Here we are a week later (by which I really mean a month later), and I’ve traveled a bit, researched a bit, relaxed a bit, and even managed to pull out 30+ pages and a presentation at the end of all of it…
I’m back in Nairobi for a few days, and am trying to figure out how, exactly, I feel as I prepare for the next 3 months of my trip, as everyone around me is getting ready to go back home. So let’s start frommmmm ISP. Things finally started to work out, I was approved to do research, and then got to business in Nairobi. After about a week of talking to people in Nairobi, I went to Kisumu and spent about a week in Kisumu, where I stayed with my professor’s son and friend at their home on the lake (Lake Victoria, that is). In a nutshell, my memory of Kisumu consists of hippos, sunsets, and reading on a mattress swing under the tree. Those, and the friendliest people you could hope for as a researcher. Not only did I get surveys filled out there, and interviews conducted, I was offered multiple lunches, games of football, rides home, and help with bargaining for a pikipiki home (the family hid me in the car so the driver wouldn’t know he was giving a mzungu a ride home). Research here is definitely not the same as research in the States.
From Kisumu I took an overnight bus to Mombasa (maybe 13 hours?), on which I slept like a baby, and still managed to make friends with the woman sitting next to me, who convinced me to go to her house on my way to my Mombasa home and have a shower and some breakfast after meeting her adorable daughters. I am now officially facebook friends with just about everyone in the world who has given me a ride anywhere, offered me anything, or seems like a legitimately good person. Won’t the pruning process be fun when I get back to the states and sift through all of these people whose names I don’t quite recognize…
So then Mombasa happened. The thing about Mombasa is, once you wipe the sweat out of your eyes, you realize it’s just about the best place in the world. Well, at least Old Mombasa is (see description from earlier post). So, there I was in Mombasa again, wondering why I didn’t come up with some way to spend my entire month there, instead of just the last week and a half. I was staying in a giant house in my own giant room with a giant balcony overlooking the bay. It was right on the water, and just upstairs from the old chai guy who does amazing arab tea and coffee every afternoon at 4 (but make sure to get there by 3 if you want buns – I never managed that part, though). So, to sum things up, Mombasa was fantastic, and I’m pretty thrilled that I’ll be only about an hour away allllll summer long.
From Mombasa, I went to Malindi, which is a small resort town a few hours North of Mombasa, and about an hour and a half north of Kilifi. The culture there is really peculiar – a mixture of Swahili and Italian… Arab architecture and gelato? Sounds good to me. That week was spent listening to presentations about all the other students’ research, which was really interesting and inspiring, and then either playing in one of the resort’s 4 pools, swimming in the clear ocean, or playing football on the perfect sand by the water. Not a bad way to spend a week. Aaaaand, just to top it all off, there was excellent food, AC, and a real shower in my room. What more could I ask for?
So here I am back in Nairobi, which feels oddly like home. Tomorrow, though, I’m moving out of my homestay and into the slum, just in time for our daily rain. Remember how I mentioned rainy season a while back? Well that was just a preview. The powers that be just seem to have realized that this country could really use some rain. So, here it is. After lawsuits against the meteorologists for predicting rain (this caused a bunch of farmers to prepare their crops for rain that never came, which cost them a lot of money), it has finally arrived. So, it’ll be fun to see how much of my clothing/shoes make it out of Kibera slum alive in a few days time. Then, back to the coast, and onto Kilifi to start my project!!
