Mombasa!

In other news, I'm still in Mombasa now.  Our homestays in Riruta ended last Thursday and we took a night train for Nairobi to the coast on Friday night (departing at 7 pm and arriving around 11 am).  That was awesome.  Never before have I been on top of a moving train in the middle of the night watching the African savannah pass by under the moon light. SO COOL.  We're staying in a portion of the town that is heavily influenced by and contains a large population of Muslims.  We're staying here to study the traditional Islamic Swahili culture, and because of the strict Muslim culture, all of us five guys and our male trip leader are not staying in homestays with families like the girls are, but instead are staying in the house of the only person who would let us stay, Ahmed Sheikh Nabhany who happens to be the most famous Swahili poet of all time.  Pretty cool as well.  But aside from that, we're actually getting much less of a “cultural experience” than the girls are getting, which is fairly lame.  On the other hand, while not getting the strict Islamic culture shock that we're supposed to be learning about here, we got a pretty good culture shock of our own on Saturday night...

I'll preface this section with the note that we are embracing having nothing to do but bro out all the time and be as bro-ish as possible while still being able to wear skirts commando around the house 24/7.  Anyway, seeing that us boys really have nothing to do (the owner of the house doesn't actually sleep here), we decided to go out on the town in Mombasa on a Saturday night.  We were told by our friends back in Nairobi that Mombasa was “the Vagas of Kenya” and they weren't kidding... After finding our way to the recommended club “Casa Blanca” we were soon surrounded in a sea of hookers.  By far the most ridiculous night of absurd shenanigans to get these women off of us.  But, at least now I can say I've bought a drink for and been somewhat molested by a prostitute.  Cool... I guess.

On a side note, us guys all bought traditional Islamic “kikoi”, which can basically be described as skirts for men.  They're awesome.  Since us five have a lot of free time in Mombasa, we've spent a majority of our days lounging around commando in our skirts.  Bro time all day every day in the Nuybrani.  As a short (bro) Swahili lesson: Nuybani=House.  Nuybrani=House full of bros.  Hujambo=Traditional greeting.  Hujambro=Traditional greeting for bros.

Ahmed, being a widower and living alone, doesn't ever cook for himself.  So after THE most filling lunch of all time yesterday, a delicious authentic Swahili dinner, breakfast delivered to our house, and another amazing Swahili lunch we really haven't done anything with Ahmed let alone experienced Islamic culture aside from the food and hearing the call to prayer 5 times a day.  But aside from that, Sunday has turned out to be yet another broday as assumed.  We started out getting ourselves lost while walking around Mombasa in our kikois.  “Shirts off skirts on” as we've been saying... Anyway, after being heckled a fair amount, finding our way back home, and filling up on a Swahili lunch, we decided to head out to the beach.  Similar to the matatu's of Nairobi, Mombasa is home to three-wheeled (roughly) three-passenger taxi's, called tuktuks, that can get you anywhere you need in the city for sh100 ($1).  After fitting 5 of us into a tuktuk we arrived at the most beautiful beach I've ever seen.  Even filled with locals, the beach extended far enough so there was tons of space and even areas where we wouldn't get harassed by vendors or people wanting us to ride their camel.  Appropriately, we all have matching orange “Laserbeamz” plastic wayfarer sunglasses and had a wonderful time walking half a km out into the ocean and still being up only to our waist in 85 degree water.  SO chill.

Monday turned out to be another fun day itself.  After learning traditional Swahili wood carving for the first part of the day, we had our first experience seeing the inside of a Islamic mosque and the practices associated with it.  That evening, seeing that we're not in a homestay, we were invited by our professor, David Spruling, to the “Mombasa Gentleman's Club” for dinner that evening.  We began by enjoying a fine glass of Hennesey cognac on a balcony facing the Indian Ocean and ordering the most expensive item on the menu (prawns for the equivalent of $13).  Then, aside from the pretentiousness of the situation and location, we began to talk to David about why, unlike all the girls, we haven't had any real Islamic cultural experiences.  Apparently the men our ages these days in Mombasa are at a weird intersection of modern society and traditional Islamic customs.  They're place as young men have usually been either in school or in work, but work these days have been tough to find for men and has thus turned a large percent of the male youth in the city to turn towards drugs, gangs, and even being recruited for al-Shebab in the worst sense.  Therefore, even if a family decided to take us into the homes, we would be discouraged, as men, to be in the home during the day and would usually end up probably doing even less than we already to together or easily get into situations that the college would rather us not get into.  Therefore, instead of living with a family and experiencing the Islamic cultural experience, our experience (and the paper we soon have to write) deals mainly with how and why we weren't included in the society.  Which, in the long run isn't all that bad seeing that we pretty much just went on an awesome vacation that ended in us spending an evening in the swankiest men's club in Mombasa.

