Kenya Log

Day Seven

Woke up around 6.45AM to get ready for breakfast, which was to be promptly served at 7.30AM. Last night it was decided that we were going to go on a mini-Safari today so we were told that we need to finish breakfast by 8.00AM so that we can leave the facility at 8.00AM sharp and come back by noon. Breakfast at BTL was not too different from the kind we were served in Bondo; some sort of bean porridge, oatmeal, scrambled and boiled eggs, toast and marmalade, and a choice between coffee, tea and cocoa was offered on the table.

We (the three that actually wanted to go on the mini-Safari) promptly finished breakfast at 8.00AM and went toward the main entrance as we were told to do so, but the driver wasn’t there; we then assumed that the driver is probably operating on “Kenya Time” which, according to our guide in Bondo, is usually anywhere from 30-60 minutes after the designated time. So with that in mind, we stood around the parking lot for about an hour, walked around the facility a few times waiting for the driver to arrive. But little did we know, that it wouldn’t be until 10.30AM that the driver will actually arrive on the facility to pick us up—some two and a half hours after the appointed time of arrival.

I may have forgotten to mention on day six that BTL is actually in an area about 24km away from Nairobi called Ruiru; the facility itself is gated and heavily guarded, probably due to the fac t that there’s a prison right outside the facility where the prison guards practice marksmanship every morning for about forty-five minutes. I kept joking with Parent 1 that BTL actually felt more like a prison than a “translation and literacy” centre, but who knows, maybe those words will come and haunt me for the next ten or so days I’m supposed to spend here.

The drive into Nairobi was almost as bad as the drive coming into BTL the night before; there was a massive traffic jam in the inbound traffic—probably people going to work or visiting Nairobi over the weekend, which reminds me of another conversation I had with one of the people here: apparently Kenyans work on a five-and-a-half-day schedule, where they work 9 to 5 on the weekdays like they do everywhere else and then work only until noon on Saturday—resulting in sixty frustrating minutes of sitting inside the car as opposed to the twenty-five it would take on any normal day. We had to first stop by a garage because the front left tire was flat and had been running on a spare tire, but when we got to the garage we were informed that the replacement tire wasn’t ready and that we’d need to come back a few hours later in order to pick it up. So without wasting anytime, we decided it’d probably be best for the driver to drop us first for our mini-Safari and then go get his replacement tire.

So another twenty minutes of scourging through Nairobi traffic later, we arrived at Nairobi National Park, the home of the Kenya Animal Orphanage and the fabled Safari Walk. As we got off the car, the driver told us that he had other things to do in town today and told us that he’d meet us at the restaurant area at around two o’clock (there’s a reason why I mention this) leaving us to go explore on our own. Although we were told the day before that the entire park was huge and takes 3hrs to walk from one end to the other, we were disappointed to find out that most of the park was not accessible to pedestrians, so we were forced to choose between visiting either the Orphanage or the Safari Walk; after consulting the man at the ticketing box, we were told that we’d see more animals inside the Orphanage so we headed to that general direction.

The ticket price for the Orphanage was organized in a rather peculiar way. The price range for a Nairobi resident, Non-Nairobi resident and a foreign national were all different; while they encouraged Kenyan Nationals to pay in KSh, foreign nationals were told to pay in USD—the price they expected foreign nationals was 10 USD (approximately 750KSh) per person, while the residents and Kenyan nationals were only expected to pay around 200-250 KSh per person.

The first animal we saw at the Animal Orphanage was a weird looking-monkey (the guide told me what species of monkey it was but I don’t remember what it was called) named “Benin,” named so because it was illegally poached into Kenya from some West African country, probably either Sierra Leone or Benin. The guide then explained to us that most of the animals that ended up in the Orphanage were mostly rescued from the hands of poachers or those that were holding them in (illegal) captivity. We then moved on to meet Patrick and Patricia the warthog, who were to be disambiguated by the fact that male warthogs have curvy tusks whereas females don’t.

As we passed by the warthog cage, my mind couldn’t help but keep wondering if there were any cheetahs in the Orphanage—afterall my sole purpose in coming to Kenya was to tackle a running cheetah—so while my mind was lost deep in hope and bewilderment, we passed by some weird birds (I’ll post links to these pictures after I organize my photos when I get back to somewhere with fast internet) and other insignificant animals until we finally arrived at the cheetah cage.

