African Dreams

What goes down must come up and so it is with moods. The past few days have been so engaging that I’ve barely had a moment to brood. And what I’ve noticed is that I’ve felt more engaged since I left the US than I’ve felt at home lately. Amazingly, I seem to have achieved the necessary warp speed to have outrun myself. Upon arrival, we were whisked off to meet a dozen more people (whose names and titles I may never remember). I’ve been drafted into the nursing school to teach, and as I dreaded, I’m expected to hit the ground running and teach 3 classes next week. Never mind that I’ve been asking for curriculum and student details, objectives, class schedules, etc. for months. For those who are not teachers, one 2 hour college level lecture can take weeks to prepare (& that’s if you know your audience). Be that as it may, I may hit the ground with a splat next week, but I’m on it… Meanwhile, one of the best things about my experience here is that I am not alone. I have my charming Ca...

Arriving in Mutomo, all the exhilaration and inflated sense of heroism is gone. The buck stops here. It’s hot and dusty. Reality hits. My Canadian volunteer counterpart and I are here for the duration—there’s no going back. She’s homesick; there are bugs and geckos in her room. I’m overwhelmed by the heat, the lack of screens or fans, the condition of the refrigerator (which didn’t seem to cool off even hours after turning it on). Another volunteer accompanied us to the open market, which lacks quaintness. Goats and emaciated livestock wander into the road causing traffic jams. We stick out like lice in a scalp of black hair. Children greet us with the few words of English they wish to practice. People laugh at out attempts to ask for items and overcharge us to see if we’ll bargain. Or they beg.  But this is Africa. This is what we’re here to experience; it’s not all safari lodges and Kenyan charm. This morning the Islamic Call to Prayer woke me out of my sweaty nightmares. Remindi...

Nairobi bustles with activity Monday morning. The traffic proceeds in British Commonwealth fashion (on the “wrong side”). Nobody rides bicycles and motorcyclists tend to wear helmets. Even the typical developing world dust is not so bad. There are only a few half finished buildings with rebar sticking out. All in all, the parts of Nairobi I’ve seen are quite livable, although I have not seen the shanty town of Kibera, where over a million people live in corrugated metal shacks. I laid low yesterday in my funky little flat. Bought some food and made sandwiches and an attempt at coffee. Not sure how they do it here, as there was neither a coffee pot nor any sort of drip cone system. I tried pouring it through a blue face mask till I realized the point of a mask to to keep liquids from passing through them! Some medical professional… I Ubered across town to the National Museum and learned about Kenyan natural history. The day before I’d connected with friends of a friend. A former medical...