Nairobi

We landed in Nairobi just as the sky was starting to show signs of day. A quick stroll through the passport check led us out into the baggage hall. Keeping my fingers crossed seemed to pay off as my hardly used REI camping backpack made it all the way from Spokane to Nairobi without a torn strap or crushed buckle. After finding our bags and “declaring” our items, we wandered around the pickup area waiting for Gilbert (our good friend and advisor who was raised in Kenya) and Paul (the director of SWEF and coordinator of the Maji Filter Company). While waiting, we got a brief glimpse of what Kenya would be like, everyone is very friendly but most want something from you. A few generous people offered us a phone to use and we finally tracked down our missing friends.
We hired a Matatu (van taxi) to drive us around Nairobi for the day, as our flight to Kitale wasn’t for another 8 hours. We ended up paying 7500 Kenya Shillings total (or less than 100 US Dollars) for the entire day, just a small example of how cheap labor is in Kenya. Nairobi seemed like a ghost town so early on a Sunday morning, it was almost unnerving. Our first stop was a small café on the first floor of a large bank building. Paul seemed a little tumultuous in trying to explain things to us (tentative plans, layout of Kitale, how to use the cell phones we would have while in Kenya, how to count in a foreign currency, how to split a bill fairly). Newly graduated Engineers didn’t seem to rank too highly on his list of able bodied travelers.
After a relaxing breakfast and seminar on technology use, we embarked on our city tour. For the first hour or so, we drove all around the city, stopping or slowing down at important waypoints and impressive city scapes. By now the city was starting to come to life. The most impressive thing seen from the car was the slums in Nairobi. We only even drove a little ways in, as Paul was starting to become noticeably tense from the obvious stares and the quickly declining semblance of safety.
After a brief glimpse of life in the slums, we hastily reverted to the tourist ways and headed for the Giraffe Park. The park was a reserve that was home to 9 Rothschild Giraffes. After a little bartering, we were able to get admittance to the park as students (I guess my worn out ID wasn’t convincing enough, all that’s left is a magnetic strip after 5 heavy years of use). Feeding the giraffes was pretty entertaining. It was a lot like feeding a horse, but with more slobber and a longer tongue. Our next destination was the house from the movie “Out of Africa” with Meryl Streep. If you’ve seen the movie, it looked exactly like that (interestingly enough). Next we went for lunch at the Walking Safari National Park. We didn’t tour the park, but the lunch was delicious. The menu was pretty touristy so most of us ended up getting burgers and fries.
Our drive back through town was a little more frenzied than our first morning pass. While the driver still said it was nothing compared to a Friday afternoon, the streets were packed with cars on top of bikes on top of pedestrians. The rules of the road seemed to be drive defensively and let everything else sort its self out. We even witnessed a truck tire blow out right next to us (which sounded like a small bomb at first). Luckily for the cargo of the truck, it didn’t seem to phase the driver in the least as he drove on right next to us as though nothing had happened. We made it to the airport with time to spare. Africa time kept our flight from leaving as scheduled, but we finally made it out of Nairobi for our destination of Kitale.