Ah yes, the cheetah. The runners of the jungle. The cheetah is the fastest animal on land and can run up to an average of a 120km/h (around 90mph); it starts hunting at about six months of age and preys mostly on gazelles or antelopes. Unlike leopards, cheetahs are not solitary animals, although they don’t hunt in prides or in packs like lions do. Although the cheetah is frequently mistaken for the leopard, the cheetah can be distinguished by the distinct black “line” that runs from the side of its eye down to its nose. The guide was “impressed” by my National Geographic-inspired knowledge of cheetah and assumed correctly that I would be very interested in perhaps touching, nay, petting the cheetah, and hinted that if I “tipped” the zookeeper, he may let us into the cage to pet the cheetah. So I quietly slipped 200 KSh (about 3 USD) to the zookeeper and lo and behold! The gate into the cheetah pen was open and we were guided into the cage.

There was a flurry of emotions flying across my brain at that moment; I was happy that I actually get to see my favorite animal up close and personal, but I was also deathly frightened by the fact that cheetahs are also deadly predators and if I had somehow managed to irritate it there probably would be no escaping death or mortal injury. But I soon found that these cheetahs were literally brought up in the Orphanage since they were only a month old and were incredibly-tame; so I decided to try my luck at tackling one while it started runn—I mean, pretend like I’ve beat it down and brought it into captivity. The cheetah that I managed to pet and take a picture with was actually only three months old, which led me to abandon my plans of capturing a cheetah cub and secretly smuggling it back to America to train it so that it would eat annoying dogs that came by; if the cheetah is this big when it’s only three months old, I can’t really imagine how big it’ll become when it’s one or two years old.

After taking a few pictures with the cheetahs, we thanked the zookeepers and left the cage to go see the lazy leopard. This particular leopard which was in the Orphanage was apparently very shy and we were told that we were actually very lucky to have come close to feeding time, else the leopard usually just hides up on the tree. The leopard, however, didn’t do much but lie down and yawn; the guide did however manage to get its attention by rattling the cage a little, after which it raised its head up with a puzzling look, but it resumed its “ima just lie down here and do nothing until you feed me” position soon after it realized it wasn’t feeding time yet.

Just across the leopard cage was the “monkey village” where we met all sorts of monkeys that we’ve never seen before or even heard of; there was one particular monkey which had groomed its hair to look like Elvis which was found in the town where Obama’s family supposedly lives, named “Barack,” which seemed to attract the most attention out of all the monkeys, probably because it started doing all sorts of little tricks and dances when the guide came around with food. We then passed by a Serval Cat, a Jackal, some weird birds, a gazelle fawn until we got to an ostrich cage; the ostrich was actually more eager to meet people than all the other animals we saw that day and it kept peeping over its cage raising its head above the fence to see if any people were coming to visit it.

I do realize that justice would be done best for remembering this day through pictures rather than my boring rambling, so I’ll just end my description of the orphanage by saying, yes I saw lions (and lionesses) and no, I didn’t see tigers, no they’re not only in Kenya and Norway is an awesome place that people shouldn’t “forget” like the weebl song tells you to do.
We walked out of the Animal Orphanage at around 1.00PM keeping in mind that the driver told us that he’d be back to pick us up at around 2.00PM and headed down to the restaurant area. The price of the buffet was 800 KSh per person, which under normal circumstances we probably wouldn’t have paid, but since there wasn’t any other eateries around we decided it’d be best for us to pay up and fill up as we wait for the driver to come back.

Although the ominous experience of “Kenyan Time” was fresh in our minds as we sat down in front of the restaurant at 1.45PM waiting for the driver to arrive, we sat in wait still in our restaurant seats hoping that the driver would come sometime soon. It was only until 2.45PM when we realized that “Kenyan Time” had been in effect again and decided to walk around the park a little more; during the 45 minutes of our walking around we saw a Masai tribe (the oft red-clad nomadic warrior tribe that Kenya is famous for) performing some sort of traditional dance, two weddings taking place in some garden nearby the Safari Walk, and two warthogs curiously outside their cages roaming around the parking lot, crawling on their front two feet.

Just as we were getting tired of waiting, the driver finally arrived, smiling and apologizing, and drove us to the A.F.E.W. Giraffe Sanctuary which was about ten minutes away; we also passed by an elephant sanctuary on our way there but our hopes of seeing any were quickly extinguished when the driver told us that the sanctuary only opens for an hour a day from 11.00 to noon, unless you decide to “adopt” an elephant. The Giraffe Sanctuary cost 10 USD to get in, and it was only after I entered this place that it hit me that I’m actually in Africa; as soon as we entered the sanctuary the first thing we saw was the peeping head of a curious giraffe being fed cereal pellets by amazed tourists all around it. The giraffe sanctuary was built on the outskirt of a simulated giraffe habitat, currently occupied by six female giraffes and two baby (male) giraffe. The “stud” of the pack had tragically passed away two months earlier, but it wasn’t like we could tell the difference between a male and a female giraffe anyway.

