him to turn left and then he would turn right, but eventually we made it. 

 The highlight was a third hour meeting of "musical experience." After sacrament meeting the bishop asked Elizabeth if she would perform something, so she reluctantly performed her recital piece (Nuvoli Bianchi), which was beautiful even though she had to play it on a keyboard that she wasn't accustomed to. Nobody in the ward plays the piano, so most of the performances were a cappella. One guy gripped the top of the mike as he walked back and forth on the stand and sang. Some songs were sung multiple times. The best part for me was when that same young man started singing "There is a Green Hill Far Away" and it suddenly switched to a rap. The bishop cut that one short. Lol. When all the performances were done, it was opened up to anyone else that felt moved upon to do so. Surprisingly, there were 3 or 4 more performances. I just can't even imagine that happening back home. It was a good day.

Week 10: The Coast!

 Like I indicated in my last blog, the train ride to Mombasa was brutal. It was hot and crowded. We had 3 seats together but we faced 3 seats that had 3 men sitting at them. The lights never turned off the whole trip it wasn't easy to sleep.

It was especially hard because Malachi kept wanting to lean against me. He sleeps hot. I was so ready to get off the train when we arrived in Mombasa.

My professor had counselled me to prearrange a ride. She didn't like the idea of us being in Mombasa at 4 in the morning with no place to go, so I booked a stay at a resort right on the beach even though we wouldn't be getting there until after 4 am and they hooked me up with a driver. I was glad I had made all those arrangements because it was absolute chaos when we got off. There were so many drivers aggressively seeking  a fare. The problem was, that my driver had sent me a message saying he would send the details in a few back when we had first left Nairobi, but then I didn't receive any further details. It didn't take long for me to realize that my phone plan had ended at midnight which was probably why I didn't receive any info and now I couldn't contact him. I looked for a driver holding a sign with my name, but no luck. One of the drivers that approached me said she knew our driver and called him. So he found us--that was pretty lucky. I felt much safer once we were on our way.

It was an hour's drive from the train station to Milele beach resort, where we were staying. I didn't realize it until Lizzie pointed it out, but Milele is the name of the place that Mufasa learns about from his mother--a sort of mythical abundant land that he is tries to find in the movie Mufasa. When we arrived around 5:30, the guy at reception told me I was supposed to check in yesterday. I explained that we just needed a place to sleep for a few hours until we could continue on to our final destination, but later when I checked out, they asked me why I wasn't staying for a full night.

Milele the beach resort did not live up to the connotations of its name. It was old and grungy, but the beds were comfortable and it had AC and it was right on the beach, so it served its purpose. There were monkeys right near our room--it was a little scary to walk by so close to them. Malachi enjoyed the pool.

We ventured out on the beach briefly. We were approached rather quickly by "beach boys" but we used the excuse that we were leaving in a few minutes to keep them at bay. Beach boys are guys that work the beach trying to sell you coconut, boat trips, Maasai jewelry, aloe, clothes, and camel rides.

We used the same driver to take us to Diani beach. I booked an Airbnb that had mixed reviews but I took it because it was right on the beach. The building was under renovations. It looked like it had been closed down for awhile--maybe since Covid. The kids reported that the pool was gross, but I've never understood why anyone uses a pool when they are at a beautiful beach. This was the view from our balcony.

The kids couldn't wait to get down to the beach. They were all sunscreened up and changed before the security guard was done telling me about all the available tours--he was similar to the beach boys.

Diani beach had been voted the most beautiful beach in Africa 5 years in a row. It was spectacular.

The palm trees actually form a straight line but the panorama warps it. Once we crossed through the palm trees, we were on public beach. And that's when we would get swarmed by beach boys. 

