(Friday 12/10/99)
So this was my first full day in Africa. I
guess you sort of have to imagine me telling you the story. If I’ve ever told
you a story before, and I’m sure for most of you reading I probably have, then
you should know by now that they do tend to drag on a bit, and not much happens
in them. Most of you are informed consumers, so, until I start getting
complaints and until I get sick of writing them, you will continue to get sagas
when you come to this site…(also, all of the links, are not necessarily active
yet, especially the pictures)
I have just had a very Toto moment. I have
actually now felt the rains down in Africa. It is almost seven in the evening
here. The sun has just set over Lake Victoria and it just started raining a few
moments ago. It is nice and cool and slightly breezy. I am sitting in someone’s
office here at the guest house looking out over the balcony at the lake a short
mostly tree obscured distance away. What a confusing place this is. I suppose
at first anywhere significantly different from home can be confusing. and this
certainly is different. At first impression this is a very beautiful and sad
place.
I arrived yesterday morning in Nairobi after
a long crowded flight from London. (for stories from London see London Day On and London
Days Two and Three) As we turned to
make our final approach for landing, I foolishly looked for wild game cavorting
in the fields. There were several very large grayish rocks that I convinced
myself were elephants, but eventually decided that their complete lack of
movement combined with a lack of heads, trunks, ears or tails indicated that
they were not proper elephants. As we flew in I was surprised mostly at how
green everything was. Surrounding the airport are large open fields with stands
of trees with delicately curved trunks and long horizontal branches that look a
little like layers of thins green clouds on a stick. I suppose what they most
look like are thirty foot tall Japanese Bonsai trees. There are mountains in
several directions, one of which, I think is Mt. Kenya. The city of Nairobi
(also called Nai-robbery as it is particularly dangerous) itself is some eleven
miles away.
As soon as I was off the plane I was struck
by two things. One, it was hot, probably in the nineties (I haven’t yet adjusted
to the Celsius/ Fahrenheit degree changes yet so I didn’t catch the actual
temperature when they announced it on the plane) After being in the wind and
rain of London, which is mild itself compared to wind and snow of Michigan, it
was still somewhat of an expected sensory surprise. I mean, even if you know,
intellectually, that it’s going to be hotter than the place you just were, your
body can’t help but say, "Hey! What the hell’s this!" The second
thing I noticed was something I thought would continue to be true, but, as I
know now, isn’t actually, and that was that people were smoking inside the
terminal. I think that when you are travelling somewhere new, especially
somewhere you are planning on staying at for awhile, you become hyper-alert to
things and you try to create a system to make sense of everything. Every piece
of information that you receive you examine, see how it fits into the picture
of things that you have already accumulated, and either add it the system or
change the system in some way to accommodate it. For me it sort of made sense
that in other parts of the world, especially ones not as draconian as the US on
this issue, that you would still be able to smoke in public, and this would be
more prevalent. It turns out that smoking doesn’t seem to be especially common,
although it is clearly done here, and of all the public buildings we were in
today, no one was smoking in any of them, although one place provided for it. I
feel like I have spent more time talking about this then is warranted by the
subject itself, but I want to point it out as the first thing I was wrong about
as I am sure that there will be countless others.
My plane arrived in Nairobi at about nine in
the morning on Friday. My plane left Nairobi for Kisumu at five in the evening.
Seven hours is a long time to wait in the Nairobi airport, let me tell you! I
went through customs and was only able to get a three month visa to Kenya, so I
may be seeing y’all much sooner than you think! (I’m sure we’ll work something
out) As I walked out of the international terminal with my huge duffel bag and
my day pack, I was assaulted by swarm of taxi cab drivers, who asked,
"taxi? Taxi?" I’d say no thanks and they’d respond, "Maybe next
time?" as if the next time I was in Nairobi I’d be able to look them up
specifically if I needed a lift somewhere. One driver started talking to me in
very good English after I turned him down for a ride and he asked me if I
wanted to have a couple of beers with him. When I politely declined, he told me
about an American that he’s had four beers with earlier in the day. The
American said that when you die and are on your way to heaven everyone has to
stop at New York City on the way. He asked me if it was true and wished I had
said that I wasn’t sure as I hadn’t died yet. We talked about where I was going
and what I was doing in Kenya. He was very excited about my being an American,
he could tell that I was one by my smile, he said. He told me that Americans
and Australians were the most respected people in Kenya. I asked about the
British and he laughed and said, "F*** the British!" We laughed and
he tried to get me to sign up for a safari for the next time I was in town,
which I declined also. Again, not a particularly interesting story, but, as it
was my first "African" conversation I feel compelled to include it.
