First impressions

25.03.2012

The adventure in Africa has started. I arrived in the evening of the 21th of March in Nairobi after a three weeks stay at my mother’s house. That was a really good and quiet time which I shared mostly with my beloved mother who is recovering from a time with bad health. And where I had to recover from weeks with preparing the year in Kenya, packing my things, tidy and clean the house and last but not least say goodbye. Saying goodbye is very difficult and leaving my children was the most emotional part and still is extremely difficult. I also had a very happy weekend spending with D. and T. and their family. They were really spoiling me. The last two days before taking the airplane to Nairobi I stayed with my sister R. in Zeist. That was lovely and she surprised me with a great dinner at a restaurant the last night.

The positive thing with leaving is that you get close to people and you realize how valuable relations are. The saying goodbye visits the last few weeks before departure were so lovely that they make me longing back to Norway.

The time difference between Norway and Holland and Kenya is two hours at the moment, it changes when summertime comes again. After a 7,5 hours flight directly from Amsterdam to Nairobi I arrived at the airport where a man was standing with a sign: Ms Ynez. I was so surprised, that had to be me since the name is very rare. And yes he came to pick me up and I got a VIP treatment passing all cues and difficulties with visa. In no time I was standing outside where I was met by K... He works in the foreign affairs in Kenya and asked a friend to help me. He drove me home to Ongata Rongai where he lives with his wife A., the good friend I know from working in the slums of Mukuru the time I was a student in 2002. They have built a new house a few years ago and an extra floor to let out to tourists. So now I live in a beautiful apartment with three sleeping rooms.

The first day it shows that I need time to get used to the climate and need to recover after the journey. Pole pole, taking it easy. I join A. to her café, Aggy’s café, not far away from here, near the Nazarene university, in the middle of nowhere. A. is very smart and turned a container that shipped their cars from a longer stay in England into a café. It offers lunch and supper to students and employees of the university and other people around. Two people are cooking from 7 a.m. and they make a good meal for a very sharp price with a lot of different food. A.’s sister who works there has to walk every day three quarters of an hour to come to job and back again. That is really impressing, but people here are used to that. I feel ashamed always having the comfort of a car. Another sister walked quite far with a can with drinking water for me, so nice.

People are very easy to get in contact with; they are very open and interested in meeting you. To me being in Holland is already meeting an openness that struck me and here it is even more open. Life is surprising because you don’t know what is happening the next moment and when you think you know it changes again. I hope I develop that flexibility again. Like a colleague back home says and people here who have lived in Europe, that there is so much stress in Europe. You are always running to the next thing, many activities and appointments.

I live quite far from the main road and A. will show me how I can take transport to Nairobi. Ongata Rongai is a much bigger place than I thought I knew. It is about 10 kilometers from Nairobi. Driving the car looks impossible, the traffic jam is unbelievable. And driving on country roads asks much tranquility and using your eyes carefully. We dumped in a hole in the street but were lucky to get out again without damage. It is crowded with people everywhere you look but most people seem to be patient and they are helping one another. Like someone was warning us before we drove in the hole but we didn’t understand.

The house had a garden and vegetable garden, two dogs Bull and Nanja and chickens. There lives a watch boy in a little house in the garden where also A.’s sister lives with her 11 years old son. In the main house A. and her husband live together with their daughters C. and G. and a foster child H.

Wanting to go back to the roots of life turns out not to be easy. Our modern life is based on communication. Already in Holland I had to cycle to the library often to get on internet to settle things. Yesterday I bought 2 Kenyan sim cards and think to buy a mobile phone you can have to sim cards in so you can switch depending what telephone company the person you want to call has. When you call with Airtel to a Safaricom it is much more expensive than when you call with Safaricom to Safaricom. A stupid system that costs people money and trouble.

The weather is warm, like 27 degrees and windy. The rain season should have come already and is expected this coming week. The land is very dry and therefore dusty.

29.03.2012

Sunday I got visit of C. and his daughter. We discussed about the organization, called Potrain – Positive Transformation Initiative -, see www.potrain.org.  and my role in it. He will show me the office in Nairobi where I will work two days a week and two other days I will work from home. I got very excited about the whole organization and the goals he has put at the end. The organization goals at empowerment for women and youth, helping them to help themselves. Potrain gets bigger every time a new group starts. In Kenya it is wished that a NGO (Non Governmental Organization) develops itself in each county, not only staying in Nairobi. There are 49 counties! Then Potrain goals to get international in the whole of Africa.