It was not easy to deal with the beach boys. Most of them were pushy and relentless. I didn't want to just ignore them because that felt rude. Also, I understand that they are desperate. And there is rivalry amongst them to secure the new tourists. Everybody wanted to know our names, but I was told not to give them our names. One time I just openly said I didn't want to tell them my name so to just call me Njeri. That is a Kenyan name specific to one of the more powerful tribes and once when I was walking through Mathare, people started calling me that. So some of them started calling me Njeri. The kids and I made up a game where we tried going through the alphabet for names, but we often froze and used the same one multiple times. We were Draper, Frankie, Ellie, Elliott, Camilla and so on, but it got harder when they would call out to us with those other names to remember to respond. The kids started getting quite impatient with them talking to me all the time when they wanted me to play with them, but we still had a lot of fun. 

On our second day we decided to walk down to the reef when the tide was way out. The beach boys would not leave us alone. Finally one guy told all the others to leave us--because he was going to take us. I did not like dealing with him because he way was to provide something and then ask an exorbitant price for it afterwards. It kind of ruined our time on the reef because he wouldn't leave us alone. He did show us a stone fish--which is super poisonous and very camouflaged. For his unwanted guidance, (which he called a sea safari) he wanted me to pay 7000 ksh. We talked him down from that, but the kids were very resentful. He also kept everyone else away from us as we walked back along the beach. 

The next day we went on snokeling/dolphin tour. One of the best things about the tour was we didn't have to worry about beach boys for the whole day. We got picked up at 7:30 and were dropped off just after 6. It starts getting dark at around 6, so the beach was mostly deserted by then. The tour was so fun. We were taken out on a dhow (a boat with sails that was traditionally used for trading).

The water was pretty choppy so I was worried I would get seasick like I did in Okinawa, but luckily I didn't. The boat was much smaller than the Okinawa tour and more laissez faire too. They took us out to see dolphins which we did see briefly and they were only a couple meters from our boat at one point. Then we went to a marine park for snorkeling. The area was a large sand bar with a reef around it. 

Before we got in the water, another girl got in and said it was as cold as heck...it was not, but it was not as warm as Okinawa and there was a strong breeze, so when we got out we were cold. In Okinawa we had to wear a wetsuit or a life jacket. It was hard to dive down and I assumed that the wetsuits were buoyant somehow, but after snorkeling in the Indian Ocean without a wetsuit, and experiencing the same buoyancy, I think it was the salt water. We didn't have to do anything to float--we just did. We saw lots of cool tropical fish. It was very fun. Although we applied sunscreen before going out, both Lizzie and I got burnt from our snorkeling. After snorkeling, we were taken to Wasini Island. Wasini Island is an island without motorized vehicles or even bicycles. We had a traditional Swahili lunch there. I had fish while the kids had broiled chicken. My fish was Tilapia and just given to me in whole fish style--similar to Japan. It was yummy. There were chicken and cats walking around at our feet while we ate.

After lunch we were taken back, but on the way back the tour operators performed for us. This was actually one of my favourite parts of the whole tour. They used water jugs for their drums. 

When we got back, we went straight to the beach to play in the waves and find a beach boy selling aloe leaves. There was hardly anyone on the beach at that point, but we found one. The previous day, we all got burned in small patches where we missed sunscreen, but we didn't get aloe. Those burns turned out way worse than the ones from the day where we applied aloe almost right away. Unlike every other  ocean beach I have been to, the sun doesn't set over the water there since we were on the east. So we didn't get great sunset pictures, but we did get these. 

I was worried about the train ride back because it during the day--I was worried that it would be unbearably hot. But the train ride back was much better. It wasn't as full, so we had room to spread out and the AC was stronger. Another plus was we could see outside. The train goes through 3 national parks. We saw some elephants, giraffes and zebra on our ride home.

We were all much happier.

We had one day left after we got back from the coast. We had a lunch with my professor, a UFV alum that is from Nairobi, and my classmate and her husband. It was a distance out from where we were, but as typical of the places my professor recommends, it had a cool vibe, with lots of garden-ish outdoor vibes. 

We have loved all the places she recommended. 

Then yesterday we flew home. I have learned so much from this internship. I wish I could have stayed longer. I feel like I didn't get everything done that I wanted to. But it was an amazing experience that I'm so thankful I got to have. Who knew when I was deciding about school last year that I would end up here.  I really hope to be able to go back one day.

Week 9: Am I actually finished the report?

