Sardine can death traps

Public transportation in Kenya, particularly Nairobi, is a thing to behold with a small amount of awe and fear. Busses are limited, and in their place is a collection of thousands if not tens and hundreds of thousands of mini-vans called “matatus”. They’re unmistakable. From a far distance you can hear them rolling into stops, brakes squealing, side door sliding open with the tout shouting the name of the destination in rapid fire, and the horn tooting a quick beepbeepbeepbeep. And they’re thrilling. I waiting until I could get one of the students to take me into the city of Nairobi, since I didn’t feel bold enough to attempt the matatu by myself. They’re supposed to seat 14 but easily cram 25 passengers on board. They blare hiphop or reggae music. Some have a screen showing scantily clad women in the accompanying music video. And some are eerily lit from within by neon lights.

The first matatu we boarded was blaring hiphop at an extraordinary decibel level, but only in the high range. Annoying. No fear – about half a mile further up the road, we made a stop to pick up the recently repaired subwoofer. A few quick moments to throw it in the back and wire it up, and we had the full ear bleeding range.

Wednesday I had decided to go to Lake Naivasha with a couple of the gals from the workshops we were teaching. We got up and out and off to Naivasha town where we switched to another matatu to go the last half hour to the edge of the lake. Half way there, we pulled into a gas station, but not up to the pump. The driver and another guy came digging amongst passenger legs to retrieve two 5 gallon jugs that they filled and returned to fume up the inside of the matatu. Another few miles down the road, we pulled over to pick up a man and his young son and their stack of 5 ft logs that were slid in the back door, again in amongst passenger legs. All we needed was a match, and we’d have a pretty decent bonfire.

My goal for the day was to rent bike and cycle Hell’s Gate national park, but that didn’t go so well. One of the gals I was with wasn’t much of a biker and ate tarmac pretty quickly. I felt horrible for her, but she seemed to pick up ok and struggled on like a trooper. But it quickly became apparent that this was too much of an undertaking for her when we hadn’t even gotten to the gates of the park and realized we had a good 14k bike ride ahead of us with too broad a range of fitness, so we turned back to explore the backpacker lodge/campsite area and then made our way back into the little near village for dinner. And then drama ensued. I’m still not entirely sure what happened, but the one who pitched off the bike suddenly decided to go back to Nairobi, and her friend stumble stuttered and quickly followed. I was left with the quick decision – go back with them late at night or stay with the other foreign backpackers I’d already met and enjoy the rest of my visit at the lake. So I stayed, which was great. I ended up with a couple of ecology researchers – the guy is from Sydney, and his girlfriend is from Mozambique. They were lovely, we had a lot in common, and we just had a really nice relaxing day over lunch and a boat ride on the lake. I’m now wishing I’d stayed behind another day to visit Hell’s Gate with them on Friday, but I felt I should get back to finish work at KU – particularly to make a meeting with the ambassador. This was a re-scheduled appointment after we were trapped in traffic for 3 hours and had to cancel our first meeting. Unfortunately, with some schedule misunderstanding, I missed the second meeting as well. I guess it just wasn’t in the cards for this meeting to happen.

I am now lounging in the Amsterdam airport in an extremely long layover. New favorite airport. If you ever have to be stuck somewhere, this is the place to be stuck. I’m in an eggplant colored body hugging lounge chair watching music videos, and the whole airport looks like it’s got enough interesting nooks and crannies to keep me entertained for awhile at least. And there’s an art gallery around here somewhere that’s exhibiting “Dutch Cows”. Will have to check that out.

I’m home again in about 16 hours and looking forward to it. This has been a really exhausting but rewarding and fun trip. And it’s settled my wanderlust for at least a little while…

Giraffe Snot

This has been a pretty fabulous weekend. Of course, no trip to Africa is complete without the requisite safari. We departed on Friday afternoon with a fourth companion, Jen - a Canadian (the French part) who is 15 months into a 2 year round the world trip. Part of me is incredibly jealous and part of me is exhausted by the thought of being constantly on the move and unstable for that long. But most of me is jealous. I'll get mine in bits and pieces, I guess. The exhausted part of me is probably the "I'm not 22 anymore" part that's ready to be a bit more of a grown up. But not entirely. Not just yet...

The safari was truly amazing. We saw everything we could have asked for - huge herds of elephants and even a little little baby less than a month old. Dozens of giraffes towering from as close as 20 feet away. Lions and lions. The first night it had rained before we arrived, and the cubs were playful. I have spectacular video of six cubs play fighting in a flowering tree. It doesn't get any more stunning than that. And we saw loads of other animals - hippos, a crocodile (huge and from really far away), jackals, hyenas wallowing in a mud hole, zebras, wildebeast kicking up their heels, all sorts of gazelles, exotic birds, dikdiks, mongooses (mongeese?), and crazy blue lizards with pink heads.

