Aug 2nd, 2003
Arrival in Kenya
Hi all, I left Dulles at 5:30 PM on Monday and after fifteen hours on two planes and a four-hour-long layover in Amsterdam, I arrived at the airport in Nairobi. Apparently, it is about midnight over on the East Coast and that may explain why I feel like a zombie right now. Or maybe it is the fact that my diet for the past twenty-four hours has consisted of airplane food, Imodium, and CVS generic brand sleeping pills.
The airport reminded me a bit of Sri Lanka’s airport for some reason. We had a nice fellow named Paul waiting for us at the exit gates and we headed out of the airport. The airport is in an industrial area of Nairobi and I was amazed at how developed the area was. Not that I was expecting huts and zebras as soon as we got off the plane, but I also wasn’t expecting huge car dealerships on both sides of the road.
We drove through the downtown area of Nairobi and my curiosity at the nightlife was tempered with the words of my co-workers who were traveling with me - “Don’t drink the water! Don’t eat anything that may have been tainted with water! Don’t go out by yourself! Brush your teeth with spring water, etc.” I wondered how much of this was scared American syndrome and how much was the reality of visiting Kenya.
About two months ago I had met a Georgetown alumni who had been born and raised in Kenya and had mentioned how non-essential employees at the US embassy in Nairobi had been given the option of returning home. He scoffed at the notion and told me that the fears were completely overblown. It made me think about how when I had been living in Korea, I would occasionally see herds of American tourists traveling together in tightly knit groups, pointing and gawking at everything as they headed to the local TGIF.
The Safari Park Hotel is absolutely beautiful and contains about seven restaurants, four bars, spa, etc. After arriving, I went to one of the bars and had a few beers. While sitting at the bar, I was shocked to hear a wailing sound coming from behind a closed door. “What the hell is that,” I asked the bartender. “Is that a bunch of Koreans?”
She smiled and nodded. “They like the Karaoke,” she responded.
The one thing I can always seem to count on no matter where I am in the world, there is always going to be Koreans singing Karaoke nearby.
I went back to my hotel room after an hour or so and lay in bed while my poor brain wondered why I was trying to fall asleep at what it thought should be about 10:00 in the morning. I stared at the mosquito netting for about two hours before drifting off to sleep.
Anyway, I’ve only been gone for about twenty-four hours and even though my poor brain is utterly confused (even more so than usual) by the time change, I feel completely refreshed in some strange way. I haven’t had this feeling in about two years nor have I had the urge to really these updates in about two years. It just isn’t as inspiring when you’re talking about spending the weekend in Balboa Park.
Well, I’ve got loads of work to get through during the next few days, when I’ll be explaining to a classroom of Africans how to use the Internet to communicate (and no, this doesn’ t mean walking them through Hotmail) - but things should lighten up by the weekend and hopefully I’ll have something interesting to talk about.
