*Small businesses and painting. There are TONS of small business ventures everywhere. Everyone's trying to make a buck. If I go out to the main road (Ngong Rd.) from my guest house, there are men making gorgeous wooden and wicker furniture, women selling fruits and vegetables, car repair places, pubs, a lumber yard, etc. Many of these small business are just primitive shacks on the side of the road. Some of them are painted red and have Coke advertising (Coke has a monopoly here-- no Pepsi allowed in Kenya!). Some fences are painted light blue and bear the slogan "If you like it, Crown it!".
*The traffic here is horrible. I will never complain about DC traffic ever again. The driving is worse. It's something that needs to be seen to be believed, truly.
*I have seen very few people begging since I've been here-- maybe 4 or 5. This shocks me. With the astronomical level of unemployment here and the many people who are struggling financially, my American bias made me expect more of this. People in Kenya want to earn their living (hence all the small business ventures as described above). There's something really noble about that.
*The radio stations we listened to on the way back from 14 Falls yesterday (more on that below) are all playing the hits from summer 2010 in the USA. Strange.
*Tusker is one of the beers brewed by East African Breweries Keyna. It's pretty good.
*M-Pesa is a service provided through Safaricom, the major cell phone provider in Kenya. It basically turns your phone into a mobile bank account. You can pay all your utilities with it and even pay for cabs and other daily expenses. In talking with some Kenyan friends about this, a major reason for its existence is the need to send money to relatives outside Nairobi. Many Kenyans, even those who have their career in Nairobi, return to their ancestral/tribal country to retire. People used to have to have someone carry money (which would often mysteriously disappear) or wire money which involved paying high fees. M-Pesa makes transfer of funds easy and instantaneous. Cell phone technology is very efficient here-- like Europe there is a "pay as you go" system. You put Ksh 500 (500 Shillings) on your phone and when your credit is gone, you buy more. A call within Kenya costs very little (1-20 Shillings) and calls to the US cost Ksh 10-50 (less than $1).
*Taxis here have no meter. You need to negotiate the price of your trip before you leave. For non-Kenyans this can be tricky. I know I'm being over-charged. What can you do?!
Yesterday I chaperoned the Red Rose Schoool field trip. There were separate trips for the little kids (baby class through Class 3) and the bigger kids (Classes 4-8). The little ones went to the Wilson Airport to watch planes take off and then to a few kid-friendly museums in Nairobi (I think they went to the snake park). The bigger kids went to 14 Falls outside the town of Thika. A "superhighway" connects Nairobi and Thika-- this is one of the many infrastructure projects being financed and built by the Chinese. Since the discovery of coal reserves in Kenya, China is investing huge amounts of money in roads to get the coal to Mombassa (the port city on the Indian Ocean) to be carried back to China by boat. They're also building a massive beltway (which crosses the hill bordering Kibera) to alleviate traffic on some of Nairobi's major streets.
So the chronology of yesterday went something like this:
The principal told me the trip would leave at 7:00 a.m.
6:36 a.m. -- Picked up by Daddyz, the friend of my driver (George) who was unavaialble
6:46 a.m. -- Dropped off at the bank in Kibera because the driver doesn't know where the school is
6:49 a.m. -- Picked up at the bank by the Red Rose principal who takes me to the lower (little kids) campus
7:00 and on -- I am greeting the little ones as they come to school
7:30 a.m. -- Two women have started a fire and are boiling water in a MASSIVE pot. They're making pilau (a Kenyan dish of rice with chunks of beef and some Indian spices) to take on the trip to 14 falls.:
8:00 -- Still hanging out with the kids. Some teachers begin to arrive at school.
8:45 -- Still hanging out. The kids start talking about the bus being lost.
9:00 -- The lower school teachers gather for chai (tea) and chapati. I join.
9:15 -- Still waiting.
9:45 -- I go to the upper campus with Teach Lilian. They are loading the bus. A huge, pink 35 (or maybe 40) seat bus arrives for 70 kids, a guide and 2-3 teachers. They start piling in (2-3 kids per seat). Kids are sitting on each others laps.
9:55 -- Teacher Lilian, Teacher Obed and I walk to the lower campus where the principal is loading flats of soda, utensils/plates and the pilau into the trunk of his car. A few teachers load into the car and we're off at about 10:05.
We get to Thika and it's clear no adult in the car knows where 14 falls is. We ask 4-5 people on the roadside for directions and finally make it. We pass a police checkpoint not far from the pull off to the falls. I'm still not clear what they're checking for.
The bus arrives and we pull in. Immediately the teachers are approached by some men who are trying to sell them guide/boat services. The principal negotiates. The kids take a quick bathroom break and then we are off on our adventure. We piled into boats to cross the river to an island where we've got a great view of the falls. At the parking lot and throughout the day there are people selling food, snacks, soda/water, and photos. The photo business is quite ingenious-- they've got photo printers powered by car batteries under trees. They take your photo at the falls, print the photo, and sell it to you (of course you can negotiate the price-- this is Kenya). One of the Class 8 girls got hers for Ksh 20. On the island, we had a photo opportunity, saw some guys diving off the falls and learned from our guide about the site and its origins. Then we crossed back over on the boats and found a nice shady spot with some trees to have our lunch.
After lunch we walked up stream a short ways to find a place for kids to swim. This was, without a doubt, the highlight of the day. Most of these kids had never been swimming before in their lives. The absolute, pure, sheer delight of this experience is something I will never forget.
Then it was back to Nairobi. We departed just after 4:00 pm (the time we were supposed to arrive home). It took about 90 minutes to get to Nairobi, and about an hour and 45 minutes to navigate through Friday evening rush hour traffic. We were at some stop lights for over 10 minutes.
The thing about rush hour traffic in Nairobi is that it becomes really difficult for me to breathe. Between the dust and the exhaust, it's very difficult to find fresh air. Rough. Very rough.
Oh, one more word about taxis. They're constantly driving around on E. Petrol here costs Ksh 108 per liter. If my calculations are right, it would cost ~$100 US to fill up their tank. No wonder people are always stopping in at the gas station for small fill-ups!
We got to Kibera just as the sun was setting, so I hopped on a matatu to Prestige Plaza mall to pick up a few small things from Nakumatt and visit the ATM. George picked me up from there and it was a quiet evening at Shalom House (dinner at L'Arena in the compound and early to bed).
Today I'm supposed to have a class at Bomas of Kenya, but they have been unresponsive. I think I will visit the National Museum in the meantime.
It was really cool to be a part of this experience. Many of these kids have VERY few opportunities to leave Nairobi. For them yesterday was the one field trip opportunity they get all school year.
Photos from yesterday:
One word on the last photo. There is trash everywhere here. I expected Kibera to have a trash problem (there is no regular trash collection there). But in Nairobi and at 14 Falls (which could be a gorgeous, pristine area), there is trash-- mostly plastic bags. When I put some litter in my pocket yesterday one of the Red Rose kids told me it was OK to throw it on the ground. I said I'd rather not...
Many more thoughts are swimming around in my head. More tomorrow perhaps.
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