For two nights we stayed in a tented camp managed by the local Massais. It was quite nice - a platform tent with proper beds and a concrete structure bathroom at the back with shower and toilet. Rather nice by backpacker standards. And our hosts were delightful. The Massai are one of the minority tribes of Kenya but what most people think of when they think of traditional native Kenyans. They're nomadic herders, and each clan has hundreds of cattle, sheep, and goats. In this part of Kenya, it is very common to see extremely tall and thin men wrapped in brightly colored blankets herding animals with a long staff. These guys kept a fire going at camp all night with one sitting sentry aside a long spear usually used for defending the herd against big cats. It felt extremely safe and reassuring.

We visited the nearest village which is open to guests for a fee of about $12. The fee is supposedly distributed amongst all of the local villages and goes to support services such as the local primary school. I didn't take many pictures, because I don't like for this sort of thing to be a spectacle and to dehumanize people even though they're opening their village to us. But it was fascinating. The houses are short and squat mud structures with straw roofs and are build by the wives before marriage. There is a big termite problem (we've seen loads of the flying nasties), so they have to pick up and move the entire village about every 9 years. It's a polygamous society, and the chief's son who led our group told us his father has 4 wives and over 20 children - 7 of whom were born to this man's mother. The clan are all related descendants from one grandfather, so any of the men have to take wives from other villages. The first wife is arranged by the parents of the son, and if he chooses to take additional wives then he gets to pick those himself. The dowry is 10 cows, but that can be reduced if the man is particularly fit and able to jump extraordinarily high in a contest among his peers. The Massai men decided that Jimmy's jumping skills should drop Amanda's dowry to a mere 8 cows.

Speaking of cows - the landscape and wildlife in the Massai Mara is unforgiving, so special care must be given to the livestock. They are let out to graze during the day but return to the village at night so none are eaten by lions, cheetahs, or leopards. The entire perimeter of the village is walled off with thick interwoven tree branches, and there are corrals in the center made of tall tree branches where the goats are kept separate from the cattle that roam freely among the houses. Each small house in the village has a closet-sized room where the baby calves are kept and another internal room where the baby goats and sheep sleep. I image it's a cacophanous menagerie at night with hundreds and hundreds of livestock packed in with people, but probably becomes as much of the normal background as city street traffic to some of us.

We made our way back to Nairobi after an early morning game drive on Sunday, and on Monday visited the giraffe park. It's a non-profit breeding program to reintroduce the endangered Rothschild's giraffe to the wild. There is a feeding platform where you can give them bits of pelleted food which brings them right up face to face. They don't want to be pet, so the only way to get up close is if you have food. As one of the guides told some spanish visitors "No comidas, no amigo". Well, I got super up close and personal in a Ghostbusters sort of way when I was face to face with one of the adult females as she got a tickle in her nose. Literally 6 inches away, full face slobbery snotty blast that left my glasses looking like I'd been through a rainstorm. Ew. We were later told that giraffe slobber is highly antiseptic, so I'm hoping I got *some* good benefit from the experience that'll keep me extra healthy for the rest of the trip :)

Sweet success

I think we're all feeling quite pleasantly self-satisfied. The two weeks we've been working here have been extraordinarily challenging, and I said early on that I'd be satisfied if we impacted at least one person through these efforts. It's been fraught with the challenges of scheduling meetings and identifying the right people with the authority and motivation to get stuff done. We started to feel a glimmer of hope early last week when the Director of the Centre for Research Development offered to follow up on the equipment distribution and usage. He's a really fantastic guy with a lot of experience both in Kenya and overseas. He's also got the right skill set and position to make a lot of positive change around here. He enthusiastically agreed to coordinate the chairs of the different departments, inventory the equipment, oversee a website that will detail the locations and contact info for each piece of equipment, and regularly check on the usage of log books so we can see that the equipment is being used and properly maintained. So if that all happens, win.

