south africa, hooray!

I am now in South Africa and one thing that has stuck out is how much it looks like America. i was pretty shocked to spend $30 on a single taxi ride. there are no goats in the middle of the road. no deteriorating sedans blasting music with steering wheels at a 45 degree angle to keep the car straight. no men sleeping under trees on the side of a busy road. if these hints of what i had known as africa exist here, i haven’t seen them amongst the malls and neatly trimmed hedges.

the cost of living is undoubtedly higher. it feels different to converse with africans who are accustomed to paying $1 for a soda or a mini-bus ride. or those that spend $20 to go to SeaWorld and see a seal show. There is certainly segregation and I am sure my Lonely Planet is not guiding me into impoverished areas on purpose. I am just noticing differences. It’s like I’m in America, but I’m still in Africa.

I arrived in the morning to Johannesburg and took my (pricey) taxi to an area of town called Melville. I dropped my stuff and went to the Apartheid Museum and wandered through apartheid history, jogging my memory of my Politics of South Africa class in college. I splurged and had the best hot water shower and night’s sleep in a long while at a very nice B&B. I then taxied into Soweto, the large township responsible for the Soweto student Uprising in 1976 and housing Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Tutu on the same street. OMG. I napped. (I forgot to check the weather, and South Africa is approaching winter, so Johannesburg was 50 degrees and raining, felt like a Seattle winter = naps). I also finished Our Time to Eat, which was quite good.

I then wandered out of my awesome hostel and walked to the famous Vilakazi street. The area of Soweto I walked around in felt like a neighborhood to be canvassed by the Obama campaign: low income, young men hanging in small groups on the street, chatty old ladies on their porches. Everyone was friendly. I walked and read all about the fascinating history. I was reading one sign about a South African liberation song that was sung by students as a form of protest and low and behold two 5-year old boys showed up just at that moment to sing the song for me. They wanted money, which i sadly didn’t have, but they sang anyway in their stained t-shirts. I walked more, looking foolish in my socks and Toms, and found the “Koppie” which was a rock and look-out for student groups where meetings were held and police were chased away. Now, it’s covered in plastic bags. I would have taken a picture of the ironic beauty, but alas I forgot my camera. I wandered back to the hostel, hung out at the “beach bar” with the only other guest, a nice Irish guy, and went to bed by 9pm.

I arrived the next morning two hours early for my bus. I tried to nap but a man yelled at me that I was not allowed to sleep. And then Jehovah Witnesses came around to our seating area. They had a binder FULL of literature in dozens of languages. How come Kingdom Hall can find a way to translate literature and it takes us public health people weeks to find a Tingrinya translation? Freezing cold at 6:30am led me to Wimpy (the fast-food answer to S. Africa), which was full, so I sat in the “smoking room” and ate my eggs and toast with an older, shaky white lady who chained smoked. I regretted that decision, but appreciated the warmth. The 8-hour bus ride that followed was pretty uneventful.

My taxi drivers got lost in Durban trying to find the hostel, so I laughed from the backseat while they studied the map in the Lonely Planet. We found the hostel, I pounded through half of Freedom and went to sleep by 10pm (again). The next day, I woke up early and met my dorm mate, a nice girl from Holland and we went in search of the internet and found it! And then ended up at the Durban version of SeaWorld. It was a trip. Durban looks and feels like Miami. The live seal show solidified this judgment for me. Following a brief swim in the ocean, I went to buy a 24-hour bus ticket to Cape Town which was sold out! (things get busy on Easter weekend, apparently) so I now have an additional night in Durban.

There are worse things.

(i also have been taking pictures, but the net is too slow to upload. soon.)

encounters from africa

i ate my way through this past weekend, which is surprisingly easy to do in nairobi. grace was visiting from kigali and arrived on thursday night. i had a ceremonious little going away dinner, where i cooked pasta and salad (can't claim to be a creative cook). the rest of the weekend we walked around kibera and markets and downtown nairobi. it was fun to be get out and do all these things my last weekend in nairobi.

