I made it to Kenya!!! As of now when I’m writing this (Sept 5^th) I’m finishing my third full day here in Nairobi and have already had a ton of experiences here, but I can tell that it is just the tip of the iceberg.  I guess I can start with a brief summary of getting here…

I left LAX at 8am on Saturday morning Sept 1^st, and then flew through Dallas and London Heathrow to get to Nairobi.  There were several other girls from my program on the same flight from London, so we all met up in the airport, which was really nice, because then once we got to Nairobi, we all went through the visa process together.  We finally had all of our bags and visas and all that jazz by 10pm on Sunday and then met Mary, one of our program coordinators, and got on the lovely blue van owned by SIT that says “Jazz Quartet” in humungous letters across the front.  We drove straight to our orientation site, which is in a suburb of Nairobi, had dinner, paired off into rooms, and then collapsed into bed. 

On Monday morning, we all got up (most of us quite early thanks to the jet lag) and had breakfast here at our hostel.  Then we all loaded back onto the Jazz bus and went to a giraffe sanctuary, which was a lot of fun.  This facility houses several giraffes in a huge area and you can see them, feed them, and even get a kiss from them (which pretty much feels like sandpaper being rubbed across your face- they have VERY rough tongues…).  After spending an hour or so there, we went to an elephant sanctuary, which cares for orphaned elephants.  We couldn’t interact as directly with them as we could with the giraffes, but it was still a lot of fun to watch them be fed and roll each other through the mud.  We came back to our hostel and had lunch and then a couple of hours to nap, read or whatever else we needed to do to cope with the jet lag.  In the afternoon we all met to do an overview of the rest of the semester, learn some very basic Swahili words, and ask any important questions.  Eventually we made it to dinner, and then most of us were in bed not too long after that. 

Tuesday began on a more dramatic note- we did what our program calls “the drop-off”.  They split us up into groups of three and dropped us off in different parts of Nairobi.  We didn’t have any specific objectives, just to talk to people in that environment and to try and learn 3 new Swahili words.  I was dropped off with Sara and Kim at Kenyatta Hospital around 10:30 am with the promise that Jazz would be back to pick us up around 12pm.  The hospital campus is huge, and so we started wandering.  We ended up in the office of the School of Public Health (apparently Kenyatta Hospital is affiliated with the University of Nairobi Medical School) and spoke to the secretary there for a few minutes and them moved on.  We decided to try and find the main office of the hospital to see if there was someone who could give us some basic facts and figures, and when we eventually did find it, we were referred to the PR department, who we realized after a few minutes of waiting, were just about to have a press conference.  We were clearly in the way, so we dodged out and kept wandering.  We ended up finding three medical students who we talked to for a while, asking them about their studies, and if they knew any particulars about the hospital.  By then it was about time to wander back to the place that Jazz was supposed to pick us up, so off we went.  We waited at the bus stop for more than an hour, but finally Jazz did come, and we headed back to our hostel for lunch.  We spent the afternoon doing housekeeping stuff- we covered safety in Nairobi, issues of money and belongings, our assignments, and more expectations for the semester.  Our meetings went pretty late, and then we went straight to dinner.  After dinner we hung around the table chatting for a couple of hours and then went to bed for the night.  Also, since I haven’t mentioned it up to this point, there are 17 students on this program, and while I’m the only student from Wooster, there is another girl from Ohio.  Lots of the other students came with someone from their school (or that’s just how it happened, either way, they know people in our group) so that’s interesting too since some people know each other and some of us are getting to know everybody.

Anyway, today we got up, and after breakfast our Swahili language teachers met us out here at our hostel.  We split up into four groups and there was one teacher with each group and we headed in to the city.  We walked down our street and then took a bus into Nairobi.  We just walked around for a couple of hours.  There wasn’t a particular objective other than pointing out some landmarks and getting comfortable walking around and starting to familiarize ourselves with the city.  Two things stood out to me on this walk: 1) Nairobi’s scent is that of dust mixed with exhaust, and 2) there is virtually no trash lying around, which compared to India, is quite remarkable.  After we walked around for a while with our language teachers, we went to a big bus stop area.  Although we took a bigger bus into the city, one of the more common forms of public transportation in Nairobi that we will be using a lot while we are here are matatus, or minibuses.  These are quite interesting because they are mostly unmarked minibuses, or vans, but they dart around the roads picking up people and flashing a card out the window with their route number.  These are fairly cheap to take, but they are quite small and cramped, and we are told they are an extremely easy place to get pickpocketed, so we are all a little nervous to take them on our own or in pairs.  Anyway, we were in our groups and looking for a matatu to take us back to our hostel.  Most of my group got in a matatu, and it was just me and one other girl waiting to climb on and shimmy into a seat.  But then it started driving… and we started running, because our teachers were on the matatu and we didn’t exactly know where we were or where to go.  So they helped us run into seats on the bus- I got shoved into the front seat with the driver which was pretty funny, I sure had a great view of us almost hitting all the other cars as we were driving!  Anyway, we made it back without incident and then we had about an hour where we all just visited until lunch.  After lunch we had more meetings and housekeeping stuff to take care of.  At about 4 we were done with everything for the day, so we all sat around having tea and talking.  I talked with a group of 3 other girls for almost 3 hours, which was really nice and relaxing.  Then it was time for dinner, and then I came back to my room to pack up, because tomorrow we head to a different hostel in Nairobi for a couple of days before we move in with our homestay families. 

So there’s the update for now- I’m sure there will be many more stories once we are living in the city and with our families!