I am sitting here trying to think of what happened this week, and I am having a hard time remembering. I know I submitted a grant application for Mathare, and I think I have finally finished my report. We'll see. It isn't the first time I thought I was done. It took me a ridiculously long time to put it all into Canva. Canva is a software where I input all my writing with visuals. I thought I was done after that, but then my professor had more edits, so I had to make some modifications that pushed all the text down and required a whole bunch more time to get everything right again. Now it has been sent to a professor from the

University of Nairobi to review. So fingers crossed he will not have any edits. This is one of the pages of the report. I not only did the writing but also created the chart and infographic. Unfortunately, I am not fast at making things like that.

My professor arrived from Canada this week. She met me and the kids at the mall for lunch and then showed me where the UN offices in Kenya are. We couldn't see much because of security. This week international youth day is being hosted by the UN in Kenya and we were invited to go, but we won't be able to go because we are taking a little trip to the coast. I am missing quite a few things because of this trip. My professor will be meeting with her South Sudanese contact and the professor from the university of Nairobi. Their names are on the report as authors. I have learned a lot about the process when there are multiple authors listed for reports. Some names just seem to be there to give the report credence. I am also missing a meeting with the testers for a training that I have been tasked with improving. I will just have to rely on the the notes my classmate takes and my professor. I did attend a meeting where we presented our proposition to Mathare. 

As I said, I'm missing these meetings because we are off to the coast. It was our last chance to go and I wasn't sure the UN thing was happening since the organizer went home for a visit and was unresponsive to us. As it was, the only train I could get was the night train. I am writing this from the train. We depart at 10 pm and arrive in Mombasa at 3:35 am. It is going to be a long night. It is stuffy and the seats are as upright as possible. That is the price you pay for 1500 shilling tickets. I'm a little nervous about this trip, but also looking forward to the beautiful beaches. I've done my research, so I think we'll be good.

Other things we did this week is go to the temple. The Nairobi temple was dedicated just before we came here. It is beautiful. I am so thankful that there has been one close to us while we have been here. I visited the distribution centre and I'm sorry to all you that were hopeful of getting the new sleeveless garments--they are sold out. The only ones they had were 2XL. 

Malachi took this one

We went out this luxury hotel for the day. Malachi was happy because there was a heated pool. It was pricey, and since I knew we were going to the coast, Lizzie and I just watched from pool side chairs. The hotel is kind of colonial, but cool to see nonetheless.

Week 8 Environmental upgrades for Mathare

 This was a pretty slow week for us. One thing about being here is that I often feel like I don't really know what is going on. It reminds me of my early days in Japan. Although most people can speak English, they all speak Swahili. Basically the only time anyone speaks English is if they are speaking directly to me--except at church. Church is 100% in English. But other than that, I am often in the dark. For example this last Monday I went to Mathare to work with expecting to work with the leader. I confirmed with him the night before that he would be there. But when I arrived, I was met by one of the volunteers there and we walked to the far side of the neighbourhood for big event.

There were a bunch of government officials there who talked about cleaning the river. And some singers--one guy wore a costume of plastic water bottles stuck all over him.

After about 2 hours of speaking, we went and planted trees along the road. The tree planting was really a photo op. The holes were pre-dug and then several people crowded around a hole, worked water into the soil around the tree, and slowly lowered it into the hole. I was pushed into  one of those phot ops.

As we walked, the girl that took us there told me all about the work she is involved in. She helps rescue girls that were forced into marriages they didn't want, and women that are being beaten by their husbands. It is dangerous work and sometimes she has had to leave home for a few weeks at at time while men search for her. She also helps rape victims. Their stories are horrific. This girl does this all voluntarily. She got to her 3rd year in social work and then had to stop to get more money. She says she helps them because there is no one else.

On Thursday I went back to Mathare, but this time I took the kids because I knew that Thursday was a big cleanup day. I bought us all some gloves and off we went. The city was providing big trucks to haul away garbage so the volunteers were going around raking the garbage into piles to be picked up. At one of the locations, we were all handed rakes, so we went to work. I have never done anything like this before. Often when I thought I'd gotten everything from an area, my rake would snag on something below the surface and I would discover a whole new layer of garbage.

