It is my last day in Kenya, my last day in Africa, and the last day of my great travel adventure. I took the train back from Mombasa to Nairobi last night, and it was even better the second time around. I woke up in the morning and saw an ostrich grazing on the plains outside my window.
Yesterday I toured Kaya Kinondo, a community-based tourism initiative that I had really been looking forward to. Kaya translates to 'home,' and a Kaya is essentially an ancestral forest village for the Mijikenda people; Kaya Kinondo is one of only a few left in the entirety of Africa, and it belongs to the Digo tribe. It is no longer inhabited, but the forest is preserved and has a number of indigenous and rare species, including a 600 year old cycad! I saw a couple of colubus monkeys and a bushback antelope, but the forest itself was by far the most impressive component of the experience. It is a coastal forest, and very obviously was once ocean bed itself, as evidenced by the mass coral formations all across the forest floor. The only downside to the experience was that I was supposed to have been guided around the forest by a tribal elder; instead, I was guided by a 20-something year old horndog named Gabriel who kept getting a little too close for comfort. I know that East Africans are a touchy-feely people, but when I feel your facial stubble in the nook of my neck, I think you've gone too far.
My train arrived in Nairobi shockingly on time this morning at 10, and I didn't really have enough to do to fill my day. (My flight leaves at 11:45 pm this evening and the Nairobi Airport is close to my idea of hell, so I'm trying to kill as much time as possible in the city...and I don't have a hotel room or anything for today so I needed to stay out.) I took a matatu (crampy bus) to the National Museum, which was a great idea. On the ride, I realized that we were passing the slum-I-mean-neighborhood in which I had stayed my first time in Nairobi last summer. It is just as scary and shitty as I remember, which I suppose is reassuring in that it means I wasn't hallucinating last summer.
Anyway, the National Museum was really quite beautiful and far different from what I had expected. It reminded me a bit of the Teylers Museum in Haarlem in the Netherlands, not in that it is also a century and a half old (because it is not) but because it is sort of a mish-mosh of natural history, archeology, and items of general interest to those who like Kenya. There was a lovely, though out of place (this would count under the 'items of interest' category, I suppose), exhibit of photographs taken by children no older than 9 years old. Most of the photos were taken by children either in Kenya or China (it resulted of a partnership with a school in Beijing) but there were several from other parts of Africa, one from Argentina and one from the US as well. They were really sweet and poignant. Most of the photos depicted "my family" or "my market" and it spoke deeply to the cultural and socioeconomic differences worldwide seeing these responses through their eyes. There were also, inexplicably, four photographs of children at the Grandma Obama orphanage near Kisimu.
After the Museum I walked back to town with a nice muzungu I met who had been born in Zimbabwe (though I suspect he had actually been born in Rhodesia...). I then walked to Uhuru Park, which is just this massive, lush park in the middle of the city, and sat there for about an hour. There is a massive tribute to Daniel Arap-Moi in the park...a huge statue that looks sort of like a fist holding a walking stick bursting out of a volcano. I think that's what they were going for, though. I noticed that the Serena Hotel-Nairobi was just behind the park and I still had a lot of time to kill so I thought, let's see what it's like!
The Serena, for those of you who don't know, is a collection of massive and fancy hotels that pop up all throughout East Africa, and I suspect the rest of the world as well, and rooms there start at about $425 a night, which is my month's rent before utilities. I took a seat by the poolside an ordered a gin & tonic, which surprisingly cost less than a week worth of groceries. I spent an hour or so by the pool, and they even treated me to complimentary bar snacks. Then they brought the bill. They had charged me for a double, which I did not order, and somehow an additional shot of gin costs more than the first. I complained, as I am wont to do, and they settled everything for me and I paid only for the shot I ordered. However, during that debate I noticed a shower in the bathroom by the pool. Now, I am not a hobo. But I had not showered since before the Kaya Kinondo excursion, seeing as I had had to check out of my hotel that morning and there are no showers on an overnight train with a squat toilet that opens to the tracks. So I decided to take my revenge on the Serena for their $6 gin and tonic (which is really quite reasonable...I'm just cheap) by using their shower facilities. I thought it quite acceptable; they assumed I was a guest at the hotel because I am white, and I didn't let on to the contrary. So I snagged a bathrobe hanging conveniently on the wall and took a shower for the first time in a day and a half. Boy, the Serena treats their guests right.
