kenya log, days one to two

Day One

Stole net from Thai airport. Due to personal aversion of airline food, had ramen at Thai airport – ordered Tonkotsu ramen but got some sort of chicken broth ramen instead; sad thing was that this was probably better than the other two times I’ve tried to order ramen all summer…

not too excited about the 10hr flight ahead

Don’t remember much from the plane ride to Bangkok; spent the night before translating after a 3.5hr nap so I was tired enough to pass out for the 5hr plane ride to Bangkok (of course with the help of drugs) – all I remember is that the plane ride to Bangkok was relatively pleasant, although the Korean Air stewardess was a little insensitive and woke me up three times after I told her two times that I didn’t need anything and didn’t want to be disturbed, but whatevs.

Most of my time at Thai airport was either spent online (bought net for 4 dollars/hr) or walking around looking for stuff to eat with Parent 1. The airport is structured in a weird way where once you go into the boarding terminal you’re not allowed to go back out to the main areas of the airport, so we spent most of our 3hr overlay in Bangkok outside of the terminal, only to have our overlay extended from 3hrs to 4hrs.

The 8hr ride to Nairobi, at least the parts that I was awake for it, was a nightmare according to Parent 1 and Parent 2; Parent 2 told me later that this specific Kenya Airway experience was probably the worst experience he’s had of the aviation-inclination in the last twelve years or so, so I guess it was a good thing that I slept through most of it – I was awake for the last twenty minutes to discover a grown black man using my left shoulder as a pillow but I guess that’s a different story altogether.

First impressions of Nairobi airport – it looked similar to Beijing airport before they started reconstruction on it like 7-8 years ago, but the outside of the building reminded me of San Jose Airport. I was actually a little surprised to find Toyotas and Nissans parked outside of the airport, and the bus ride into Nairobi sort of reminded me of Mongolia, except all the signs outside were in English as opposed to a foreign language I don’t understand.

bored scott is bored

Picked up a few Swahili (?) phrases:

“Jambo!” means “Hello”

“Karibu” (sounds a little bit like the animal, except the word-initial [k] seems to be aspirated, and there seems to be a tonal inflection on the last syllable) means “Welcome”

We arrived at our hotel after 20 some minutes on the bus from the airport, only to find out that the hotel was actually a hostel, and that the hostel was actually a converted Italian nunnery; yes, the hostel is run by nuns. First meal in Kenya was hopefully a promise of things to come: we went into this café sort of place in downtown Nairobi and had a spicy fried potato dish (sliced potatoes in batter with bits of spice inside), carrot and lentil soup with a something that tasted like rye dinner rolls.

food... and me in the left corner laughing

We went to a supermarket after lunch to pick up some essentials for the bus ride tomorrow; I was pleasantly surprised to find Ribena and Lucozade in Kenya, as well as other things reminiscent of being a part of the British Commonwealth—other household British names in Kenya include: Barclays bank, Orange (phone network), Vodafone, BP, and Standard Chartered Bank.

After we were done shopping for drinks/other junk, we came back to the nunnery and had lunch; the lunch served consisted of boiled carrots, fried eggplant, some beef dish that I didn’t eat and some sort of ravioli pasta. Oh one thing that’s worth mentioning is that the coffee I’ve had here is simply amazing; I have no clue if it’s local grown coffee (which I presume it is since Africa is a huge producer of coffee) or some generic brand sold here, but it’s so much better than the Pike’s Place blend that I’d been having for the last six months at Starbucks in America.

Oh and something shocking happened on our way back to the nunnery. Apparently somebody left their laptop in one of the cars we were travelling in and someone tried to break in to the car and steal it. Our driver chased after the guy, brought him before two other people, and then started beating him on the head with a rock – luckily police came to break it up and the would-be thief got away, but apparently justice in Kenya is served Hammurabi style; (capital) punishment can be dealt out at anytime and any place, so long as some sort of consensus on the guilt of the wrongdoer has been reached in front of a make-shift “tribunal” of three people. Apparently this type of thing doesn’t happen too often in the area of Nairobi we were in, but it was still very very frightening to see someone who was smiling and telling us about Nairobi and Kenyan culture just a second ago take a 180 turn without a moment’s notice to almost killing a man. And the fact that such a thing is considered socially-acceptable sort of makes you think twice before making any move… at least in front of a crowd of more than two people XD

After lunch I was forced into doing pro bono interpretation for Parent 2’s what I’ve now come to label as “cult”—I refused to do it more than five times but they were so insisting so I decided to shut off my conscience for 2hrs and sell away a piece of my soul to organized cultism. Oh and the 2hrs I slaved away doing unpaid work revealed a little of my schedule for the next five days: apparently I’m going to go to a town near Kisumu (so the humanitarian stuff wasn’t in the city itself, but in the outskirts of that city In a school located 30-45 mins away from it. The place I’ll be staying at is apparently a “hotel” and not a hostel, but then again that’s what they said about this place too so I honestly have no idea what to expect. Oh and apparently I get to go on a safari on Saturday, so I guess I just have to endure five days of BS and then it’ll all be smooth sailing from then.