I don't know how much we actually helped because we were using tools that other people would have been using. When we finished, we gave them our gloves, which I think was the bigger help. Note all the children standing near Lizzie and Malachi. Kids flock around us so much more when I bring them with us. We really heard the word "mzungu" (white person) a lot that day. Even after we were done and walked back to the Mathare Roots office, many kids walked right along with us.

Malachi especially gets so much attention. Adults are often endeared by him--they often put their arms around him. And the girls...this week schools closed for their winter break. We were driving somewhere and were stuck in bad traffic beside a school bus of girls around his age. Once they noticed us they kept begging us to "push down the window" (where Malachi was sitting). The driver eventually conceded and rolled down his window. There were cheers--girls asking for his number and a shy Malachi smile. They all begged us not to go when the road opened up. The driver was quite amused by it all.

Elizabeth also gets attention. She says it is something she doesn't like about being here and that she feels uncomfortable in her own skin. In her case it is people calling to her from across the street. Today at church there was about 6 or 7 missionaries there that were going home, so the bishop invited them all to bear their testimonies. The first missionary that spoke (I believe) was trained by Packer. He is in Packer's Facebook profile picture. The bishop said he was a favourite. The missionaries took up all of sacrament meeting and then some. I think we ended 15 minutes late. Afterwards, one of the missionaries talked to me.  He was from Burundi and knows Packer too. He said there is a cat named Packer Gorner in Mombasa. When he found out I was from Canada, he wanted to talk to me in French. I told him to talk to Elizabeth which he did after church. He told me her French is very good and she doesn't have a Quebecois accent. He also asked for her number because he is going home in 2 days. haha

On Saturday we visited Karura forest. It is a beautiful protected forest right in the middle of Nairobi. I've written about it before. 

In the park area, there is a play thing made of logs that Malachi got Elizabeth to play tag on. But since there were only 2 of them, it fizzled pretty fast. But then I got them to see how fast they could touch all the upright posts. That kept both of them going for quite awhile. 

I only have 2 weeks left in Kenya. The time is going by so fast. I feel like I still have so much to do! I know these next 2 weeks are going to fly by. We will do our best to live it to our fullest.

Week 7: Lots of work, but countless dik-diks in return

 I worked a lot this week--everyday in fact. Everyone in the office I worked in left (to go in the field) so I was by myself the last couple days. Since I wasn't even interacting with IMPACT employees, my plan was to work from home on Thursday, but I forgot my mouse at the office, so I had to go back. There is no way I can work in Canva without a mouse. I finished the brochure for Twala. I will share it on here. 

Let's just say that Chatgpt and I spent many long hours getting that to look right. Chat is quite an annoying perfectionist. I sent it off to the powers that be from IMPACT and to the person in charge at Twala. I got good feedback from IMPACT, but the person from Twala never said anything, so I'm not sure what she thinks. The director at IMPACT has sent me all this info to look over from their social enterprise (side business that helps to fund IMPACT) so that either means he was trying to find something more for me to do, or he thought I might have something useful to contribute.

I was also asked to write a generic concept note that they could adapt for all their agroecology projects. They said that this way, I could still help them design projects after I go back to Canada. This felt way out of my comfort zone! First of all, I never even knew what a concept note was until I came here and was asked to do one for Mathare. I had to google what is a concept note and how to write one. Second of all, who am I to design a project for them?! I just worked on a regenerative farm in a temperate rain forest. I don't know very much about gardening in arid and semi arid climates. So that was very hard for me. I wrote one for them to use for helping to legitimize pastoralists. Pastoralist are often blamed for degrading their rangelands while other concerns like renewable energy and conservation is given priority over their needs. But actually they use very careful practices to protect the rangelands so that it will be available to use over and over. They practice a lot of agroecology practices. It didn't really touch on my own knowledge and experience, but they seemed more interest in that sort of focus. 