I'll be back in New York tomorrow afternoon around 1 local time. Jeez.
Monday, December 21, 2009
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Kenyan Adventures
Hello!
I am currently sweating my skin off on Mombasa, the second largest city in Kenya and an island on the Indian Ocean.
Kenya has been lovely so far. I spent two days in Nairobi, took the overnight train to Mombasa Wednesday evening, and I will be here until tomorrow, when I will take the overnight train back to Nairobi.
Firstly, Nairobi has really grown on me. They sell fresh popcorn on the street for 10 ksh a bag (about 12 cents), and that alone is enough to win me over. They also spice their food in Kenya, which is a nice pick-me-up from the terribly bland Rwandan cuisine. Wednesday I had the most lovely and touristy day. I hired a driver for the day and went first to the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, which is an elephant and rhinoceros orphanage. Yes, I said orphanage. From 11-noon every day, visitors are invited to watch them feed the baby elephants (yes, I said baby elephants) and pet them and watch them play with each other. The youngest were three months old; the oldest less than two years. I died. They are just big fat dusty lumps of adorable. They take to the orphanage caretakers as surrogate mothers and follow them around, play with them, even try to wrestle with them. It is just heart-squashingly adorable. After the elephant orphanage, my driver wanted to take me to a Masaai marketplace. I have never seen so many masks in my life. The market collects African masks from all over the continent, including many antiques and old bronze pieces. They were breathtaking. Outside the shop I met a Maasai warrior named Julius who is 23. The shopkeep said, "you're a single girl, he's a single boy, and you are both tall--you make a great match!" and urged me to marry him. I gracefully declined, and continued on to Giraffe Manor, a Rothschild giraffe preservation and education center that allows visitors to feed the giraffes by hand! I did, and was french-kissed by a lady giraffe as thanks for lunch.
The overnight train from Nairobi to Mombasa was awesome, by the way. You do travel through Tsavo National Park, but at about 2am, so it is impossible to try to spot animals unless the train breaks down (which it apparently often does). I managed to score my own room, which was nice because I would not want to have shared that closet-sized compartment with a stranger. The views are absolutely beautiful. You leave Nairobi just at sundown, and as the train winds out of the city, the bright lights of the Central Business District trick you into thinking you're in New York. There are a lot of shantytowns and slum shacks along the train tracks, though I suppose that is standard in developing countries. When you wake up in the morning, there are hundreds of children lining the fields along the tracks waving at the muzungus. All in all, it is a hell of a colonial throwback. At dinner on the train I sat with three railroad employees--one was the conductor, one his assistant, and one a guard. The guard, Francis, engaged me in a two hour discussion about the duties of a father and raising daughters and why it was good that I did not accept the Maasai warrior's marriage proposal.
The train arrived in Mombasa just before 10 am (practically on time!) and I checked into my hotel, which is in the heart of town and acts like a four-star hotel despite costing $50 a night. I'm talking glasses of juice and cold towels at check-in. My hotel also has this hilarious calypso cover-band that plays on the hotel patio every night and is loud as hell. I can hear them from my balcony overlooking the city. Oh, did I mention my room has a balcony overlooking the city? I must have forgotten that part. My first day in Mombasa, naturally, I walked down the road to Fort Jesus and to see the Old Town.
Fort Jesus was built by the Portuguese in 1593 after Vasco de Gama "discovered" Mombasa. It has, throughout history, alternatively been occupied by both the Portuguese and Arabs. It is now mostly in ruins, but totally cool. It overlooks the Indian Ocean (as any good island fort should) and gets great breezes, an important consideration in Mombasa life, since this is the most oppressively hot place I have ever been. Yes, it's worse than New Orleans in July. Old Town is pretty slummy, to be honest. It's not like what I imagined it to be, which I suppose falls more in line with my expectations of Zanzibar's Stone Town. Old Town is definitely interesting though, and has some incredibly intricate wooden doors. I also found this quaint little Indian tea shop with the best Indian sweets I've ever had! While wandering Old Town, I ran into the two American students that I met in Gisenyi in November! It really is a small world.
