Old Friend, New City

Over the weekend, I finally was able to travel into Nairobi to visit my friend Christine.  We were in the same group at the conference in Dubai, and I’m so happy that I got to meet up with her.  From Mombasa, you can take a nice tour bus to the capitol city.  The ride took about 9 hours, but the time passed quickly enough; I slept, read, and watched the countryside as it passed.  The scenery was usually pretty great, covered with baobab trees and highlighted by the occasional sighting of Mt. Kilimanjaro or a baboon.  Then the hills turned into skyscrapers and I knew I was there.

Christine and her sister picked me up at the bus depot and took me to their house.  They live in the Parklands area of the city, which is historically the Indian part of town.  It was a nice, quiet area dotted with Buddhist temples and parks.  Just up the road from her house one can find numerous embassies and a UN office.  

We spent the weekend being equally lazy and touristy.  We watched plenty of music videos and bootleg DVDs in between visits to the National Museum of Kenya, shopping malls, outdoor markets, and a national park.  I definitely fell in love with Nairobi.  It is the best African city I have visited so far.  It earned this stellar ranking by being a modern city (it had traffic lights, garbage cans, and road signs) with bustling commerce and a strong middle class, while still retaining a strong African identity (there were open-air Masai markets and no lack of mataus).  It’s hard to explain, but basically I saw a city living up to its potential, and that made me extremely happy.  I could definitely live in Nairobi.  

From Kabul to Kenya

I have definitely had the opportunity to have some unique adventures here in Kenya.  One of these adventures came to me through my friend Masai.  He helps with procurement for the dairy, but that is just one of the many pies he has his fingers in.  Another side project of his is consulting groups on an initiative called Farmer Field School (FFS).  Essentially it provides training for members of rural communities to learn new techniques on existing crops and methods to introduce new projects.  It’s been pretty successful here in Kenya and Masai has been sent all over the world to teach other groups how to start it there.   He had an interested group from Afghanistan, so they came here to Mombasa for three weeks so he could teach them. 

Upon hearing what he was up to, I definitely wanted to sit in and experience it for myself.  So we figured out a day that worked out for us both, and I joined the group.  That day, there were travelling up the coast a bit to visit an FFS group.  The visit was great, but the Afghanis made it wonderful. They were so welcoming and nice.  What I had initially planned on being a morning visit turned into a three day long adventure.  The visit concluded about noon, so the group decided they wanted to go to the beach for the afternoon.  They insisted I come and I couldn’t pass it up.  I only stayed for a while, but I did manage to teach them the concept of chicken fighting, which they thought was hilarious.  The next day, they were discussing farming as a business, so I was invited to that as well, which turned into me getting invited to dinner that night.  It was the middle of Ramadan, so each night they had a big dinner to break the fast.  I got there early, so I sat in the kitchen and watched Diana, one of the members of the group, cook a wonderful curry (she wouldn’t let me help).   It was a wonderful evening, and I ate so much that I was full through lunch the next day. 

Our final encounter was the next morning.  By then, the founder of CHOICE (Dr. Mayfield) was in town, and when I told him about what Masai was doing, he was curious as well.  So with Masai’s approval, I brought him along to one of their final meetings.  Dr. Mayfield has been working in international development for like 50 years (not even exaggerating) and he has been a professor at the U for nearly that long, so when they asked him to get up and speak, he did an amazing job.  The whole room was captivated for the entire 30 minutes that he was speaking.  It was a wonderful note to end on. 

I am so glad I got the opportunity to meet those wonderful people from Afghanistan.  They definitely have their work cut out for them, but I know they will make their country a better place.