Heart of Darkness...er..Nairobi

Day 5 - Sunday, May 30th. From Sharon:

After failing to get to City Center yesterday, we decided to make that our sole goal of the day. Well that, and attending church. We'd gotten an offer to go to the church service that the house goes to, but kindly passed. While it would have been easy from a logistical point of view, I think we both wanted to see a Kenyan service (Eric called their church "westernized"). Our trusty internet cafe eventually led us to a Mass at the Holy Family Basilica at 6pm. Since it was located in city center, that seemed perfect.

At this point, it was time to brave our first matatu experience. With no guide. Two idiot white people trying to negotiate non-regulated, unposted schedules and stops, "public" transportation systems in Nairobi. Seems kinda like a disaster waiting to happen. Here's the basic rundown of how these things work: a matatu has been described as a half bus/half taxi, but it's really hard to draw comparisons of any kind. Basically these are 16 passenger vans (made by Toyota) that were probably designed as 10 passenger vans. You either catch one randomly on the side of the road (they'll stop pretty much anywhere if they have an empty seat) or at a matatu "staging area," hop in and take off down the road. There's a driver and what I'll just call a "doorman." The doorman solicits passengers, collects fares, and tells the driver when to stop (which he does when he sees a potential passenger or you signal him). At staging areas, they'll wait until the matatu is filled before taking off. Which explains the lack of schedule. It's like a bus that only moves when full or nearly full. Supposedly there's different numbered routes, which all Kenyans are familiar with, but which we are decidedly not. Although many in Nairobi speak English, the doormen we encountered weren't much use in telling us whether or not the matatu went where we needed to go. Luckily, we were headed to City Center, which is a prime destination, so our chances were good that we'd pick a correct one. Approaching the staging area (not too far from the mall by Eric's place) was a pretty overwhelming experience. Probably 5-10 doormen converged on us, all waving their hands in our faces, yelling in Swahili (with a random "good price good price" mixed in) and trying to usher us towards their matatu. We finally picked one and crammed ourselves in. I can't begin to describe how cramped, hot, stuffy, and crowded these things are. There is basically no comparison in the States, to include rush hour metro/subway rides. There are loud bumping tunes though, and every traveler knows that makes everything better.

We paid our fare and hoped we'd recognize our stop when we were getting close. Luckily, we were trying to get at a prime destination downtown, so we didn't need to signal to stop and pretty much everyone else got out too. We ended up in City Center at Tom Mboya and River Rd, a roundabout with the staging area in the middle. Remember these cross streets, they'll be important to the story later. We were trying to get our bus tickets to Kampala for later in the week, so headed off down Tom Mboya in the direction we knew the ticketing office roughly was. The streets in downtown Nairobi are similarly insane, like the highway. There are stands/shops all along the sidewalks, people still don't obey traffic lights or laws of any kind so every street crossing is like throwing your life into the hands of the drivers around you, and the sidewalks are packed with people. PACKED. Again, as the only white people in sight, we were constantly approached by vendors to purchase whatever they were trying to sell. In what ended up being several hours downtown, I think we saw 4 other white people. And we probably saw a good several thousand individuals.

We found the train station, which was crammed with buses and seemed like a good possibility for the office location. It wasn't. At this point, we'd been walking for almost an hour. It was hot, and sweaty, still loud and crowded, and I almost ripped the freshly cut pineapple slices out of the hands of a street vendor. Parasites and infected water be damned. We headed back up to where Google Maps said the bus station was. It wasn't. It turned out to be the hub for the local buses, but not the intercity buses we were looking for. A kind Kenyan took pity on us with our map and cell phone and distressed expressions and tried to help. He gave us a rough idea of where to go, but didn't fully know how to explain it or what the streets were called. We got in touch with Eric's coworker Clayton, who grew up in Nairobi, and he gave us some directions, but trying to find the "central matatu staging area" as he said to do, was a lost cause -- every other street corner looked like a central staging area. We wandered some more...and found the Hilton, which Clay had mentioned was a good landmark. There was a tourist information center there -- hooray! Too bad it was closed on Sunday. At this point, we'd been wandering in chaotic downtown Nairobi for almost two hours. No fewer than three street children had grabbed on to Brian's arm and refused to let go for a couple blocks. We then told a man selling safari trips that we'd give him an honest listen if he told us where Akumba, the bus company whose office we were looking for, was. He agreed and walked us there. We did give him an honest listen, but for $200 a pop, and not a lot of free days left in Nairobi, we passed on his safari. I felt a little bad. But not as bad as the fact that it took us over two hours to find the office. We headed back up Tom Mboya and decided to make a note of the surrounding cross streets so that we could find our way back on Friday when it was time to catch the bus. The next street south of the street the office was on? River Road. Yes, we'd spent more than two hours wandering around the city when our destination was two blocks from our starting point. We should probably write a travel book.

We had a bunch of time to kill before Mass, so headed south in the direction of the Basilica. We stopped at the August 7th Memorial Park, which commemorates the bombing of the US Embassy in 1998. (the embassy at that time was in downtown...it's currently way north in the city, away from the city center, and heavily heavily guarded and fortified). It was a peaceful, quiet area (ironically next to the chaos of the train station) and we thought it well worth our 20 Ksh entrance fee. We wanted to check out the Maasi Market, which was downtown, near the Basilica.

I don't know if this is how the market works for everyone or just white people, but we were quickly approached by a man who called himself Picasso and his porter. Picasso is the boss and will lead you all around the market. The porter takes your "maybes" and carries them around while you continue to shop. They both do a good job befriending you, encouraging you to look at different vendors' goods, and generally increasing business for the market. Picasso, "the boss," became BFF with Brian, while the porter, talked me up. We picked out a few things for our families, and then went to the "office," an area by the fence where they laid out our "maybes" and we picked what we wanted. Then the negotiations began. The porter became the secretary and wrote down his initial offer of price in a little black book. It was ridiculously high. Brian countered with a low offer, that probably wasn't low enough in hindsight. The porter/secretary insisted that we were friends and could do this nicely, that he would "come down like a monkey" and that Brian needed to "jump like a Maasi boy." Yes, it was as funny as you're imagining it. They went back and forth until Brian reached his "final" offer. We all negotiated to about 15% above that, which made us realize we should probably make our "final offer" a little early. That's what you get for being honest about your final offer. Oh well, lesson learned.

We went to the Basilica about 45 minutes early since we were in the area...and tired. Having never heard sung Swahili before, we marveled at its beauty at the opening hymn. The Mass was pretty standard....except it was a little difficult to understand, even though it was in English (hymns were largely in Swahili and, even with them written out in the hymnal, were a little difficult to join in. Lots of consonant blends that I did not learn in 2nd grade with "bl," "str," and "cr"). The homily drew a parallel between the three-in-one of God and the need for the tribes of Kenya to unite together as one as the referendum on the new Constitution approaches. I made a mental note to look up more on that.

We had a little bit of trouble getting back to Eric's, but made it back safe and sound. We cooked ourselves a delicious dinner with the groceries we'd gotten yesterday (not sick yet!), which was made even more delicious by the presence of sweet pineapple (soooo good) and some quality (okay, maybe not quality) Kenyan beer. We're also really bonding with Edison over How I Met Your Mother. And by bonding I mean, we laugh and watch many many pirated episodes in row together. But basically the same thing.