Yesterday I went on a day excursion to Wasini Island to go snorkeling on the coral reefs. It was incredible. We took a very long drive to a pier, then a motorized dhow around the Indian Ocean chasing bottlenose dolphins for a while. Eventually we anchored off the coast of a beach island and snorkeled for about an hour and a half. I saw rainbow fish that literally looked like the ones in that children's book (mom, you know what I'm talking about). And angel fish! And weird massive white fish that looked kind of like fat baby crocodiles bred with catfish. And clowfish! (One of the tour operators made me promise to try to catch him a "Nemo" when I snorkeled.) It was just lovely. What impressed me most was the massive variety of types of coral that existed on this reef. It was just breathtaking.
After snorkeling we had lunch on Wasini Island, and took a tour of the (very poor) town there. I wanted to visit these Slave Caves that were used during Portuguese and Arab times to hold slaves before shipping them to Zanzibar, but everyone else on my tour was tired so I missed out. But it was just a beautiful day.
One more thing about Kenya before I sign off for the post: they LOVE Dolly Parton. Now, I know that country music is popular in East Africa. I've heard Jimmy Buffet and indistinguishably country music playing in markets in Uganda and Rwanda. But Kenya takes it to a whole other level. My hotel has been playing non-stop Christmas music since my arrival, which makes sense. What does not make sense is that every morning during breakfast hours, they play the same five Dolly Parton Christmas songs on repeat. I now know all of the worlds to "Christmas to Remember" (I do quite like the "we'll make this"/"springtime bliss" and "Christmas to remember"/"in the middle of December" double-rhyme, though) and "Hardy Candy Christmas" (excuse me if these aren't the accurate titles--they are merely educated guesses based on learning all of the lyrics) which I'm pretty sure is just a breakup song and not actually about Christmas.
I am currently sweating my skin off on Mombasa, the second largest city in Kenya and an island on the Indian Ocean.
Kenya has been lovely so far. I spent two days in Nairobi, took the overnight train to Mombasa Wednesday evening, and I will be here until tomorrow, when I will take the overnight train back to Nairobi.
Firstly, Nairobi has really grown on me. They sell fresh popcorn on the street for 10 ksh a bag (about 12 cents), and that alone is enough to win me over. They also spice their food in Kenya, which is a nice pick-me-up from the terribly bland Rwandan cuisine. Wednesday I had the most lovely and touristy day. I hired a driver for the day and went first to the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, which is an elephant and rhinoceros orphanage. Yes, I said orphanage. From 11-noon every day, visitors are invited to watch them feed the baby elephants (yes, I said baby elephants) and pet them and watch them play with each other. The youngest were three months old; the oldest less than two years. I died. They are just big fat dusty lumps of adorable. They take to the orphanage caretakers as surrogate mothers and follow them around, play with them, even try to wrestle with them. It is just heart-squashingly adorable. After the elephant orphanage, my driver wanted to take me to a Masaai marketplace. I have never seen so many masks in my life. The market collects African masks from all over the continent, including many antiques and old bronze pieces. They were breathtaking. Outside the shop I met a Maasai warrior named Julius who is 23. The shopkeep said, "you're a single girl, he's a single boy, and you are both tall--you make a great match!" and urged me to marry him. I gracefully declined, and continued on to Giraffe Manor, a Rothschild giraffe preservation and education center that allows visitors to feed the giraffes by hand! I did, and was french-kissed by a lady giraffe as thanks for lunch.