Although I had no problem touching or stroking the giraffe, I was terrified to feed it out of my hand or let it lick my face like it was doing to the other tourists when I heard the girl I came with telling me that the giraffe’s saliva was sticky like a web of some sort. The kodak moment of the day, however, was when one courageous American tourist decided to put a cereal pellet between his teeth and “kiss” the giraffe, claiming that it would make a “great facebook profile photo” which it probably did. The funny thing was that he ended up kissing one of the baby male giraffes that got scared after kissing the man; we teased the guy, telling him that he scared the baby giraffe straight in more than one way.

After we got out of the Giraffe Sanctuary, the driver gave us a mini-tour of some peculiar spots in Nairobi; we drove by a Sikh temple, a Hindu stupa, the worshipping place of what was supposedly a Muslim sect, and most curious of all, a freemason church. This freemason church was a place of particular interest that had many rumors surrounding it; the saying goes that even if someone gets into an accident or gets hurt in front of the freemason church, the person will not bleed but just sustain scratches and deep entry/exit wounds—the driver claims that a man who was shot one time in front of the church was taken to the hospital immediately after getting shot but the ambulance that he was taken to the hospital in was miraculously found without a single drop of blood—and asked us if the freemasons are a cult or actually an established religion in America, to which I just shrugged and told him that they’re also very much a mystery in America as well.

We arrived back at BTL just in time for dinner, and after dinner I had to move all my stuff over from the room I had stayed the night before to Parent 2’s room since Parent 1 was leaving to go back to Korea and I’m supposed to room with Parent 2 for ten days. At about 8.00pm the first car leaving to the airport left the facility, leaving myself and three other people to wait for the second car which would take the remainder of the people to the airport, hoping that “Kenyan Time” would not strike again, but it did; the second driver arrived at 8.45PM much to the worries and anxieties of the second group including myself.

The driver, however, assured us that the car would arrive at the airport in time for the check-in time which was 10.00PM, and told us to gear up for a bumpy ride, which we did—fourty-five minutes and twenty traffic violations later our car arrived at the airport at the same time as the first driver that had left forty-five minutes before we left the facility.

We dropped Parent 1 off at the airport along with the rest of the people going back, and stopped by Nakumatt (the local 24hr Walmart) to grab lucozade (the british version of red bull with about 300% less caffeine) and other essentials and headed back to BTL where I drugged myself to sleep once again.

I’m pretty sure I’m missing a day or two here, but whatevs.

Woke up at 7.10am to the sound of people heading toward the restaurant to grab breakfast for the last time (!) in Bondo, and whereas I’d normally be distressed by the fact that I’m ten minutes behind schedule, I was too exahausted and too overwhelmed with everything that’s happened to really care and just made my way to the restaurant again.

The breakfast was the same as always: corn flakes, scrambled eggs, boiled eggs and toast; with thermos flasks of hot milk and hot water on the table for those people wanting to make instant cocoa or milk tea. One interesting thing I observed about the way Kenyan people drink tea, or milk tea to be more specific, is that whereas one’s impression of “milk tea” would be black/red tea with milk added after the tea was brewed in hot water, in Kenya they just dip a teabag into hot milk and actually flavor the milk; it’s probably more accurate to label this “flavored milk” as opposed to “milk tea” since the end product is probably lacking most of the benevolent substances of tea (I think I read somewhere that putting milk in coffee destroys most of the caffeine/polyphenol that’s inside the coffee) and is just a fattening lactose-based drink.

After breakfast, I went back into my hotel room for the last time to check if I left anything behind; luckily I was able to charge my mp3 player using the computer in the annex lobby so I was set for the long drive ahead to Nairobi. I don’t remember if I mentioned this on day two or not, but coming into Bondo by bus was actually a tricky endeavour; the main road leading into the hotel was blocked off for construction so we had to take a backdoor route through a very narrow unpaved road which was surrounded from all sides by trees: since the bus we were taking to Nairobi was substantially better than the bus we arrived in Bondo with, the bus driver decided that he didn’t want to take the risk of damaging/scratching the top and the sides of the bus so he stopped at some random point near the town centre. This meant we had to walk out of the hotel on foot and look for the bus which was fine, except that the bus driver gave us very ambiguous directions as to where he had actually parked the bus so we ended up circling around the town for quite some bit before we actually found the bus and hopped onboard.

