New Blog on Wordpress!

I’m going to try out using wordpress.com rather than the blogger through Google because I think it will be simpler to use, and allow commenting and notices of when blogs are posted which I haven’t been able to work out on Blogger!

http://natalieinkenya.wordpress.com/

          Hujambo (how are you)? (this is the part where you reply: sijambo!) I’m writing now from my host mother Jennifer’s house! It was a rough first few days finding phones, getting pupil passes, finding routers…. Finding out the routers wouldn’t work…. But after a few days we have gotten just about all that sorted out. There are four of us here in Nairobi for the pre-session – the smallest group they’ve ever had. In the first three weeks for this pre-session we will be doing exclusively Swahili class, an entire four credit, semester class in 15 days! Our teacher Judy is wonderful though so I think that will make it much easier  and really enjoyable, it is a very conversational style class rather than lectures and she will use the words in context so we can guess at the English translation first rather than her telling us straight out.    

For the first two nights we stayed at a Methodist guest house for our orientation, it was a good transition to have between the exhausting flights and meeting our home stay families because we had the chance to TRY and shake off the jet lag and get as organized and as informed about the up coming weeks as we could. 

Wednesday we met our host families. I live with Jennifer, an older and wonderfully talkative lady. She has grandkids that are very young who come over often so I’m really looking forward to getting to meet them! I have my own room here which, as an introvert, is such a blessing.

Joys of the week:

• The amazing group of girls on this trip, we really help to keep each other sane when the non-american-ness, or homesickness gets overwhelming.  

• The energy, openness, and thoughtfulness of my host mother

• Having the most American-y spots pointed out to us for those times when we need a break from our cultural education

• A working modem and cell phone!

• The extra cold (55 F) winter weather welcoming us to Kenya and making me feel right at home!

• Vegetarian food seems to be always an option at restaurants and at my home-stay!

Frustrations:

• Nothing we do will help us blend in, like it or not we are Mazungos who stick out like a sore thumb

• Cold shower water

• Sore blistered feet from shoes I didn’t think to break in before leaving

The joys on this trip are certainly outnumbering the frustrations though and each day I feel more and more comfortable with walking from class and to my house, slowly learning the city, slowly gaining confidence, but quickly gaining blisters…. Today we were ALLMOST on a Kenyan comedy TV show, Jane one of the program staff pointed out to us a van off the side of a small road which apparently held a camera crew. She said that the show pulled pranks on unsuspecting passersby, they will ask you to do something for them and then trick you and show you that you’re on camera. And what a surprise they especially like targeting mazungos! Two men were standing with a power cable in construction uniform acting like they were going to fix the line. They were poised and ready to tell us that we had to be careful and jump around to avoid the wires or something I guess but when they started trying to tell us they saw we were already laughing and knew what they were up to. They seemed disappointed so one of the girls indulged them by hopping around on one foot before walking off, but somehow I don’t think our giggling was interesting enough to land us on the show (though afterwards we decided it would have been fun to play along anyway to see what would have happened!).

I am so glad to be here, and so excited for what will happen next. Thank you all for your support and prayers, it means the world to me knowing that I have family and friend back home that are interested in following me through this new adventure. 

24 Hours to go

Tomorrow morning I'm leaving home at 10. I will be driving 3 hours to Chicago, getting on a plane at 4, and taking off. I'm in for around 28 hours of total travel time, with a brief layover in lovely Amsterdam. Somehow I'm still not convinced I'm really leaving.

For the past few days I've been caught in the desperate struggle between bringing too much, or bringing too little: Do I really need to bring 20 books...? I could go without shampoo for five months right....? Even though it does seem to keep slipping my mind, I will be in Nairobi, a major city for 2/3 of my time and could probably find a way to get a hold of just about anything I might forget. I think, maybe because I've had so little experience with big cities in Africa I picture everything as rural, like I'll just be out in the middle of nowhere. Or maybe that's because that always seems to be how Africa in general is portrayed in a lot of popular culture. I've been trying to prepare my self for being wrong a lot, the image I've always had in my head of Kenya has been colored by my experience in Rwanda and my exposure to pop culture. The real place I will be traveling to tomorrow will probably not fit into those boxes I've created, it will be real and unique; and the experiences I imagine myself having will probably be much more amazing and uncomfortable than I prefer to picture them being.

All this boiling down to excited-terror. I don't know who or what experiences are waiting for me in Kenya but I think I'm as ready as I can be at this point to face them head on.