I tried to check in for my flight and was
told to come back a couple of hours before it left. I went up to a nice little
restaurant recommended by a friend of Kim’s called Simba. They had a little
lounge with a coffee table, a couch and some chairs. That damn "Mambo No.
5" song was on the radio as I settled in and read for a while. That was
about ten, I woke up at about two, wondering whether or not they minded that I
had just slept for four hours in their lobby. As nothing happened to me, I
guess it was alright. At three I went down to the Kenyan Air counter and tried
to check in. At this point I was introduced to what I think Kim has referred to
as "African Time." As in many other, non-Germanic/non-Protestant
countries, time is non-Euclidian in Africa. There doesn’t seem to be much of a
rush until the last minute to do things here. In this way, and in a couple of
others I’ve discovered, it seems as if I may be personally predisposed to life
in Africa.
I had been told when I first arrived that I
could check in at three, but when I got there at three I was told that I had to
wait for the next shift which would come in fifteen minutes. When they came
thirty minutes later I tried to check in, but at that time they were only
selling tickets. It was at least four before I was able to check in. When I got
to the head of the queue (as a former colony, Kenya is chock full of
Briticisms) I was told that they didn’t have a booking for me and that the
plane was nearly full. He told me to wait to the side and he would call me to
the front when everyone else had checked in. I rushed to the other terminal
where the moneychangers were and changed some pounds to shillings. (Actually, I
tried the ATM first and it didn’t work. I was just excited that they had one) I
only had one coin, ten shillings, to call Kim and warn her that I might not
arrive. Fortunately I reached her and had just enough time to tell her the
situation before the phone died.
I rushed back to the counter to find a sea of
humanity crowding in front. I waited in line again for some time, watching the
clock get closer and closer to five. The line crawled and people were pushing
their way forward as not miss their flights. Finally, they just seemed to give
up on their computer system and started filling forms out by hand and giving
them out. He called my name at 4:59 and I had to holler to get someone to take
and tag my bag. I raced out of the main terminal and ran O.J. Simpson style to
get to the gate. I went through the main door and through the metal detector
and expected to have to run all the way down a long terminal to the last gate
as is seemingly always the case in these situations. Instead I went through the
first door past security and directly on to the tarmac and directly in to a
tiny twenty seat propeller plane. Fifteen minutes later we took off. Seeing as
they closed the door not a minute behind me, and as the cargo doors were closed
and I didn’t hear them open and the fact that the people at the counter didn’t
seem particularly interested in it, I was positive that I was going to show up
in Kisumu without my big bag. I spent the entire fifty minute flight thinking
about how I was going to end up searching Nairobi Kenyatta airport for it two or
three days later.
To make a longer than necessary story short,
I arrived in Kisumu where both my bag and Kim were there to greet me. (here’s a
link to an exciting action shot of me arriving at the airport: Pix 1)
Kisumu is located on a medium sized narrow
bay of Lake Victoria. Here’s a link to a map site if you’d like to see where it
is: () Kim and a driver from the CDC picked me up and drove
us to the CDC guest house. The airport is on the opposite side of town from the
house, so we drove right through town to get there. Things were both better and
worse than I thought that they would be. The roads are better then I thought
they would be, but by my American road standards, even Michigan road standards,
they are abysmal. Huge gaping potholes dot the dirt and paved roads. The most
notable thing about the roads is the number of people that are walking alongside
them. The dirt shoulders and the first couple feet of road are continuously
full of people. People carrying boxes, bags, people walking back or to work,
and people just sitting around. There are no sidewalks on most of the roads
outside of town, although there are some in the city itself.