The bus ride from Bondo to Kisumu was only about 75 minutes, most of which was spent listening to music and ignoring the people singing in the bus in “noise-cancelling mode”; it’s actually a pretty nifty function where the earphones emit some sort of a vacuous sound in the background so it cancels out any noise that’s coming from outside–it actually feels like you’re on an airplane or some very high building at first, but then you get used to the sound and the feeling and tend to appreciate the fact that you’re not being disturbed by any outside noise.

One good thing about long bus trips is that you tend not to be so picky about the music in your playlist since you know you’re going to be strapped down for a long time with nothing else to do but listen to music so you don’t skip around trying to single out specific songs you want to listen to; I ended up recycling through about 5-6 years of music that I’ve been neglecting since I pretty much had nothing else to do but listen to music on the bus.

We stopped in Kisumu to visit an orphanage that was apparently established and funded by Medical Ambassadors International (yet another NGO that Parent 2 used to work for) where I had to play interpretor yet again while touring the facility. One interesting thing about Kenya I learned while we were in the orphanage was that children often leave home or go out to live in the street as a result of polygamic marriages. Whereas polygamy is discouraged by religion and the state itself, it’s apparently a big part of Kenyan culture; there are apparently many cases where children are simply abandoned as a result of polygamic marriages, especially since a polygamic marriage is discouraged by the state and none of these marriages are usually considered “official.” As a result of having no legal obligation to stay with their families, people tend to informally “end” marriages when they see fit, most of the times resulting in families being split up and whatnot.

About an hour later we hopped back on the bus and headed to Kericho which was about an hour away where we had lunch at this place called “Tea Hotel” which used to be some sort of a manor built by the British during their occupation of Kenya; the menu here was the same as anywhere else we ate at: Ugali, Steamed Kale, some sort of meat stew, Potatoes, Cabbages.

After lunch we hopped on the bus once again on our merry way back to Nairobi; we briefly stopped in Nakuru (the place where our bus broke down on day two) to refuel at the same place our bus broke down and saw a family of baboons on our way into Nairobi–the bus driver actually stopped for the baboons and we threw potato chips and dried bananas at them to draw them in closer to take pictures–hit a huge traffic jam after we got into the city of Nairobi at around 8.00PM, had a few “inspectors” board our bus who were promptly shooed off the bus by Parent 2 being paranoid, and finally arrived at my new resting place for the next 10 days or so: the Bible Translation and Literacy Centre (or BTL for short), which is also home to the SIL’s African Division; they have “satelite internet” here so hopefully I’ll be able to update with more frequency than I’ve been doing for the past few days or so.

Day Five

Some major drama happened today.

So I woke up this morning a little more tired than usual since I had to interpret an entire church service (oh the irony) the day before, so I was 10-15 minutes late for breakfast. I dragged myself out of bed, still tired and still wearing glasses to go to breakfast, just ate toast, eggs and two bowls of cereal and headed back to my room.

Remembering that the alarm on my cell phone didn’t ring this morning for some peculiar reason, I started looking for my cellphone all over my room but it was nowhere to be found. So as I was frantically searching for my phone I started hearing waves of panic coming from all over the floor—people in the room across from me had their wallets robbed of their money, credit cards, and whatnot; people in the room next to us had their camera and their money stolen; the one down the hall had their laptop and some perfume stolen from their travel bag, which they found with the safety lock tampered with and broken into. And at that moment, it sparked a thought in my head: maybe I’ve been robbed too.

So I ran back into my room frantically hoping that perhaps they left our room out and just passed by, but I guess happy endings never happen in real life; after 30 minutes of thoroughly searching every corner of my room I found out that my camera, my watch, my cellphone, and most importantly, MINIMALIST (lappy) was stolen. So I went through the whole five steps of dealing with grief thing except for “bargaining” and was kind of distraught all morning realizing that I’d been pretty much robbed of everything I treasured materialistically for the last two years, but then I started analyzing the facts carefully with the other victims from the floor:

1. The annex building where we’re staying in is currently inhabited only by the twelve of us from the NGO.
2. The annex building door is usually closed and locked when we’re not there.
3. The robbery took place during the 15 minute window when the last person left the annex building to go eat breakfast and the first person came back from eating breakfast;
4. Two of the three rooms that were broken into had their door locks tampered with; one room (mine) was left still locked.