The overnight train from Nairobi to Mombasa was awesome, by the way. You do travel through Tsavo National Park, but at about 2am, so it is impossible to try to spot animals unless the train breaks down (which it apparently often does). I managed to score my own room, which was nice because I would not want to have shared that closet-sized compartment with a stranger. The views are absolutely beautiful. You leave Nairobi just at sundown, and as the train winds out of the city, the bright lights of the Central Business District trick you into thinking you're in New York. There are a lot of shantytowns and slum shacks along the train tracks, though I suppose that is standard in developing countries. When you wake up in the morning, there are hundreds of children lining the fields along the tracks waving at the muzungus. All in all, it is a hell of a colonial throwback. At dinner on the train I sat with three railroad employees--one was the conductor, one his assistant, and one a guard. The guard, Francis, engaged me in a two hour discussion about the duties of a father and raising daughters and why it was good that I did not accept the Maasai warrior's marriage proposal.
The train arrived in Mombasa just before 10 am (practically on time!) and I checked into my hotel, which is in the heart of town and acts like a four-star hotel despite costing $50 a night. I'm talking glasses of juice and cold towels at check-in. My hotel also has this hilarious calypso cover-band that plays on the hotel patio every night and is loud as hell. I can hear them from my balcony overlooking the city. Oh, did I mention my room has a balcony overlooking the city? I must have forgotten that part. My first day in Mombasa, naturally, I walked down the road to Fort Jesus and to see the Old Town.
Fort Jesus was built by the Portuguese in 1593 after Vasco de Gama "discovered" Mombasa. It has, throughout history, alternatively been occupied by both the Portuguese and Arabs. It is now mostly in ruins, but totally cool. It overlooks the Indian Ocean (as any good island fort should) and gets great breezes, an important consideration in Mombasa life, since this is the most oppressively hot place I have ever been. Yes, it's worse than New Orleans in July. Old Town is pretty slummy, to be honest. It's not like what I imagined it to be, which I suppose falls more in line with my expectations of Zanzibar's Stone Town. Old Town is definitely interesting though, and has some incredibly intricate wooden doors. I also found this quaint little Indian tea shop with the best Indian sweets I've ever had! While wandering Old Town, I ran into the two American students that I met in Gisenyi in November! It really is a small world.
Yesterday I went on a day excursion to Wasini Island to go snorkeling on the coral reefs. It was incredible. We took a very long drive to a pier, then a motorized dhow around the Indian Ocean chasing bottlenose dolphins for a while. Eventually we anchored off the coast of a beach island and snorkeled for about an hour and a half. I saw rainbow fish that literally looked like the ones in that children's book (mom, you know what I'm talking about). And angel fish! And weird massive white fish that looked kind of like fat baby crocodiles bred with catfish. And clowfish! (One of the tour operators made me promise to try to catch him a "Nemo" when I snorkeled.) It was just lovely. What impressed me most was the massive variety of types of coral that existed on this reef. It was just breathtaking.
After snorkeling we had lunch on Wasini Island, and took a tour of the (very poor) town there. I wanted to visit these Slave Caves that were used during Portuguese and Arab times to hold slaves before shipping them to Zanzibar, but everyone else on my tour was tired so I missed out. But it was just a beautiful day.
One more thing about Kenya before I sign off for the post: they LOVE Dolly Parton. Now, I know that country music is popular in East Africa. I've heard Jimmy Buffet and indistinguishably country music playing in markets in Uganda and Rwanda. But Kenya takes it to a whole other level. My hotel has been playing non-stop Christmas music since my arrival, which makes sense. What does not make sense is that every morning during breakfast hours, they play the same five Dolly Parton Christmas songs on repeat. I now know all of the worlds to "Christmas to Remember" (I do quite like the "we'll make this"/"springtime bliss" and "Christmas to remember"/"in the middle of December" double-rhyme, though) and "Hardy Candy Christmas" (excuse me if these aren't the accurate titles--they are merely educated guesses based on learning all of the lyrics) which I'm pretty sure is just a breakup song and not actually about Christmas.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Ghetto Safari and Other Adventures
Hello from Nairobi, Kenya.
I like it a lot more than I did when I visited for a day last year.
It really is spectacular that as I drove away from the airport I could see giraffes grazing just off the highway in Nairobi National Park.