He also connected me to a number of people on campus he's recognized as needing extra assistance with grant writing. I had a meeting on Tuesday evening with a group of three women and was expected scientists. So I was pretty surprised when one said she's in the School of Fashion, another was in Finance, and the third was in the library. The woman working in fashion has a proposal to develop a skills training program for high school drop outs. The finance woman is writing a proposal for materials and support to increase alumni giving to the university so they can establish scholarships for orphans and disabled students. The woman from the library is writing a proposal to increase availability of library resources for the blind by developing a recording studio to turn some of the frequently used materials into audio books. So of course I was honored to help - and incredibly intimidated and a little terrified at first. But a lot of the essential principles of grant writing are consistent across disciplines, so I think I was able to be helpful. I'm scheduling another meeting for Friday through the research development office to follow up on these few and help others that are identified this week. And there's some talk of having me perhaps come back in the future for an intense one week grant writing "boot camp". We'll see. I said I'd be happy to come if they could provide the financial support for my trip. That puts some of the motivation in their hands and means they'll make the most of my time if they put the resources into having me back again.

But the most satisfying part of the entire two weeks was our final "wrap up" on Thursday afternoon. We plastered the place with flyers openly inviting all of the faculty, staff, and students - including the director of research, the deans, and all of the chairs. We were a little worried it wouldn't go well because of the hierarchy here - students and faculty wouldn't speak openly in front of each other. But we were encouraged by all of the higher ups who wanted to hear what we had to say and were intrigued by the unconventional format. So we put together a handful of slides highlighting our key observations and used that to guide discussion. It was fabulous - beyond all expectations. We have had a core group of about 15 students at all of the workshops, and they rose to set the tone. They talked openly about all of their concerns and frustrations - the faculty don't challenge them enough, they don't get enough mentorship, they'd like the opportunity to assistant teach. I watched the faces of faculty for the first half hour or so, and a lot of them looked pensively sour. But they sat there, and they listened. Then one of the lecturers who is deputy director of one of the research offices spoke up and thanked the students for their insight. She said she'd never heard these words from the students before and felt it was eye opening to realize their perspective. Then more and more faculty started to speak up, and before we knew it they were all engaged in a really frank discussion about their expectations of each other and hopes for the future of KU. The director of research, dean of sciences, and several faculty made little speeches about their new vision of collaboration at KU, and the director of research encouraged everyone to strive not only to be the best in Kenya or Africa, but to see Harvard as a benchmark for success.

Afterward, the students and faculty said that nothing like that had ever happened at KU, and they felt empowered. It was awesome. I emailed the group of students afterward to thank them for taking the time to be with us for the full two weeks and encouraged them all to remain in contact with each other and with us. Most of them have since written back with thanks and appreciation for our time and efforts. Several of them said that we have shown them that research is difficult but worth the effort. They say we've open their eyes and changed their lives. So even if we only impacted this small group of students and encouraged them to keep striving, I feel like we've done a pretty amazing thing.

Weekend in Mombasa

Mombasa is along the coast of Kenya, an old port town with a multicultural history that includes the Arab slave traders and British colonists. It's also a resort location, since it's reported to have great beaches. We didn't actually go to the beach, even though it was oppressively hot and humid, but it was lovely anyway. Hours and hours strolling through the narrow streets of the old part of town gazing at intricately carved doorways and elaborate balconies with the occasional stop to goof around with some random group of kids animatedly playing soccer with a long worn and mostly deflated ball. Everywhere we went, we heard calls of Jambo! (Hello!) and Karibu!(Welcome!). Even from windows several stories above where it was unclear anyone had noticed our passing. A significant portion of the town is Muslim, so there were the frequent calls to prayer competing with the hustle and bustle of street life and traffic. I was disappointed by the fact that the haunting reverberations can't quite reach deep into your bones like it does in Urumqi or Kashgar (China), but then this morning I drifted out of sleep at about 5 am to hear the dawn call. That was pretty special - the faint haze of early morning light, silence of the streets below, and a lone voice calling to the faithful in melodic tones.

We are back in Nairobi now. I am really enjoying my work here. It's a challenge - an immense personal challenge that I find to be really fun. I'll give you one example by way of my day today: we decided last week that it would be useful to call a meeting of the chairs of the science departments that have benefited from the equipment donation that was made by Seeding Labs in the spring. There are some complications and apparent misunderstandings that would be efficiently addressed with everyone present. The departments fall under two schools - Health Sciences and Pure and Applied Sciences. So first we talked to the dean of PAS who was on board and ready to schedule the meeting. But she said we should first coordinate with the dean of HS. We walked all over this immense campus on friday trying to find the office because we couldn't reach him by phone, failed until the day was nearly done, and resumed an attempted phone contact upon return from Mombasa. That still didn't work, and the internet for the campus was down (again), so we again made our way over in person and got an audience with the dean. He didn't seem to understand our request but finally said he could call a meeting of HS chairs but couldn't involve PAS. Finally, we got the full story from a faculty friend of ours - hierarchy. Each office on campus has a flow chart of the administration. Each person knows their place, who is above them, and who is below them. And there are rules. Chairs cannot call meetings of other chairs because someone above the chairs has to oversee the meeting. Deans can call a meeting of chairs, but only within their own department. So a meeting amongst chairs of two departments involves two deans. But deans can't call a meeting of other deans, because again you need someone above the deans to oversee the meeting. So that sends us up the food chain to either the deputy vice chancellor or the director of research. We are only here for three more days, and hectic schedules fill up quickly, so we'll see if this meeting actually happens, or even gets scheduled, while we're still around.