We therefore concluded that the chance of someone completely unrelated to hotel personnel robbing all three rooms in that time frame is very unlikely and all unanimously agreed that someone must have received some sort of help from someone in the hotel—just the fact that the robber struck us in that fifteen minute time frame when we were gone for breakfast seems to suggest that the robber knew our daily routine/habits—either that or the robber was incredibly lucky.

We reported the incident to the police briefly who told us that they’d come back in the afternoon to give us a full report/for a follow-up so we went about our day’s schedule, which was part two of school visitations.

Instead of going to Thim primary school first like we did on Monday, we headed over to Migono first albeit an hour late; our “guide” had already called the principal in advance to tell them about what happened at the hotel this morning and that we’d be late as a result, so the principal was rather understanding of our predicament. When we arrived at Migono, we were greeted by a familiar scene of children coming out of their classrooms carrying their desks over to a shady area where we could all sit down. After everyone was properly seated, the principal greeted us (and surprise surprise, I had to interpret everything that was going on again) and told us that the children had prepared presentations for us, which turned out to be either poetry recital or some sort of singing, either in Swahili or English.

After the children were done with their show and tell, it was our turn to do “our thing”; basically the NGO’s purpose in coming to the school was to aid them through providing some necessary supplies all the while subliminally preaching Christian propaganda along with it. So they decided that in order to integrate these two things together, they’d hold some a drawing competition, where they would tell the children a bible story and ask them to draw or depict the story they heard as well as they can with those that performed admirably better than the others being rewarded with a special prize.

So the NGO group decided that they wanted to tell the story of the Prodigal son (which was first told in Korean, interpreted into English by yours truly, and then into Swahili by one of the teachers since the children aren’t completely fluent in English as opposed to Swahili or their native tongue) and would reward every child that participated in the “competition” by giving them a piece of candy, a pencil, and an exercise book each; those that performed over and beyond would be rewarded with an assorted stationery set.

After that was done and over with, we said our goodbyes and went back to the guide’s mother’s house for lunch again; lunch was pretty much the same meal that was served everyday, except this lunch was a little bit more eventful because Parent 2 got scratched/bitten (he claims that the cat bit him, whereas I saw it clearly scratch him with its claws) and he was off to kill it every time it came back into the room. I felt sorry for the cat since he pretty much deserved to get scratched after aggravating it so much, but whatevs. It was funny seeing him get so angry over a small animal either way.

After lunch, we headed over to Thim primary school (the “bush” school from Monday) where the children also brought over benches and chairs to sit down as soon as they saw us and we were given the same formal greeting plus the show and tell show. Thim’s show and tell was a little more impressive since they even prepared a traditional Bantu dance for us (for those of you who don’t know who the Bantu are, they’re the stereotypical Africans wearing war paint carrying spears and wooden shields) and even recited a poem which apparently ranked third place in some provincial poetry recital contest. But all in all, this school was a little more impressive than the one we visited in the morning.

The NGO group decided once again to follow the format of “bible story drawing competition” and I was told this time to interpret the story of Nehemiah (for those of you who don’t know either the stories of the Prodigal son or Nehemiah, either poke the nearest bible near you or google it if interested) and then tell the children this time to draw what they want to become in ten years—this went off without a hitch as well until it started raining and we had to make different arrangements.

With that all the regular scheduled events were done and completed, except now there was some more drama waiting to happen over at the police station.

So if you’d recall back to the events that I described happened earlier in the morning, the police officers told us that they’d check on us during the afternoon again to delve into the robbery a little more closely; since we were preoccupied with scheduled events during the afternoon, we told them that we’d come to them at the police station as soon as we were done with our arrangement for the day.

When we arrived at the police station, our “guide” had a brief talk with the officers there, after which we were taken into a questioning room/interview room to give our statements/testimonies/particulars regarding what happened in the morning. Because most of the victims, excluding myself, could not speak English, Parent 2 had to interpret into English one group of people whereas I’d have to interpret for the other group after I was done giving mine. But in the middle of what seemed like perfectly normal criminal procedure—writing down the name and personal information of the victim—Parent 2 started lecturing the police, telling them that this isn’t the way the police should be treating victims of a crime, and suggested that they were instead treating us like criminals. Then he went as far to say that if the police were going to treat us like this then we’d rather not receive any help at all, which left the police flabbergasted and me raging mad.

So in my viewpoint, since Kenya used to be a British colony and had inherited its system of government and bureaucracy (and kept it even after declaring her independence), the police were just simply following criminal procedure as prescribed by British Civil Law: no matter what the type or caliber of the crime may be, the reporting officer must always interview all victims and witnesses to ensure that they have all the information necessary in order to start an investigation.