kisumu, kenya

As far as I know, there is internet in the city of Nairobi—I saw a few “cyber cafes” downtown, but as I mentioned earlier, it’s kind of dangerous to go downtown by oneself apparently, so I’ll have to find yet another lonely soul who is curious about visiting downtown to go chill there, but until then, Kenya Log will be written offline nearby whatever electric plug input I can find… we do have one in the room I’m sharing, but I guess he brought a laptop/camera as well, and since he’s like 30 I am culturally obliged to let him have priority over doing pretty much whatever. So meh, thus ends day one of Kenya Log, unless something interesting happens over dinner/after dinner, which I highly doubt (today on the schedule was labeled “rest day”)

Day Two

waking up at 7am is srs bsns

Got up at 7.00am Nairobi time, repacked all of my belongings and got ready for breakfast, which was served promptly at 7.55am. After breakfast began our long long long journey from Nairobi to Bondo; We left Nairobi around 8.30am and sat on the “ant bus” that I saw before in China—coincidentally, the bus was manufactured by a Chinese company called Higer—for about three hours, before we reached a service stop at Nakuru. The bus ride to Nakuru was semi-pleasant; the view outside was mostly that of trees and other florae indigenous to Kenya. At one point we did see a baboon run across the street to be joined by an entire family of baboons, which then proceeded to just sit down next to the side of the road; we also spotted a prey/herd or whatever the quantified is, of zebras grazing along the field, but those two sightings were the only two times we saw something reminiscent of safari/savannah during our journey to Nakuru.

scenes from the bus window

At the service stop it was made evident that bus frame was sinking into the tire which was what accounted for the 4hrs of constant “warning beeps” inside the bus and we were told that we couldn’t use the ant bus anymore. A prompt call to the bus company revealed that a replacement bus was on its way to where we were, and would arrive in two hours.

Thus with quite a bit of spare time on our hands, we took a bus into the town of Nakuru itself. The town reminded me of those small 2-square area towns you see in Western flicks (if you haven’t seen any yet, Tombstone is a good one to start with) we had lunch at a place that served burgers, pizza, fish and chips etc. all were of mediocre or better quality, which left us pleasantly surprised. After lunch we went out toward the city square into an open area resembling a bazaar. Venturing through this part of the city actually looked like the very first stage of Resident Evil IV where you walk through the city into the designated area and everyone’s staring you down or staring at you—the close encounter of the homicidal kind from yesterday didn’t quite help settle my now-tired-of-adventure nerve from being suspicious of everything and everyone around me. Parent 1, however, was being dumb and walking ahead of everyone in the group, until I pulled her back reminding her that because we’re no longer in a tourist-friendly area after having left Nairobi, she should definitely be a little more suspicious and aware of her surroundings.

biohazard iv 1-1, anyone?

One thing that did confirm my suspicions about the area was a man selling backpacks for 100 KSh in the bazaar—upon closer inspection we found out that these backpacks were stolen or inconspicuously snatched/picked up from other tourists: one of the backpacks had a logo which read “Seoul Central Preschool” and above it was an inscription made with a sharpie or a felt-tip pen which had a child’s name on it. (Another random coincidence: the child’s name was Kim Tae-Woo, which is the name of a singer from former boyband G.O.D. – so the person who found the bag was yelling “Hey look, I found Kim Tae-Woo in Kenya!)

somewhere in this marketplace...

After lunch we were transported back to the area where our bus broke down, then lo and behold! Our replacement bus had arrived from Nairobi as the bus company guy said it would. The new bus was crappier than the one that broken down earlier, despite having described as the “royal class” by the bus company representative, but I guess you can’t win it all after all.

replacement bus

We set off once again from Nakuru toward Kisumu and then Bondo; one thing that greatly disturbed me as we were travelling by bus was that there were people lined up along the side of the freeway trying to sell the fruits (well not literally) of their harvest to people passing by on the freeway—kind of like those Mexican fruit vendors who wait on the side of streets holding signs that say “STRAWBERRIES” and sell them to people passing by too. Except in the case of Kenya, it was a whole flock of people who would ran toward every bus or car that stopped by banging on their windows asking them to buy their produce/harvest. What disgusted me was not the Kenyans who were desperately trying to make a living, but the group I was travelling with; as the Kenyans started flocking in toward our bus they continuously took pictures of the eager Kenyans from inside the bus, waving at them as if they were some animals in the zoo. Then I started to wonder “what if that was me out there starving trying to sell fruit and vegetables to tourists to make a living?” and made me a little bit more appreciative that I wasn’t born in Africa or in a third-world country. Only a little bit, though.

potatos, por favor?

5 exhausting hours later, we finally arrived in Bondo, the place where we’d be spending the next five days of our Kenya visit; for a countryside town, our hotel in Bondo is surprisingly well-equipped; we get running hot water here (via heater) free breakfast and dinner, and most importantly, a computer with 56k dial-up!

the red x marks where bondo is

I guess this means I will be able to update Kenya Log every now and then, just don’t expect me to be able to upload pictures until I get back to Nairobi maybe.