Blog 3
Even a city whose
public transportation system works as well as does Amsterdam’s can’t be relied
on for a 4:30 a.m. trip to the airport.
A $6 trip twenty minute train between airport and central city yesterday
turned into a $65 return-trip taxi ride this morning. It turns out my “2-hour in advance” planning
for my 7 a.m. departure put me in well ahead of time, and I picked up my stored
luggage, went through security, and up to the Business Class lounge before they
opened at 5:30.
Today’s travels
began with a one-hour hop to Zurich.
Flying across the upper Alps provides scenes of incredible beauty,
verdant green fields intermixed with wide belts of solid forests, many topped
with lacey clouds, amidst a polka dot array of small villages. Each town looked cozy, red-roofed, white-walled
chateaus in groups of a few dozen, the occasional soccer field marking a school
or park. I had to resist an urge to
deplane right there and start a new life in that land of tranquil charm.
A quick transfer
and I loaded onto the jumbo jet heading to Nairobi. I spent most of the eight-hour trip sleeping,
the fully flattened seats offering peaceful bedding, and turning down the food
offers coming every hour or two. I used
frequent flyer miles to travel business class to Nairobi, partly so I could
bring a suitcase loaded with gifts, and partially, well, because its fun. I return in coach.
As we descended
into Nairobi, the sunset providing early green hues to the horizon edges, the
contrast with Zurich could hardly have been starker. A pea-soup atmosphere hung oppressively over
the city, smog thick with car pollutants and industrial wastes. The landscape had no forests or greenery, instead
brown patches of weak gardens and tumbling stacks of unpainted buildings, each
one surrounded by eight-foot concrete walls topped with broken glass.
As we taxied in I
noticed the airport sign welcoming us to Kenya was so caked with grime as to be
nearly unreadable. In fact, everything
was gray except for the red of the airplanes’ tails. We downloaded into a bus. On the transport from plane to airport, I
conversed with the woman next to me, a fiftyish research vascular physician on the
first big vacation of her life. She told
me as a child she’d always dreamed of going to Africa, and now had taken off
seven weeks to see the Dark Continent. A
lesson for anyone … if you want to do it, you really can.
A twenty-minute
wait at passport control with a $50 visa stamp took me through to baggage
control. I have two suitcases, one with
gifts for my friends and a rim of clothing for me, and another with gifts for
the orphanage. The latter is an old
battered veteran of Isabelle’s travels, and clearly on its last legs – well,
now it’s last leg, as one of the two wheels didn’t survive the trip. Having started in France, brought Isa to
America, and seen extensive other trips, it will end its days in Kenya. A story in itself.
Outside of the
airport two friends met me, Francis and Jared.
Francis works in the Ministry of Health, his wife in the Ministry of
Labor. Those are good bureaucratic jobs,
good pay, benefits, and pensions, with enough income to send their children to
private schools, own a small house in Nairobi as well as one back home in
Kisii, and yet still not enough to buy luxuries like a digital camera, which I
brought him as a gift. He dreams of
coming to America some day, and of course I invited him to stay with me and I
would show him a great time – Biloxi casino buffets, the sounds of New Orleans,
a day in the surf of Pensacola. Then he
asked me if I could get him a job and I realized that what he meant was he
REALLY wanted to come to America someday, like, you know, permanently. It seems to be a common aspiration.
Jared Okoyo Mbono,
in his late twenties, I first met in 2010 where he worked as a student in
Keumbu Hospital. I helped him
financially through his school, what we would call physician assistant
training, and since he’s persisted in seeking out the hard to find
employment. Currently he’s on his third
job, working with a Swedish NGO, a nonprofit providing nearly free medical care
in a clinic near Nakuru. They provide
him a free room on the compound and just barely enough money to feed himself. As a present I brought him a laptop. Nowadays these bright and efficient Samsung
machines run only $200, and will open up the world for him through Internet
access. He’s a good man, a hard worker
who won’t date until he’s established and able to support a family, and hopes,
one day, to return to school and become a real doctor.
Our driver, Brian,
loaded my bags into his trunk and we were off on the nail-biting adventure of
driving through Nairobi. There are
lanes, though they frequently change in number, so a three-lane road will
suddenly become two, forcing a chicken-dare merge, and red/green lights have
little effect on actual traffic flow.
The car had no air-conditioning, and so every five minutes I would roll
down the window to cool down a bit, only to gasp and wheeze on what constituted
atmosphere.