But somehow, Parent 2 thought that doing the above, i.e. doing the job that they’ve been hired to do, was somehow “disrespectful” and was the same as “treating us like criminals” and even worked up the nerve to say that police shouldn’t be treating people like this and that he was “very disappointed” in the Police system of Kenya.

Of course the two officers who were trying to interview us were also somewhat annoyed and surprised that he’d react this way but they were very very polite; they continued to remind Parent 2 that Kenya was a developing country and that their system may not be on par as that of Korea or other advanced countries. Nevertheless Parent 2 continued insisting that formal criminal procedure wasn’t good enough for us and said that we’d send in our written statements tomorrow, to which the police reluctantly agreed.

I protested with the officers and Parent 2 in the same room, telling him that we’re no longer in Korea, and since the crime was committed in territory that’s under Kenyan jurisdiction (neverminding the fact that the crime was just a regular domestic felony not an international one) we need to abide to Kenyan law and Kenyan procedure if we expect any help from Kenyan authorities, and that the officers were only following their bureaucratically assigned tasks of gathering information which Parent 2 dismissed by saying that we shouldn’t have to follow this sort of bureaucracy and leaving the room.

On our walk back to the hotel (the police station is very close to the hotel) I was of course very angry at the way Parent 2 handled the situation and as I always do when I’m angry I started walking faster with a “stay the fuck away from me” look on my face. Parent 2 noted this and asked if I had a problem with him, to which I replied “of course I have a problem” and proceeded to explain to him the “errors” of his ways and also reminding him that no matter what his stance on what the police’s duty to the citizens should be, he should NEVER tell the police how to do their jobs, or tell them that they’re doing a crappy one ESPECIALLY if he’s a foreign national.

To this he gave the same “but I didn’t want to deal with that bureaucratic crap” response which made me speed off to my room to lie down and cool my head for a bit.
After I cooled down, however, I came to the conclusion that this event had happened because Parent 2 has always lived in Korea where civil workers supposedly “serve” the civilians as opposed to terrorize them and break their tail lights for no reason, and that his viewpoint on the law may be different from that of mine since I, as a student of (International) law believe that law is based on a set of ground norms which are designed to keep social order in balance, whereas he as a devout (maybe to the degree of cultism) Christian seems to think that laws and norms can be disregarded with authority from a being inapplicable to/transcending law (i.e. “God”).

So in thinking that the “misinterpretation” of the situation was merely a product of these different schools of thought, and also reminding myself that Parent 2 has no reason to not want to report this crime to the police and that he was merely doing what he thought was the best course of action in resolving this matter at hand, I felt that maybe I shouldn’t have lashed out at Parent 2, and wrote him an apology note (like a true Asian would do when apologizing to their parents) to which he told me in person that perhaps he shouldn’t have been so disrespectful to the police and that he acted this way because he thought if we had to interpret for everyone who got their stuff stolen at the police station, we’d be there until midnight ( which is totally untrue, but whatever)

So after that entire mess, we went to grab dinner as usual, and during the “reflection meeting” most everyone seemed to agree that we should be thankful that we were able to carry on with the day’s schedule most unaffected by what happened in the morning, and that the crime committed against us was only petty theft and that no one was hurt – in conclusion, being in good health and in good spirit is priceless, for everything else, there’s MasterCard.

Oh, on a concluding note, in the case that MINIMALIST is not found before I leave Kenya, I’ll probably buy myself a stronger, faster, better MINIMALIST, henceforth to be known as: MINIMALIST MK II

I’m thinking of getting me a VAIO Z series, or anything similar to it that’s 13-14in., somewhere around 2.6-3.0Ghz dual core or higher; 2-4GB of RAM; 300-500GB of HDD space with a decent video card that will let me watch videos—portability and non-macintosh-compatibility is a must. Let me know if you have any suggestions!

Day Four
Nothing much happened on day four other than me being forced into more pro bono interpretation labor for Parent 2, so I guess I’ll describe what our daily routine’s been like for the last week in detail instead.

So every morning we’ve been waking up at 6-6:30AM promptly to get ready for breakfast served in the main building of the hotel at 7.00AM. Although the usual pattern is that nobody really gets there promptly at 7.00AM, breakfast seems to be served between the hours of 7.00AM to 8.30AM which is when most of us show up downstairs for breakfast. Breakfast is usually scrambled eggs, untoasted bread with the choice of boiled eggs and/or sausages as garnish, which I’ve never been adventurous enough to try.