Every country you go to people say that the
driving is crazy. It doesn’t matter where you come from, or where you are going
people always insist that the drivers that populate their roads are the worst
in the world. Some have more of a case than others. I think that I have been to
about eight or nine countries and maybe fifty or sixty cities in all parts of
the world and I think that thus far Kenyan drivers are the most absolutely
certifiably insane by a long stretch. They drive, as the British, on the left
side of the road. It would be more accurate to say that they generally drive on
that side. It is more of a guideline than a hard fast rule. The driver from the
airport to the house used the flattest part of the road, whichever side of the
road that that might be. He swerved into oncoming traffic to avoid bumps, he
drove off of the road to miss potholes and passed opposing traffic on the right
(imagine driving in the states and passing a car going in your direction as well
as an oncoming car by passing in the shoulder of the oncoming lane) (that’s not
very clear is it? sorry…) Anyway, they’re insane. They really aren’t helped by
the condition of the roads or the lack of sidewalks, so I should give them a
little bit of a break…Hopefully you can picture Kim and I stuffed into the
front seat of a jeep. The thing you should have no problem imagining is me
trying to play it cool, like I’ve been in a Kenyan Mad Max Deathrace before,
while secretly, just out of Kim’s sight, my hands are gripped white-knuckled on
the window frame. I’m sure they didn’t notice.
We pulled up to the guest house (pictured
here and here) Although
I had remembered Kim saying something about it, I was still surprised to see a
guard at the gate in a little blue uniform. I am so glad he’s unarmed. That
would be a little too much. At this point I’d best talk about this so no one
particularly immediate family, worries too much. As I may of said in previous
conversation (most likely a conversation trying to rationalize not working for
awhile), the cost of living here is very low, that is it is low compared to the
cost of living in say…oh I don’t know….Ann Arbor! But this is just in
comparison to Ann Arbor. It’s an economy of scale thing, if you are only making
$3000 a year as an average Kenyan is, then $400 a month is well beyond your
reach. I’m not sure how much the place we’re staying in is, but it’s really
nice, by any standard. It has three large bedrooms, one really large bedroom,
three and a half bathrooms, a large living/dining room and a large kitchen, as
well as a little yard. This is a pretty nice place in general and a near
mansion in comparison to the kinds of places that poor native Kenyans live. It
is in a row of similar gated, guarded houses called, I believe, maisonettes,
from the French: "little house". In my short exposure to the
immediate area, I think that this is the rich part of town. However, I think it
is on a road leading in to town so people of different socio-economic classes
live and walk by us all the time. At the very least I am sure they would know
where this part of town is. I think that any time you have the perceived haves
(especially foreign haves) living in close proximity to the have-nots then you
shouldn’t be overly surprised at some theft. That, I think, is mostly what is
being protected here, property. The fact that it is a government rented house
means that there is twice the reason to have it guarded. Kim and I were talking
today about what we were going to do about this issue once we were renting our
own house and she said that if we decided not to get a guard from one of the
local security companies it is not at all inconceivable that one of the
companies wouldn’t hire someone to break in-in order to encourage us to use
security services. Sounds like a Mafia insurance scam to me…
We stayed in all night at the house. There is
a caretaker here most of the time and he made a really really good chicken and
rice dish, which was particularly good as I had not eaten since early that
morning on the flight in. Kim and I ate and caught up while the caretaker,
Julius, watched the Swahili news on television. After dinner and a shower after
Julius left Kim and I sat down to see what was on television. It turns out
there is only one channel that comes in. We watched the news in English at
eight, the highlight being the weather from around the world. They play a song
from Monty Python and the Flying Circus movie "The Life of Brian."
It’s called "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life." I am cracking
up right now writing about it. You will never guess what was on after the
English news at eight. Please, take the time to actually guess…
I’ll wait a second….
Because I don’t think anyone actually is
going to guess I’m going to put it on a different page, and while that page is
loading, I’m banking that you think about just a little bit
As both of us are fighting jet lag, we went
to bed and woke up several times during the course of the evening. I was awake
for dawn although I couldn’t quite see it through the trees.
All in all not a very eventful day, except,
that during the course of the day I moved to Africa, a fact that I try to stay
cool about, but inwardly, every once in awhile, and certainly this day, I say,
"ohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygod…"