On a final note, this blog post is the first time I've had internet for god knows how long.  So sorry for the sudden rampage of posts.  Today's our last full day in Mombasa and nothing all too exciting happened.  Tomorrow morning we'll be boarding and plane and flying to the island of Pembe, where we'll actually be included into a Swahili Islamic home!  Yay!

Nakuru!

Halfway through our homestays the group took a 2 night outing to the town of Nakuru about 200 km northwest of Nairobi.  The entire trip was a shit show and nothing went according to plan.  It was awesome.  The drive should normally take around 2 hours, but due to a broken muffler, the president driving by twice, and a handful of other things it took us around 8 hours to get there (nothing compared to our adventure on the way back).  The following day, after learning that admission to Nakuru National Park was 75$ a person (our main reason for going to Nakuru) we spent a good amount of time messing around with monkeys and watching Devin almost get mauled by a baboon.

The next day, while planning to be back in Nairobi before 5 to eat dinner with our families, we decided to stop by the top of a large crater outside of town to see the view (beautiful by the way).  On our way down from the rim, our bus driver thought it to be a great idea to take a short cut down the hill.  To make a long story short, our bus soon was halfway leaning into a ditch and dangerously close to flipping.  After getting an entire village to attempt to help us out, we eventually had to grab our stuff and leave the bus as it started to rain some of the hardest rain I've ever been in.  After walking for a good 2 km in the rain and lighting (and only stopping once to let a herd of cattle pass by) we arrived a hotel where we could finally get lunch as we waited to see if the bus had fallen farther into the ditch or not.  By 9 pm (four hours later), half of us still hadn't received our food, we'd been charged double for almost everything, and we eventually ended up leaving very unsatisfied.  I didn't make it back to my home until after 2 in the morning and, aside from some roadside corn in the rain, didn't eat for a good 14 hours as well.  Great trip...

Nairobi and stuffs

Let's see, where did I leave off... Home stays.  The last two weeks have been the most incredible and different weeks of my life and beyond anything I ever imagined it would be like.  I wish I could have updated this earlier, but I haven't had access to a computer (aside from a sketchy internet cafe) since leaving for Riruta.

Anyway, Riruta, a “suburb” of Nairobi is where we all stayed within our host families. Riruta is a community that, in American standards, would be considered very very rural, but is fairly modern and middle class on Kenyan standards. I could ramble on about Riruta, but I really don't have the time or energy right now to tell a cronological story, so I might as well make a list of the most interesting points:

Matatu's: Holy fuck matatu's.  These 14 passanger vans are by far the most terrifying and deadly creatures in all of Africa.  Aside from often being overpacked with the conductor hanging the side of the door, the drivers of these things are fuckin' maniacs.  These half bus half taxi vehicles are the main mode of transportation for locals and seem to take up a good amount of the traffic during the day.  But, with that traffic, comes the erratic driving such as often swerving into oncoming traffic to pass, driving on the side walks, and (in my personally favorite matatu experience) speeding down the side walk for the opposing lane of traffic while pouring rain makes seeing almost impossible.

Wazungu:  There was never a time where one of us would walk by a group of children without first hearing “WAZUNGU WAZUNGU how are you how are you how are you”.  Wazungu (or mzungu singular) literally translates to a European or white person.  I still don't understand why they are so intrigued by us nor why when we answer their questions and ask how they are the simply respond with “fine how are you”.  Is this the only english they teach these kids in school?

Homes:  Most of us lacked running water, or a flushing toilet.  Goats and chickens were often found within our multiple family compounds, and piles of burning trash EVERYWHERE is the norm (all of Nairobi smells like burning trash all the time, fyi.  For some reason, every single family keeps the tv on at almost all times.  I swear I watched more tv these last few weeks than I have all year.  The urbanization of a community like Riruta has come with strange introductions of technology where even my host mom was texting while watching American tv shows, but we all still took showers out of buckets and had to flush our toilet by pouring a bucket of water into the hole.

Giraffe Center: For some reason I ended up going here twice.  Awesome place.  Got to get licked by multiple giraffes.  Nuf said.