Brian, by the way,
like the other two, comes from Kisii County, where Keumbu sits (well, Jared
hails from just over the border in the next county). All three speak English, Swahili, and Kisii,
the local dialect. Besides offering himself
as a taxi driver, he has a small business in Nairobi, an “Internet Café,” with
three computers: no food or drinks, just three computers. Everyone is a small businessman here,
struggling to make a living.
In an hour we
arrived at the hotel Francis had reserved for me. The “Kenya Hotel Comfort Suites” stands nine
stories tall, numbered European style with a ground floor lobby and floor one
above. My “suite” on the third floor has
a single bed with about two feet of clearance on each side and a closet sized
necessary room, with a toilet against the back wall and a shower outlet
overhead. Please remember to move the
toilet paper outside before taking a shower.
Roosters crowed outside throughout the night. Cost: $70 U.S. included breakfast.
I settled in,
spiffed up a smidgen, and met the three men downstairs in the hotel’s
restaurant. Every decent sized hotel has
a restaurant, most travelers not interested in heading out at night. The waitress kept shoving menus in our hands,
but Francis had decided to take me out for a Kenyan meal experience, so we
loaded back into Brian’s sedan and once again braved Nairobi’s traffic towards
the downtown.
To park in
downtown Nairobi one has to bribe the police.
Yes, they’re standing around in flak jackets, berets, and holding large
automatic weapons, guarding parking spots.
At least you know your car won’t be vandalized, I suppose. We entered past the restaurant’s guarded gate
into a huge outdoor garden spot, maybe 200 tables, each occupied by suited
businessmen drinking and shouting and ignoring the plethora of ladies. Well, perhaps not all the ladies were being
ignored. One cutie with an interesting
arm tattoo had settled next to an elderly white man, enticing him to buy her
and her friends beers, and whispering incessantly into his ear. The women sat in pairs, each as pretty as
could be, with captivating smiles, raising their beer cans hopefully in my
direction, and offering a wink. I asked
Francis if every woman here was a prostitute, and he said, “Yes.” Really?
No one would bring his girlfriend or wife here? “No.”
Just for the
record, I would never take home a Kenyan prostitute. Besides the rather obvious risk of disease,
they have a reputation of drugging your drinks and robbing you. Though, Jeez, they sure were pretty to look
at. To avoid having unwanted visitors
settle in, or doctor our drinks, we never left our table unguarded through the
evening; when two or three of us got up to listen to the live music, or pick
out our food, at least one stayed at the table.
Typical Kenyan
food consists of barbecued meat. The
waitress brought me to the grill where I picked out my preferences, in my case
a chicken quarter, a beef shish-ka-bob, and a samosa (a meat filled triangular
pastry), and the cook put them on the grill as I returned to my table and
sipped on my Tuska beer. Tuska is only
4% alcohol, comes in a big glass bottle, and doesn’t add another plastic waste
to the acres of Nairobi city dump. Jared
and I enjoyed our Tuskas, Francis and Brian drank Mango juice, and we settled
into a two-hour relaxed meal of conversation and camaraderie. Francis and Jared chose the fish, each a
large flounder, served with a cup of rice, while Brian went with chicken
gizzards and goat. Everything is served
with a cup of large fries and slaw, and one eats with one’s fingers. Even sophisticated Francis scooped up the
fish with his hands, dipping in the rice, and smacking his lips. He left only bones and a head on the plate. The bill came to 3600 Kenya Shillings, or
about $40. I had a thick stack of 1000
Shilling bills left over from previous visits, and peeled off four, telling the
waitress to keep the change. Big tipper.
We talked about
the difference in prices. Most “things”
cost about the same, such as books and furniture, so no one owns any books and
furniture tends to be cheap plastic or hand-hewed wood. The rent for a single apartment runs about
$50 a month. A large part of income goes
to food, with costs for local goods being a little cheaper than in America, and
imported products quite high. Most
stores don’t carry candy bars, though if you find a local brand, it’ll run
about 80 cents, a Snickers costs three bucks.
A REAL Coke (sugar, not corn syrup) runs about sixty cents.
I love traveling,
and one gets the best of the cultural experience by having friends take you to
local spots. Zurich at night felt safe,
with its clean, well-lit streets, everyone minding their own business in a
happy, touristy atmosphere. Nairobi
streets are dark, a scattering of too-high streetlights emitting a feeble glow
over rubble strewn streets, dirty sidewalks with darkened store windows, and
beggars besieging you on the short walk to your auto. I wouldn’t walk here alone at night.
There aren’t many
pictures this blog as I traveled in the plane all day and didn’t bring the
camera to the restaurant. Tomorrow I fly
to Kisumu where Pastor will meet me at the airport and we’ll head for the
orphanage and hospital.
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