After breakfast we head back to our hotel rooms usually to get ready to go to wherever we’re going for the day; popular destinations for the last few days have been the church Parent 2’s NGO has been setting up and the two primary schools that we’ve been visiting to give away supplies and what not. The getting ready part is usually done in a cinch; the hard part is getting to the destination. Our preferred method of transportation during our stay in Bondo so far was either the back of a Toyota pickup wagon, or packing ourselves like sardines in a RAV4. I’ve actually had to cram in the front seat of the RAV4 a few times with Parent 1, so my preferred transportation method between the two is the pickup wagon but even that requires 8-9 people to cram in the back of the wagon, sitting on two wooden benches facing each other.

Lunch for the past few days have been served at a Kenyan residence, inside a living room furnished with multiple sofas with many people eating from a several dishes that were laid out in the middle of the table in buffet style. (I think I’ve already touched on this on Day Three, so I’ll skip the rest about lunch)

After the day’s scheduled events were done and taken care of, we head back to the hotel in the same two methods of transportation mentioned above, and usually by the time we get back to the hotel it’s usually somewhere around 18.30 or 19.00, whereas dinner is served at 19.00. Dinner for the most part has always included rice, some sort of steamed/sliced+fried potato dish, some vegetable which looks like grass but tastes like Korean Nameul , some chicken/pork dish and some fish. I can’t say that I have been entirely satisfied with the dinner that they’ve been providing here, but then again I can’t say that I’ve been disappointed either; the food itself is clean, it’s edible and it’s somewhat westernized—whether the food served here is authentic Kenyan food or not is up for grabs, but at least they seem to be serving Ugali with every meal.

Usually after dinner we head back to our annex building (the hotel is divided into the main building where the restaurants and some of the rooms are, and the annex, which is right across the street from the main building which shelters a few conference rooms and the rooms that we’re staying in) to wash up and get ready for sleep. Usually before going to sleep Parent 2’s NGO group usually has some sort of a reflection meeting to reflect on what happened during the day, what went well, what could have been done better, etc., but I usually tend to stay away from it and just chill in my room or take a shower. One particular thing about Kenyan hotel rooms, is that the beds all come with a mosquito net-cage thingy to fend from mosquitoes (the primary source of malaria in the country), so usually before going to sleep, we untie the mosquito net-cage which is hung and tied from the ceiling, and unfold it so to cover the entire surface area of the bed; usually when the entire net is spread out, the bed looks like a canopy bed with someone trapped inside.

So that’s the particulars of our days here in Bondo in a wrap.

Day Three

The morning started off with a curious experiment; I found it frustrating that I kept having to repeat myself 2-3 times in order for people here to understand what I’m saying so I started talking with a British accent to see if people would understand me better. Lo and behold, it took me only once to ask the waitress for hot water for my tea as opposed to the two-three times it has been for the last two days. So the rest of the day was spent getting back In touch with my British accent (for those of you who don’t know, I lived in England for two years before coming to America and I did at one point have a British accent) with the natives, and I’m pleased to report that I can now at least make it sound like I’m some sort of pompous imperialist brat—although I do experience sporadic bouts of my unconscious self taking over and “correcting” my English back to Standard American.

Breakfast was quite forgettable; we were served scrambled eggs, toast, and sausage with a choice of powdered hot chocolate or OJ as beverage. I decided to take a slice of toast, garnish it with scrambled eggs and then let calorie mate take care of the rest. After breakfast was over and done with, we were drive 7km away from Bondo to the church that Parent 2’s NGO was funding/building where we checked out the land, church building, workers, and other boring Christian stuff that I refused to partake in but was forced into doing because I was the designated interpreter.

After the boring formalities were done and over with we headed out to fulfill the second item on the day’s agenda: school visitations. The NGO expedition group is apparently supposed to put up some sort of event for two primary schools (The Kenyan education system is as thus: KindergartenPrimary School (Grades 1-8)  Middle School (Grades 9 -12)  College/University) so they were scheduled to visit those two schools, meet with the students, faculty, etc.

But before we get to the boring touchy-feely heart-warming stuff, a few interesting facts compliments of my new friend: (our driver who’s been driving us from point A  B  C for the last few days)

The Republic of Kenya is home to some 42 different ethnic tribes, with the Kikuyu being the biggest denomination and the Luo being the local tribe in the Bondo region. Although the Republic of Kenya officially recognizes English and Swahili as its spoken languages, each of the 42 tribes speak a language which is as similar to each other as “English is to Mandarin” according to the driver. The education system mandates that the children be instructed in their native tongue until the third grade, and then taught both Swahili and English in school from third grade onwards. So in theory, all children of Kenyan descent should be at least linguistically intelligent as they are exposed to three different languages and are forced to put them into use from such an early age.