Africa boys: Somehow we befriended a bunch of local boys and ended up hanging out with them for a few nights.  That was...absurd.  But we did teach them American drinking games so that was exciting.

Swahili class: Every weekday we had around 4-6 hours of instensive Swahili lessons, which has lead to us knowing an incredible amount for only starting two weeks ago.  We just had our final for the class this Friday morning and can all easily write 200 word essays, conjugate in 5 tenses, and have a stock pile of verbs that have shown to be very useful when out speaking on the streets.

Mimi ni mwanafunzi, si na pesa:  I am a student, I have no money.  Most useful phrase we learned.

There was also so much more but I really don't have the time or energy or physically capacity to write it all down.  My experience living with a Kenyan family for two weeks was beyond anything I imagined.  I've now been adopted into a second family that couldn't be more different than my first.  As a current update:  I'm currently in Mombasa on the coast writing this blog entry but have absolutely no idea how or when I'm actually going to post this...Oh well.  I guess we'll just see.

Internet black hole

Sooooo... Sorry that I haven't updated in a while, I haven't really had internet aside from sketchy internet cafe's for ages.  I actually have like 3 or 4 entries writen, but sadley, I saved them on the thumb drive in the wrong format so I couldn't get them onto this compter and thus the internet this time around.  Boo hoo.  Hopefully I'll be able to get them up before we fly out to Pembe tomorrow and ya'll can know about all the exciting adventure's I've been on.  From living in Riruta for 2 weeks to being on top of a moving train in the middle of the savannah to being heavily solicted by prositutes on the coast in Mombasa, it's been craaaaaaazy.

First few days...

Oh Jesus, I don't really know where to begin.  It's Friday night and we've been in Nairobi for only 3 full days but it feels like weeks.  I guess I'll start with the travelling , which was a little bit of a hell after a 6 hour drive, 11 hour flight, and another 9 hour flight.  But, in the end, having only had 5ish hours of mixed sleep over those 48 hours really helped get over the jetlag.  On Tuesday night we arrived at the "Kolping Guest House" in Nairobi completely unaware of what was to follow.

Wednesday morning marked the first of our intensive Kiswahili lessons.  And when I say "intensive", I mean intensive.  For the last three days we've received around 4-5 hours of lessons from some wonderful teachers and  have learned SUCH an incredible amount.  I can say for certain that in 3 days I'm already more proficient in Swahili than I am in Spanish (and probably ever was for that matter...).  Using the language on the streets has already shown to have it's advantages and it's amazing to see the responses and respect people have given us when they realize that we are students wanting to learn rather than silly white tourists.

Speaking of the streets of Nairobi, that's really the only "real" Africa I've experienced so far (we're living within a fairly well kept compound complete with guard, chef, and a few maids.  So needless to say we're not really living the real African life just yet).  The streets are filled with both the good and the bad and it's definitely different than anything I've ever experienced before. Most of our meals have been from going out and exploring the area where you can easily fill yourself up on 5 shilling bananas or cooked ears of corn.  Down the road is a small open air market where deep in a small shop where yesterday I unknowingly ordered a plate of intestines and ciabatta bread that was surprisingly not bad and even more surprisingly hasn't made me vomit yet.  On the flip side of the fun we've had exploring I've gathered a fair amount of observations that I'll briefly note.

1) Everyone dresses nice.  Second hand clothing is apparently very cheap so ever person aside from workers on the job are dressed in nice slacks and a nice shirt.  This makes us white folk stand out even more in our t shirts and shorts...
2) People drive like fucking maniacs.  I'm surprised none of us have been hit by a car yet.  They also drive on the wrong side of the road...
3) We're only around a kilometer away from the largest slum in Nairobi, Kibera, so occasionally we'll run by a "glue kid".  This has probably been the saddest experience I've had here when we have to deny giving these very small poor children begging for money on the corners.  We've been told never to give these children money on account that most of it will be spent on glue which gives them an extremely zoned our high and doubles as an appetite depressant.

There's so much more to say but I really don't have the time to explain it all (I've barely scratched the surface of what I have mentioned).  I'd also upload pictures but Hannah said it took her 45 minutes to upload four pictures of monkeys so I'm going to refrain until (hopefully) we'll have a better internet connection (probably not...)

In other news...We start our homestays in the outskirts of Nairobi tomorrow and we've been told that these will be some very uncomfortable and different experiences.  I really have no idea what to expect but I guess I'll let y'all know in two weeks when they're over...