"yay, Lauren, you have friends!"

feeding giraffes

still feeding giraffes

federico loved the giraffes

an upper view of kibera

i'm starting to get a bit nostalgic, as happens when i'm about to leave. this is the last time i'll eat githeri, the last time i will walk to this place, the last time i will see this person, etc. it's emphasized by the fact that i don't know when i'll be back. laabda baadaye, nitarudi kenya. becoming settled in a new city happened without much fanfare, just one day everything felt comfortable and content. now, i'm gearin' up for the next adventure!

this past week has been easy. last day of work on monday where i turned in my CDC laptop and said my goodbyes. tuesday i went to a cultural orientation class for urban refugees, a mix of burundian and congolese about to move to the U.S. i observed the teacher talking about winter clothing, "you will need a hat, scarf and gloves. life does not stop in winter, you must go to work anyway. and there is this clothing, they call them long johns..." an older man with 1/2 inch thick glasses was shocked he couldn't physically discipline his children. and a promotional video was shown, which read just like an obama campaign ad, with sweeping views of mountains and autumn leaves and the grand canyon, people of all ethnicity stood in front of a brick wall and said "Welcome!" there were cheerleaders and bikers and jazz musicians and little african american girls playing in water from a hydrant and LOTS of cowboys and people rebuilding homes in new orleans and skiers. it choked me up and it also made me yearn for america. i was waiting for the follow-up video to be of long lines at the WIC office, and snow at the bus stop, and overcrowded schools and 1-bedroom apartments and gang violence, but there was no such thing. maybe they show that video on day 3.

last night as a final hoorah (no, really, this is REALLY my last night..) a bunch of us went to karaoke. i, naturally, sang 'leavin' on a jet plane' and simon sang 'give me hope, jo'hanna' about johannesburg....although the lyrics were a bit awkward:

Well Johanna she runs a country
She runs in Durban and the Transvaal
She makes a few of her people happy, oh
She don't care about the rest at all
She's got a system they call apartheid
It keeps a brother in a subjection
But maybe pressure can make Jo'anna see
How everybody could a live as one

[chorus:]
Gimme hope, Jo'anna
Hope, Jo'anna
Gimme hope, Jo'anna
'Fore the morning come

'total eclipse of the heart' was sung, there was ample dancing and lots of smiles (and i may have found an enjoyment in karaoke..)

deb, josh, ashley, simon and i

...and everyone danced

.....and debby and i sang

....and everyone eventually helped

group shot

i have dinner tonight with miss hartstone and her mom (yes!) then i leave nairobi tomorrow, stop in eldoret, then kampala then fly on to johannesburg and then around s. africa, where i'll be clueless and lost for the next three weeks. nairobi treated me well, asante sana.

sunny weekend

friday after work i had some happy hour beers in the canteen with friends and the motor pool staff, stole josh's bike for a few glorious laps around the parking lot and sat in traffic en route to the train station to meet jonathan. i found him and we upgraded to first class (ohhh! ahhh!) and got on the train, bound for mombasa. our compartment was small but the one next door was open so it all worked out. we got to hang out the window and look at stars, eat some chicken for dinner and i slept pretty early. the train is this wild snapshot of history, now really only utilized (at least 1st and 2nd class) by traveling white people attempting to bask in the colonial history of what it must have been like when one had to take the train. also, not much has changed on the train since it was built. the history is here.

leaving the station at night

jonathan in the retro-cool food car

the next morning a staff member came around and said "the train is stopping here. and won't move all day." of course. silly of us to assume our train to mombasa would make it all the way there. so we hopped off, quickly followed the 3rd class kenyan passengers through the little market and got on a bus. one hour later we were in mombasa, on a tuk tuk and en route to another bus which would take us to watamu. i napped in the 2 hour ride. and, well, watamu is gorgeous and quiet and white sand exists and so does a ridiculously large italian population. we had good pizza from an italian man that didn't speak english or swahili (??). apparently lots of italian older women ("...with white hair") come to kenya in search of "a kenyan man" for the weekend. one notorious pair of said italian women didn't get what they came for and wrote a disapproving review of the whole hotel. i heard all of this from a cabana boy who was trying to court me into marriage (i didn't give him our phone number, dad) 'cause jonathan thinks it's funny to tell kenyan beach boys i'm single "and looking for a boyfriend." it never ends well.

view of the quiet, beautiful beach

view of the ocean when the tide was out

we did a lot of sitting. lots of lounging. some swimming. even went to a spontaneous beach party put on by rebellious beach boys. we left before it "started at 2am" though. then we sat in a matatu back to mombasa. that ride was hot. we wandered around old town, found a perch overlooking the water with men drinking strong, ginger-full coffee and had a cheap dinner. it was a nice, chill weekend. just some nice sun and swahili people. i made it to work this morning in what i wore on friday and a head scarf 'cause i didn't bring shampoo to the coast and i looked like a ragamuffin.

my sunburn and i stumbled upon the old SIT office!

a view of jonathan's head on the waterfront

and it just dawned on me that i haven't gotten my weekly 'this modern love' in the reader 'cause of the nytimes paywall. BLAST! that was always the highlight of my monday.