And so it begins....

Have you ever felt that the stars have aligned and in a strange way you are precisely where you are supposed to be at that moment? A place where given the choice, you wouldn’t choose to be anywhere else in the world at that given millisecond in time? I have been fortunate enough to have this feeling a few times in my life, possibly only those who have felt it can understand, but it is the only way that I can put words to my initial feelings for Kenya. Well, maybe not INITIAL feelings. Let me start from the VERY beginning before I get too far ahead of myself. After a 20+ hour travel day I finally arrived in Nairobi with a mixture of emotions that I don’t dare attempt to describe. Half expecting no one to be at the airport to pick me up after a miserable travel day, I practically hugged Benjamin (strong African name, right?) when I saw him holding the sign for Fadhili Community at the baggage claim.

The scene is Nairobi, a completely foreign and admittedly intimidating city… at midnight. Add a driver I don’t know, exhaustion and only one other volunteer trusting enough of  Benjamin to guide us safely to our unknown destination (relax mom, spoiler alert: I made it alive) and lets just say the adrenaline was pumping . We drive outside of the city for about 20 minutes and turn onto an unpaved road… abandoned. Hayley, the other mzungu volunteer (mzungu-- a coverall word used to beckon, describe, harass… and possibly degrade? white people) and I give each other a look as our driver almost runs the only two people around off the road. He looks back at us and says “you cant slow down in this neighborhood at night if you want to keep your car”… the lack of emotion in his voice must be lost somewhere in the cultural gap, right? We do want to keep the car-- at least we know he is on our team. We pull up to a nondescript gate and one man comes to open it and at that precise moment another man pops out of God knows where. Benjamin, for the first time, flustered, looks around nervously, locks the doors and rolls up my window… I promise you, Benjamin is the third most nervous person in that car. A collective sigh of relief almost fogs the windows inside the car as our unexpected visitor walks past the car, taking what felt like half an hour in reality what was closer to half a second. We enter the gate and Benjamin helps us bring our bags into a house. Our expectations are low. We walk into our house for the night and find it is incredibly nice, in place with most houses in any given North Shore of Chicago suburb. Confused, exhausted, relieved, with adrenaline pumping through every vein, Hayley and I settle into our accommodations. Welcome to Nairobi.

                Day 1:

After a little, and I do mean a LITTLE sleep (it IS “Kenya hot” in Kenya, weird!) I was ready to attack my first African day. I met the other 12 volunteers that were starting at my orientation (amazing kids) and we set out for the 20 minute walk from our house towards the city center. As we left our gated house that looked like it must have been out of a Kenyan House and Home magazine, we faced the neighborhood from the night before, which during the daylight hours was a vibrant (although, “ verrrry rustic”) market. We made our way through and walked down the heavily populated Ngong road. Almost every face we saw was staring right back at us. It was almost as if we stuck out in this neighborhood. As the only Mzungus for what seemed like miles around we walked towards the mall to get all of our needs for the next few days. EVERYONE gave us looks of curiosity as we walked by, but none more than the bus full of older white people who were clearly “slumming it” from the comfort of their safari van in Nairobi for the afternoon. Their looks were more concerned as if to say “look at these poor white children, don’t they know where they are! Is there any room in our van for them?” (again mom, made it…) After a brief shopping excursion we decided to hop on a City Hoppa bus and head out to the giraffe center just outside Nairobi, so that we could get back to the house before dark… good call. We hopped on the “Hoppa” and headed in the exact wrong direction from where we needed to be. After about 20 minutes of bus ride, some lady, bless her soul, realized how confused we were solely based on how we must have looked and asked where we were headed. When we told her she giggled and told us to get off at the next stop and catch the bus in the opposite direction which took us all the way to where we needed to be… simple enough, right? Right…. Well after about 40 minutes we were serrrrriously doubting that this bus even existed.  But finally it did arrive and we got to the giraffe park with about 45 minutes until closing time… ooops. But it was all worth it. We got to meet and greet Ali, a Rothschild giraffe with a serious thing for Giraffe food. It was Valentines day, and me and Ali had really hit it off, so in the spirit of the holiday, I went for the big one. And boy did I get it!

                                        

        My valentine’s day Kiss

Although, I’ve had better kisses in my life (and probably worse), my Valentine’s evening with Ali is one that I will never forget, and in a strange way, I guess a bucketlist item that I get to check off…? (I promise that wasn’t on the list before it happened).  After a major downpour in the night (the first in Nairobi in months… the people were soooo happy), an authentic Kenyan meal of Ugali (cornmeal cooked on an open pot over a fire) with beans and an early evening to bed, I started to settle into my new African life… but little did I know it hadn’t begun.