I sent it off for the team to review and give me feedback...and it has been crickets. So I am not sure what to do about that. I have been thinking about it ever since and second guessing what I wrote it on. I plan to write another one more about growing food and better utilizing their kitchen garden spaces, so hopefully they will like that one better. 

As I mentioned earlier, I wasn't even going to go in on Thursday. I spent the time working by myself in a vacant office, but the director arranged for the kids and I to have this amazing trip. When I met him, he commented that I hadn't really had any field experience and asked when I was leaving. He provided a driver and car to take us up to Samburu to go for a game drive there. So on Friday we were picked up  and driven 2 hours north to Archers, Samburu and driven around the park. Communication was not clear to me. I didn't know where we would be staying and even that we would go to the park that day. 

The game drive was so much fun. We saw so many different animals that we hadn't seen in Nairobi, like elephants, a rare species of zebra (grevy's zebra), oryx, gerenuks, kudus, gazelles, jackals, so many dik-diks and a different kind of giraffe. If you are like me, you don't even know what most of those animals are. I hope these pics help. 

Grevy's Zebra

Oryx

dik-dik-they are so small and camouflage well. They remind me of Ali and a bunny.

baby kudu

Gazelle

gerenuk

Jackal

another dik-dik--you can see this one's horns

After a hot day of driving around with no air conditioning--nobody seems to use it here--we drove to where we were staying. It was a mystery to us. Honestly, as we were driving, I had some thoughts like "please not there." All my fears were for naught. We stayed at a beautiful home owned by a French Canadian woman called the dik-dik lodge. It had a pool. The kids were happy. That night we were fed a fancy meal cooked by her chef. 

However, when it was time to go to bed, we started noticing the bugs. The kids room had an ant problem. There were so many ants that Malachi stomped on. Luckily my room didn't have that problem. BUT, when I was getting ready for bed, I saw a HUGE spider that moved super fast...so I went in and woke up Elizabeth. (They were told before we came to Kenya one of their jobs would be to deal with the creepy crawlies.) Everyone else was in bed. So she dutifully got up and brought Malachi's shoe. She looked thoroughly disgusted but moved forward to take care of it. And then it moved...it was so fast--like a cockroach! And it came right towards us, which sent us stifling screams into the hallway. That was the end of it. There was no making her deal with it at that point. And it was no longer in my room so we went to bed.

The next morning we got up early to continue our game drive. Unfortunately neither of the reds had a good sleep, so they were very tired and grumpy at the start. That made it a little awkward since we were being taken around by someone just trying to show us a good time. Thankfully when they pulled out the cold drinks and Elizabeth had a sprite she perked right up. It was like night and day. We spent a lot of time in the morning trying to find lions. We asked so many other safari tours, and the director made calls to the people who study them...but it is hard to find lions in that park. While we were searching, we saw 2 Somali ostriches--a male and a female. The male was doing his mating dance which was really cool to see, until it worked...and then it was a little "disturbing." Elizabeth said she didn't want to see that much of nature. haha.

Eventually we did find one lioness. We were able to drive up really close to her. So close that we had to roll up the windows. That was pretty awesome to just be able to observe her sitting in the shade. 

After finding the lioness we went for lunch at this amazing little safari resort at the other end of the park. It had a pool but the kids hadn't brought their suits. We had a buffet lunch where we were treated super well because the director knows everybody. One of the workers was his cousin. While we were eating, a troop of baboons came to the watering hole. Some of them were massive!

After lunch the kids swam (I had to buy Lizzie a bathing suit bottom from the gift shop and Malachi went in his clothes.) Strangely, most of us the people who used the pool were older people. There were only a couple other kids. 

We did more driving around and saw elephants and a family of Impalas and so many dik-diks.

Impalas

this is an anthill!

 It was super fun and memorable. This morning we drove back to Nanyuki and then back to Nairobi. It is nice to be back in our own space again. But I miss the more rural areas. The city is so big and crowded. Tomorrow I'm back at Mathare. I have so much left that I want to do and so little time. 2 months is just too short.

I couldn't resist this video of Malachi trying to get warm before jumping into the pool. He'll probably kill me for it.