Flashing, Slums, and Traffic. Like you've never seen before

Day 3 - Friday, May 28th. From Sharon:

I can't speak for Brian, but I know I slept like a rock Thursday night. It was nice to be in a bed after two nights spent on airplanes. I stayed with the head female staff of the camp, who are about the nicest people you could ever hope to meet. They might actually be the nicest, most friendly people I've ever met. But that could also be because I've been away from the South for too long. Also a possibility.

We started the morning by going to the camp's "devotion," which typically consists of a Bible story for reflection throughout the day (and discussion at night for the campers) as well as some praise. The camp staff is little more musically inclined than my family's genes allow for, so in addition to being a very calming, reflective, peaceful way to start the day, it was pretty beautiful from an acoustic perspective.

From that point, we left camp with Eric to drop our bags at his house, where we'll be staying for our time in Nairobi (the house is inhabited by the senior leadership of the camp, so they're all at the camp for most of the summer). The house is beautiful, and huge, and, as is common for the not-poor in Nairobi, guarded 24 hours a day and gated. The guards also apparently patrol at night with their watchdogs (including into Eric's backyard) -- unclear if this makes me feel better or worse...

We also went by one of the schools from which many of the campers come from, Rosslyn Academy, to pick up applications. The school was founded as a missionary school and many American kids (kids of missionaries or diplomats) in Nairobi go there. It's huge and beautiful and most "hallways" are outside. The gym is "open air" and doubles as the cafeteria -- seems like a pretty sweet place to have to go everyday. Eric's group has a really good relationship with the teachers and staff there, so they collect applications in the main office and are generally very receptive. Later in the day we would go to the International School of Kenya, which apparently is more international students and wealthy Kenyans, and is run on the British system. It was similarly large and beautiful.

We met the camp staff back at Village Market, which, despite it's name, is essentially a shopping mall. Since it was Friday, the local market was there, so we got our first taste at Kenyan price negotiations. First we stopped and got a cell phone from Nakumatt, Kenya's Wal-Mart, which I hadn't imagined that we would do, but at the low low price of around $25 USD, it seemed like a good investment. Especially since after today, Eric will be working and we will be set loose on our own to get lost in Nairobi. We loaded it with 500 Kenyan shillings (Ksh), which should get us pretty far considering texts are 3 Ksh and talking is 6 Ksh/minute. Really shows you want a sham US cell phone companies are running. It's also free to receive calls, so Eric introduced us to the Kenyan phrase "flashing." (Brian to me: none of that for you). Flashing is apparently calling someone and hanging up before they answer (which is free to do). That is either a predetermined message -- "I'm done, meet me back out front" -- or, in the case of someone who doesn't have any minutes left, "call me, I'm out of minutes." Eric informed us that "Kenyans do this all the time." Kenyans seem like real smart people to me; I like them.

We had lunch at the food court (seriously, we could have been at an American mall) and had the good fortune to run into Eric's friend Joe who works with refugee camps (caused by the election violence in 2007-2008) out in western Kenya. He's going to let us come along for a day or two next week to visit the camps and work with the group of college students that he has out that week (from UNC, no less) to do some house building and other work. That should be a great way to see some of Kenya outside of the city, since Eric doesn't really have the time to take us to his projects out in west Kenya.

After lunch, we (where we=Brian) haggled with the market women to purchase some necklaces before heading back to Eric's place. Eric said he starts with an offer of 1/4 of the price of what the market vendors tell him.....we didn't start that low, but ended up at about 50% of what the vendor originally asked for, so we felt relatively good about that. As I was taught in "car buying 101," in 9th grade ELP (Economic Legal and Political systems for the unlucky non-North Carolinians among you), the biggest power you have is to walk away. As soon as we tried that tactic, "well, that's nice, we'll walk around and be back," she countered with "how much for now?" and gave us a price 50 Ksh above that. Thanks, Mr. Tharp, I owe you one.

At Eric's place, we hung out with his friend Paul for a bit, which was an interesting experience to say the least. Paul runs camps for Kenyans (Eric's camp is targeted more towards non-Kenyans, who, unlike those in the public school system, have the summer off) and also grew up in Nairobi (he went to Rosslyn Academy). His family has a ranch not far from where we went rock climbing so....he carries a pistol. On his ankle. Apparently there's bandits afoot. More (or at least less frightening) is the fact that his license took 5 years and 7 applications to get. Apparently the going bribe rate for getting a license when you want it is $8,000. Charming.

Our last activity was visiting Kibera, which is Nairobi's largest slum. Estimates of the population there are anywhere from 200,000 to 1 million people, although Eric thought a quarter million was about right. In any event, it is everything that you might imagine a slum in Nairobi to be. There are a couple of streets that run through/around it, but other than that, it's a huge area filled with tin/cardboard/fabric "houses" that are about five by ten feet. Dirt "alleyways" run through in confusing and intricate ways that even Eric says he never hopes to master. These alleyways are filled with trash and feces, children run around barefoot and stare in awe at us, small shacks line the road offering food, shoe shines, or clothing. In irony of ironies, we were there to return soccer cleats that Eric had borrowed from his friend, Kip, who lives there (someone earlier in the day, to Eric: "you borrowed cleats...from someone..in Kibera???"). Although we didn't see Kip's house, Eric says it's about 7'x9' and has a bed, dresser, and desk. That's not his room, that's his whole house. It was frustrating and disheartening and sad to see that level of poverty -- unlike anything I'd ever seen -- and even more frustrating and disheartening and sad to hear Eric say he wasn't sure if there were any good avenues out. (an aside: There are apparently 1/4 the number of secondary schools (high schools) as primary schools in the Kenyan public school system, so aside from the money needed for uniforms, transportation, etc, it is extremely competitive academically to get in.) Kip wants to get his certificate in social work and work with youth to improve their condition, and I guess it's perhaps those small steps from which all big change have to come...? Let's hope so. Kip is the smiley-est person I've ever met, so I'm hoping and praying for him.

We had dinner at Eric and friends' favorite Ethiopian restaurant which was.....delicious. I was very proud of DC to find out that Ethiopian food there is almost exactly the same as Ethiopian food in East Africa. Strong work, District.

The drive back to Eric's house was INSANITY. I've never seen so much traffic and chaos in my entire life. And I've been stuck in both DC and NYC traffic. There are no lines on Nairobi roads and what traffic lights exist, are completely and utterly ignored. Trucks are overloaded beyond any sort of safety standard, matatus weave in and out of traffic like they're in their own little world, pedestrians dart in and out because the lack of traffic light obedience means there's no good place so cross the street, and, when the going gets really rough, KENYANS DRIVE ON THE SIDEWALKS. I'd heard from a Dave Berry column on international driving that this happened in France, but never really believed it (nor did I see it when I was in France). Let me tell you, it happens in Nairobi.

We got back to Eric's, watched a little How I Met Your Mother on pirated DVD's with Edison, the university student staying at the house for the summer (it was weird, felt like I was back home), and promptly passed out from an Ethiopian food coma.