Saturday, August 05, 2006

Hi from Kenya

Right now I’m in Nairobi, staying with my friend Lucy (she was a friend of a friend, but now she’s just my friend). I came on a bus with 14 students from the Development Studies course at TCDC (the center where I’ve been studying), which was fun. They helped take care of me and made sure I was dropped off at the right place. It’s a little strange to realize that I am in Kenya now and not Tanzania anymore. I really liked Tanzania and I’m not sure that I’m ready to be in Kenya yet. It will be interesting, though, to see some of the differences between Kenya and Tanzania having been in both recently. Up to now, I’ve been comparing my current experience in Tz with my experience in Kenya 4 years ago.

The rest of the afternoon, Lucy and I have just been talking and cooking. We’ve been talking all afternoon in pretty much all Swahili and I understood just about everything. It’s been nice to talk about faith (we’re both Christians) and to try to explain what I think about certain things in Swahili. It’s also been fun to talk about our friend Courtney (who, by the way, deserves major props – she arranged for me to stay with Lucy here in Nairobi and she also bought phone cards for and emailed the numbers to Dave and my parents so that they could call me here). I talked about her a lot on Tanzania and it’s nice to meet someone else who knows her.

We’ll be in Nairobi for a few days and then we’ll travel to western Kenya together (Lucy’s family is from that area), stopping in Nakuru on the way. I will be able to see my friends who live there (the same ones I saw unexpectedly at Ngorongoro Crater) and hopefully my Swahili teacher’s sister.

Well, it’s time for me to go to bed. I was struggling to stay awake all afternoon, so Lucy fed me early and sent me to bed. It’s 8:15 right now and I’m looking forward to a good, LONG night’s sleep.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Yay! You made it safe and sound. I'm so happy to hear it. We, likewise, had an uneventful flight and arrived safely in Detroit. Deo ran off so I didn't get to say goodbye to him, but did get to see off all the others who were going on to catch domestic flights. I'm still fighting the jet lag, but maybe that's me just making excuses for not wanting to work on my grants ;-)

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