Another interesting fact about the tribes is that since Kikuyu are the most numerous out of all the tribes, they naturally have the most members represented in government, or apparently they did until last years’ elections. The Kikuyu domination was apparently brought to an end last year when a representative from the Luo tribe was voted in as Prime Minister; The prime minister was apparently dethroned by the President, who was of Kikuyu descent, but sworn back into power after the people cried foul, albeit in a joint-power resolution where the power would be shared by the now-Luo Prime Minister and the Kikuyu President, in a way similar to the Mugabe-Tsangvirai administration in the nation formerly known as Zaire.

Another sad product of tribal rivalries lay with the fact that the Luo and the Kikuyu were historically and politically bitter enemies with every Luo politician always leaning anti-Kikuyu in terms of administrative affairs In government. But since the Kikuyu pretty much ran the government with their superiority in numbers, the Luo tribes and the provinces/districts they represent were always targets of systematic government “neglect” probably in spite of their opposition to the Kikuyu-driven government. Prior to the Luo Prime Minister being voted in to office, development and governmental spending/support in Luo territory was almost non-existent—right after the Prime Minister was sworn into office, however, construction began immediately in paving roads to his hometown of Bondo.

While we’re still on the subjects of celebrity politicians who inspired massive improvements in their previously undeveloped villages, Barack Obama’s Kenyan relatives apparently live 21km away from Bondo; if numerous news reports are to be believed, the city of Kisumu (which is about 45 mins away) experienced a huge boom in tourism starting last year as it was revealed that the now-President’s family were among its residents and after it was revealed that the then-Senator himself actually visited his family there two years previous to his triumphant entry into the White House. The house of his extended relatives is currently a popular tourist attraction, and has been supplied with electricity and paved roads ever since Barack Obama assumed office in 2009.

Coming back to what actually happened during the day: the first school we visited was a Primary School which was built atop an area which was formerly covered in bushes, which apparently served as the namesake of the school, as it is named after the Swahili word for “bush”, “Thim.” When we approached the school on our 4WD, a storm of kids dressed in uniform came rushing toward us, trying to shake our hands as if we were some sort of celebrities; but then again, this pattern of “welcome” from the natives is something that’s been happening pretty frequently over the past two days, which made me wonder if shaking hands has any sort of formal meaning in Kenya—now when I shake hands with one of the people here it feels as if I’m just waving at them, but whatever.

Thim Primary School is apparently ranked 2nd out of a 100 or so Primary Schools in the Bondo area, but it Is also one of the most poorly funded out of all the Primary Schools—the school only has six government issued teachers and two P.A. hired teachers instructing over 300 children from grades 1-8. The school has also faced many challenges in retention as some families were not making enough money to even send their children to school, or simply because they didn’t have enough supplies or resources altogether.

What was impressive about the school was the fact that they used solar panels to store energy that they now use to light their classrooms on cloudy days or whenever they hold classes at night. The school also embarked on an impressive agricultural project of growing their own food when funding for school-issued meals were cut short, but this project was also scrapped later on due to lack of funding and poor farming conditions in the Bondo region, where rainfall has been very sparse for the last 2-3 years.

After the first visitation was over we headed to our “guide’s mother’s house” where we were served a buffet-style lunch which included tilapia stew boiled with tomatoes and lentils; pasta with no pasta sauce; boiled lettuce salad; slightly salty mashed-potatoes and other food that contained meat that I couldn’t eat. It was also here that I was officially introduced to Ugali, which is a staple of Kenyan cuisine eaten with every lunch and dinner—Ugali looks very much like mocchi or Korean rice cake, except it’s made of maize and flour as opposed to glutinous rice. One more thing that I noticed which seems to be a part of every Kenyan meal is hot sauce and ketchup; no matter what meal was put forth on the table, hot sauce and ketchup always seemed to be a part of it.

After lunch we visited yet another school where they made the girls who go there serenade us for like five minutes which was damn awkward; then I had to interpret yet another meeting between the NGO people and the Board of Directors of the school, after which we headed home for dinner.

I do realize I’m not doing much justice to the school visitation part of this story, but we’re supposed to go back on Wednesday for the school event that the NGO is putting up so I’ll write more about it then.

Until then, Beruru!

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.