My last few days in Rwanda were just gorgeous. Friday I recorded the rap as planned, and played a jeopardy-style game with the students to assess what they had learned. After the class, I gave them all little gifts (mostly bubbles and hairclips) and a few of the girls (my favorites--i'll admit it) gave me a present! I almost cried! They gave me a little plastic ring with a red stone. It was the sweetest thing in the world! As we left the "classroom" behind the FVA office, the girls invited me to go back to their school (Remera Catholique) with them for dance practice. Obviously I went. I don't think I've ever enjoyed walking to Kimironko so much in my life. I walked with a group of 15 teenage girls who swarmed around me and urged me to speak Kinyarwanda and dance with them. Other pedestrians just watched us and laughed. I couldn't have had more fun if I had tried. Dance practice was lovely. They rehearsed the traditional welcome dance for me, and integrated me into the song. After, the did "plays," which is basically an improv exercise that they perform for each other. Most of the plays had to do with a cute girl and a boy checking out her butt. Then they got together and collected pocket change for association, just as the PLWHA Association I worked with in Kanombe does. It was so sweet. They played association! It's like if we played labor union in high school.
So, I promised tale of a ghetto safari, and here it is: Rwanda has one real safari park, though it's nothing to speak of in terms of the rest of the continent. Akagera National Park is only about two hours outside of Kigali though, and relatively cheap, so it sounded like a great deal! All of the volunteers who were around this weekend (me, Rachel, Jamie and Thanh) decided to wake up at 3:30 am and go on safari. Hijink number one: the drawstring of my sweatpants broke and instead I wore flowery leggings on safari. (I thought it looked quite "smart," as they say in Rwanda.) Hijink number two (the most major of all the hijinks): we decided to rent a taxi to take us on safari, and Rachel was charged with finding a taxi driver outside of Ndoli's, a local shop. We managed to snag the worst taxi in Rwanda. The driver, Alphonse, was a sweet guy, but he was a very bad negotiator; Rachel brought him down from 60,000 rwf for the day to 37,000 with very little effort. He also forgot to pick us up, and Rachel called him and wound up speaking to his girlfriend to remind him to come get us at 4:30 in the morning. The taxi's windshield had two large webbed cracks, the left mirror had fallen off--not the whole mirror apparatus, mind you, but just the mirror itself. The mechanics beneath the mirror were still in place. Rachel later discovered a hole covered by a pillow behind the backseat. The trunk had a hole in it somewhere, and everything we brought was therefore covered in red dust. The car was half-gone before we got to the park, and we quickly realized that our safari would probably be its death knell. We did manage to see a number of giraffes, zebras, impalas, other antelopes whose name I don't recall, vervet monkeys, olive baboons, buffalo and hippos, incredibly, without trekking very deep into the park. The poor, decrepit taxi was a trooper on the off-roading, though, and managed to survive at least the drive home. Every other group on safari was, of course, in a massive 4X4. When we stopped for our picnic lunch (peanut butter sandwiches, peanuts, a few cheddar pringles and some rank cookies) we attempted to befriend some of the other safari-ists in the hopes that they would take pity and invite us into their massive cars. It didn't work.
My last day in Kigali was immense. I visited the Centre Sante for lunch with Zena and the other nurses, then bought a mattress for one of the Association women, strapped it onto my back with twine, and hopped on a moto to Kanombe. I really thought that I would fall off, but hoped that the mattress would at least catch my fall. I survived, incredibly. My favorite Association member, Paul, met me and we walked to the woman's house to bring her the mattress. After I gave it to her, I gave her son my kazoo. They were really excited by the kazoo, and fairly complacent about the mattress. I wound up staying there for about an hour and helping her shell beans. Then I met Zena at the Centre Sante again, because she told me she wanted to take me out on the town. We had dinner in Union Trade Center and then I met her younger brother, who lives with her and kind of takes care of her. She has had a couple of operations, and is due for another in January, and he looks after her. He is a wonderful man. We had a long talk after Zena went home, and he even invited me to go with the whole family to Gisenyi the next time I go to Rwanda.