There are two groups going on at the moment. Eleven boys living in the Kibera slums have formed a group that is organizing a business with selling chicken. They meet every Saturday to discuss how to set up the business and get money from charity to develop the business idea. When they get started they have admitted to start a new group each one of them with the same goal, to get a job by starting a business and provide themselves in living costs. C. is joining them at meetings giving them ideas but the thought is that they develop the business idea themselves. C. has a bachelor on social work and has a lot of contacts. A group with adults who are interested in theater is working to develop a business out of that. The latter group is from Mukuru slums. C. has a fulltime job and gets more time to form groups and guide them when I get the role of fundraiser advisor. In fact I have only that once with a group finding money for an Idriart festival and we were very successful. I just give it a try.

We were also discussing visa as that is the most important thing to do now. I had to send some forms on email but there is no internet access. We asked in many shops but there is no mobile internet modem for sale at the moment. I could lent from the family but C. managed to scratch the card too hard so a few numbers were not to be read and we didn’t manage to crack the code. But next day A. remembered that she could transfer money from a special account to fill up the modem. That account is called Mpesa, you put money on your account and you can transfer money from there by your mobile. Imagine that I managed to change the size so I could send the forms the right way.

At Monday A. took me along to Nairobi town and I was really excited to be in that town again, so many good memories from earlier times. I just love that town with its vibrant atmosphere, its image of a really big and important city, the variety of shops and the crowd of people the whole day around. There is so much to investigate and you just stroll and find a place to relax and there are good places to rest too. You compare the many shops when you will buy something. I bought a mobile phone that has to various sim cards in it and you can switch from one to another phone company like I described before. Travelling to town: first we have to walk like 10 minutes to the road, than take a tuktuk (a motorcycle that looks like a car on three wheels, they also had such tuktuks in Colombia) to the main road, where we take a matatu to the centre of the town. A matatu is a minibus with a driver and his helper. The bus is stapped with as many people as is possible and they drive like crazy picking up people on the way. Everything needs to be as fast as possible to get more money. Often the driver is drugged, chewing kat and there is loud music. It may happen that when they see a police car they suddenly change their route. Since the new president Kibaki the government tries to follow up rules for safety. Now there are no longer people hanging out of the bus because it is overcrowded. They also try to have a better public transport system with better busses. I once travelled with a bus and people warned me that the door opened itself while driving.

Most shops are also open in the evenings and there are stalls in the streets, some plain of wood with some plastic, others look like a cage and they sell through narrow openings. You can buy sweets and cigarettes one at a time. Sometimes you are very surprised the variety of things they sell.

A took me and others from the café to a deaf centre next to the café. They exploit an organic farm with 7 ponds with fish, albino (white with red eyes) rabbits, German sheppards, bananas, vegetables. People can get a basket every week with meat, fish and vegetables. Even the dogs get washed with organic soap. The foreman is very nice and seems to have a good hand with all kinds of creatures. The café buys vegetables there. Afterwards we visited people at the German mission nearby. I met people from Germany and even Norway. The German couple had a lovely house with an amazing view right into the Nairobi National Park. They can watch the game life from their sitting room. Drinking tea with a Kenyan family I heard the story that a lion came right to the house towards the end of the day looking for the dog. The lady watched herself running as if she flew to the nearest house. She told that lions don’t like human flesh much but he could be angry when the dog was closed in. This event was for two years ago! The game life is very nearby and I got really shocked that it can be so dangerous here. You won’t see me running around when it becomes dark. By the way I have to be inside when it is dark when I am alone because of danger from the human race. And it gets so really dark here.

Today Thursday the electricity fell out in the morning just when I finished my shower (the shower is also dependant of electricity) and did not come back before 7 p.m. when it gets dark. I was waiting for the electricity to come the whole day but it works out that they cut off the electricity every Thursday because of shortage. This will end when the rain comes. And just now when the fridge got repaired and placed in the kitchen. The whole evening it is like a flash light, on and off again.

Tomorrow I get a tenant, a priest who will share my apartment for a month. He is from Cameroun and speaks only French, so it will be quiet around here. I have learnt French a long time ago. I feel like ashamed to live in such a big apartment when people around live so narrow. And it helps with the rent.

Tomorrow I will meet M from Norway and her Kenyan husband. Friday night two nurse students from Porsgrunn will arrive and Saturday a daughter. After her arrival we’ll set of for a three hours’ drive to Loitokitok near Kilimanjaro. There I will see what work the organization Scilo is doing there and we will look at what can be done later in the year. If you are interested you can look at www.scilo-norge.org.