I have been so lucky to meet such incredible people on this trip. Rwanda is the most beautiful place I have ever been in terms of landscape and physical beauty, but it also contains some of the most warm and wonderful people I have ever had the pleasure to meet. I can't wait to go back to Rwanda!
But in the mean time, I will make the most of this week in Kenya. I have the whole day in Nairobi tomorrow, then at 6 I take the overnight train to Mombasa! I can't wait. I don't know if I mentioned this before, but the train passes through Tsavo National Park (where the infamous man-eating lions once lived) and I think another game park as well!
I like it a lot more than I did when I visited for a day last year.
It really is spectacular that as I drove away from the airport I could see giraffes grazing just off the highway in Nairobi National Park.
My last few days in Rwanda were just gorgeous. Friday I recorded the rap as planned, and played a jeopardy-style game with the students to assess what they had learned. After the class, I gave them all little gifts (mostly bubbles and hairclips) and a few of the girls (my favorites--i'll admit it) gave me a present! I almost cried! They gave me a little plastic ring with a red stone. It was the sweetest thing in the world! As we left the "classroom" behind the FVA office, the girls invited me to go back to their school (Remera Catholique) with them for dance practice. Obviously I went. I don't think I've ever enjoyed walking to Kimironko so much in my life. I walked with a group of 15 teenage girls who swarmed around me and urged me to speak Kinyarwanda and dance with them. Other pedestrians just watched us and laughed. I couldn't have had more fun if I had tried. Dance practice was lovely. They rehearsed the traditional welcome dance for me, and integrated me into the song. After, the did "plays," which is basically an improv exercise that they perform for each other. Most of the plays had to do with a cute girl and a boy checking out her butt. Then they got together and collected pocket change for association, just as the PLWHA Association I worked with in Kanombe does. It was so sweet. They played association! It's like if we played labor union in high school.
So, I promised tale of a ghetto safari, and here it is: Rwanda has one real safari park, though it's nothing to speak of in terms of the rest of the continent. Akagera National Park is only about two hours outside of Kigali though, and relatively cheap, so it sounded like a great deal! All of the volunteers who were around this weekend (me, Rachel, Jamie and Thanh) decided to wake up at 3:30 am and go on safari. Hijink number one: the drawstring of my sweatpants broke and instead I wore flowery leggings on safari. (I thought it looked quite "smart," as they say in Rwanda.) Hijink number two (the most major of all the hijinks): we decided to rent a taxi to take us on safari, and Rachel was charged with finding a taxi driver outside of Ndoli's, a local shop. We managed to snag the worst taxi in Rwanda. The driver, Alphonse, was a sweet guy, but he was a very bad negotiator; Rachel brought him down from 60,000 rwf for the day to 37,000 with very little effort. He also forgot to pick us up, and Rachel called him and wound up speaking to his girlfriend to remind him to come get us at 4:30 in the morning. The taxi's windshield had two large webbed cracks, the left mirror had fallen off--not the whole mirror apparatus, mind you, but just the mirror itself. The mechanics beneath the mirror were still in place. Rachel later discovered a hole covered by a pillow behind the backseat. The trunk had a hole in it somewhere, and everything we brought was therefore covered in red dust. The car was half-gone before we got to the park, and we quickly realized that our safari would probably be its death knell. We did manage to see a number of giraffes, zebras, impalas, other antelopes whose name I don't recall, vervet monkeys, olive baboons, buffalo and hippos, incredibly, without trekking very deep into the park. The poor, decrepit taxi was a trooper on the off-roading, though, and managed to survive at least the drive home. Every other group on safari was, of course, in a massive 4X4. When we stopped for our picnic lunch (peanut butter sandwiches, peanuts, a few cheddar pringles and some rank cookies) we attempted to befriend some of the other safari-ists in the hopes that they would take pity and invite us into their massive cars. It didn't work.
My last day in Kigali was immense. I visited the Centre Sante for lunch with Zena and the other nurses, then bought a mattress for one of the Association women, strapped it onto my back with twine, and hopped on a moto to Kanombe. I really thought that I would fall off, but hoped that the mattress would at least catch my fall. I survived, incredibly. My favorite Association member, Paul, met me and we walked to the woman's house to bring her the mattress. After I gave it to her, I gave her son my kazoo. They were really excited by the kazoo, and fairly complacent about the mattress. I wound up staying there for about an hour and helping her shell beans. Then I met Zena at the Centre Sante again, because she told me she wanted to take me out on the town. We had dinner in Union Trade Center and then I met her younger brother, who lives with her and kind of takes care of her. She has had a couple of operations, and is due for another in January, and he looks after her. He is a wonderful man. We had a long talk after Zena went home, and he even invited me to go with the whole family to Gisenyi the next time I go to Rwanda.
I have been so lucky to meet such incredible people on this trip. Rwanda is the most beautiful place I have ever been in terms of landscape and physical beauty, but it also contains some of the most warm and wonderful people I have ever had the pleasure to meet. I can't wait to go back to Rwanda!
But in the mean time, I will make the most of this week in Kenya. I have the whole day in Nairobi tomorrow, then at 6 I take the overnight train to Mombasa! I can't wait. I don't know if I mentioned this before, but the train passes through Tsavo National Park (where the infamous man-eating lions once lived) and I think another game park as well!
Thursday, December 10, 2009
the almost-end
I hated writing that as the title. But it's true. Tomorrow is my last day of work here, and I leave Kigali Tuesday morning.
I finally (as of literally this afternoon) have a plan for the week between Kigali and going home though! I am flying to Nairobi early Tuesday, spending two days there and taking the overnight train to Mombasa on Wednesday evening! I'll spend the extended weekend (until Sunday night) in Mombasa, then take the train back to Nairobi and leave Monday just before midnight. I'm pretty excited for the train. It's supposed to take absolutely forever, but it goes through the Serengeti and is an old English colonial mainstay. I can't wait! And Mombasa will be a good substitute for my failed Zanzibar plans, as it is also a Swahili coastal town along the Indian Ocean. I plan to do some day excursions out to Diani Beach and hopefully a Kaya as well (sacred forest).
This week has been absolutely gorgeous. This weekend I went back to Gisenyi and was supposed to cross the border to Goma with Rachel, but she forgot her yellow fever vaccination card and we weren't sure if it was the best idea to potentially bribe our way into the Congo and maybe get stuck there. (Good logic, I think.) I saw the most intense and incredible lightning storm over Lake Kivu, and found the hot springs in the town just beyond the Bralirwa plant.
This week has managed to sum up my experiences here in the most poetic ways. Tuesday, the Centre Sante had a big party for the ARV patients and their children. It was really awesome to see so many people I knew and had worked with all gathered together for a party, and it was obvious that the children really appreciated the experience. Kevine was there and I gave her a Christmas present: a sparkly jump rope, a large bouncy ball and a ton of bubbles and bubble-blowing devices, all in my NY Strand bag that she always stole when she visited me at the clinic. Her mother was really sweet, and Best helped me talk with her a little bit. I want to stay in touch with them once I leave and help them out any way I can if they need it. They are just a beautiful family and deserve way more than I can give them. Later in the day, Mama Kevine tried to send Kevine home with me to America, which broke my heart. She tried again today, too. Oh yea, today was my last day at the Centre and Kevine just happened to be there again! We played for about two hours and she cried when I told her I was leaving for good. I got tears in my eyes as well. She is a really special (if somewhat selfish--she kept yelling "muzungu wangu!" at the other kids who tried to play with me...if you can't figure it out that means "my muzungu!") child.
Anyway, at the Tuesday party at the Centre, a lot of women from the Association I work with in Kanombe also showed up! It was really awesome seeing my two worlds combine. I mean, I've seen a couple of the Kanombe women at the Centre from time to time picking up their ARVs, but there were a great number of them at this party and it was really wonderful. I sat with one Association woman during the ceremony preceding the party.
Wednesday was my last meeting with the Association as a whole, and as I left, about twenty-five women looked up from their crafts and waved at me. It was so beautiful that I asked them if I could take a photo.
Today, also, I taught my HIV Edu course again. Today we discussed human sexual physiology and reproduction. It turns out that in P5 (around 11 or 12 years old) they learn about reproduction, and even filled in the vocabulary for me, like "embryo." However, in learning about embryos and the life cycle, they do not receive any official instruction on how an embryo gets there or how a woman may become pregnant. So they learn about the trimesters and how a baby develops, but nothing about how this phenomenon occurs.
We also worked on a song in my class today. Last week, I told the group that I wanted to do a cumulative project to show what we learned, and we decided on a song. One of the older girls wrote a really great verse and chorus for a rap over the weekend, and we built off of that. Tomorrow I will record it, and you will all definitely get to see the final results!
I finally (as of literally this afternoon) have a plan for the week between Kigali and going home though! I am flying to Nairobi early Tuesday, spending two days there and taking the overnight train to Mombasa on Wednesday evening! I'll spend the extended weekend (until Sunday night) in Mombasa, then take the train back to Nairobi and leave Monday just before midnight. I'm pretty excited for the train. It's supposed to take absolutely forever, but it goes through the Serengeti and is an old English colonial mainstay. I can't wait! And Mombasa will be a good substitute for my failed Zanzibar plans, as it is also a Swahili coastal town along the Indian Ocean. I plan to do some day excursions out to Diani Beach and hopefully a Kaya as well (sacred forest).
This week has been absolutely gorgeous. This weekend I went back to Gisenyi and was supposed to cross the border to Goma with Rachel, but she forgot her yellow fever vaccination card and we weren't sure if it was the best idea to potentially bribe our way into the Congo and maybe get stuck there. (Good logic, I think.) I saw the most intense and incredible lightning storm over Lake Kivu, and found the hot springs in the town just beyond the Bralirwa plant.
This week has managed to sum up my experiences here in the most poetic ways. Tuesday, the Centre Sante had a big party for the ARV patients and their children. It was really awesome to see so many people I knew and had worked with all gathered together for a party, and it was obvious that the children really appreciated the experience. Kevine was there and I gave her a Christmas present: a sparkly jump rope, a large bouncy ball and a ton of bubbles and bubble-blowing devices, all in my NY Strand bag that she always stole when she visited me at the clinic. Her mother was really sweet, and Best helped me talk with her a little bit. I want to stay in touch with them once I leave and help them out any way I can if they need it. They are just a beautiful family and deserve way more than I can give them. Later in the day, Mama Kevine tried to send Kevine home with me to America, which broke my heart. She tried again today, too. Oh yea, today was my last day at the Centre and Kevine just happened to be there again! We played for about two hours and she cried when I told her I was leaving for good. I got tears in my eyes as well. She is a really special (if somewhat selfish--she kept yelling "muzungu wangu!" at the other kids who tried to play with me...if you can't figure it out that means "my muzungu!") child.
Anyway, at the Tuesday party at the Centre, a lot of women from the Association I work with in Kanombe also showed up! It was really awesome seeing my two worlds combine. I mean, I've seen a couple of the Kanombe women at the Centre from time to time picking up their ARVs, but there were a great number of them at this party and it was really wonderful. I sat with one Association woman during the ceremony preceding the party.
Wednesday was my last meeting with the Association as a whole, and as I left, about twenty-five women looked up from their crafts and waved at me. It was so beautiful that I asked them if I could take a photo.
Today, also, I taught my HIV Edu course again. Today we discussed human sexual physiology and reproduction. It turns out that in P5 (around 11 or 12 years old) they learn about reproduction, and even filled in the vocabulary for me, like "embryo." However, in learning about embryos and the life cycle, they do not receive any official instruction on how an embryo gets there or how a woman may become pregnant. So they learn about the trimesters and how a baby develops, but nothing about how this phenomenon occurs.
We also worked on a song in my class today. Last week, I told the group that I wanted to do a cumulative project to show what we learned, and we decided on a song. One of the older girls wrote a really great verse and chorus for a rap over the weekend, and we built off of that. Tomorrow I will record it, and you will all definitely get to see the final results!
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