My window to Rwanda

The last few days have been an unbelievable cultural experience, and not just because it's Culture Week at Kenyatta University. Truthfully, we couldn't have picked a better week to come. Not only is it like we're touring all of Africa without leaving the campus, but I'm also getting the chance to meet some truly inspiring people. Two nights ago, I was sitting alone on the balcony updating the last blog post when a whole group squeezed past me to a table, and each one said "hello" on the way by. After a while, a very soft spoken, shy young man came over to talk and ask who I was. He was quietly enthusiastic and a little bit intense. He told me that his performance group is here from Rwanda to be part of culture week. Then his whole group convinced me to join them and proceeded to burst out into song and folk dance. It was indescribably beautiful. They said this is a sort of oral tradition that is a "pastoral poetry". Many of the songs and dances are performed by rural farming cultures to recognize their appreciation for the land and the cattle. The vocalizations are deep in the throat and nasal passages with a lot of harmony, and the body postures of the men evoke the horns and mannerisms of the cattle while the angular arms of the women and flowing movements are like stately trees and running rivers. It was beautiful and special because it was spontaneous and genuine. One of those unique cultural experiences you couldn't pay any amount of money to experience in a theater.

Last night, I joined them again for dinner and a couple of drinks, and we started talking about *everything* - academics, politics, family, culture, etc etc. After a while of discussing when I felt comfortable, I asked the question that had been racing through my mind from the moment I heard "Rwanda". Not "what happened?" We saw the news and heard the stories, and I'm sure that was only a fraction of reality - but that is precisely why I could never ask. It's only a fraction and yet a horrible story. Instead I asked "What's it like now?" I feel like I saw a lot of Cambodia, a country that also came through a massive genocide, and what I've seen was dark and deeply saddening. Depression, alcoholism, low economic growth, prostitution. It's a country suffering PTSD and not realizing it. So I wanted to know how Rwanda is progressing by comparison since our news doesn't cover what's happening there now. What I heard was inspiring - they credit the president that rose from that time for saving the country and in fact each of their own lives. Things are stable, lives are moving on, and while nothing is perfect (by their own admission), it's still like they have created "heaven" when before everything (even before 1994) was hell. Since the Belgian colonists left in 1963, there was one university in Rwanda until after 1994. Since 1994 there are now 14 universities. The One Laptop project has been incredibly active, and many of the Rwandan children are at least minimally computer literate. They're proud of their progress but see that there is a lot of work left to do. In fact, they feel like their country has come so far but fear that it won't continue to move further.

I'm actually really sad that I won't see them again after tonight. We are leaving for Mombasa in the morning, and they are returning home the same day we get back. Each of them has warmly invited me to visit them in Rwanda any time, and I think I will really have to consider it. From what I've seen of their hearts, enthusiasm, intelligence, and kindness, it seems like a beautiful country to visit.

One small step

I think I made an incremental amount of progress today that may have a monumental effect at KU. I gave a grant writing seminar for about 25 participants and went through the general structure and preparation as well as the expectations of reviewers and granting agencies. The whole presentation went really well, and I clearly had an interested audience actively taking notes and asking really insightful questions. A good conversation followed about international collaborations and preliminary data. (How are you supposed to get preliminary data when you don't have the resources or equipment to do some of the the first fundamental experiments?) One junior faculty member even gave me a grant he was about to submit to ask me for feedback and suggestions, and I think I can expect several more to follow. So I felt overall quite useful in expressing that this is a learned skill that takes years to acquire, that it's worth the investment, and that individuals shouldn't get frustrated by failure and give up. They seemed surprised by the rejection rate in the US.

Two things came out of these conversations that were particularly striking. One was a question - "Are there mechanisms built in that recognize when you have difficulty with an approach and spend too much of your money troubleshooting before things start to work?" That's something none of us really have to worry about. Grants in the US are *huge* by comparison, and we can spend a lot of time trying different things without worrying about the funds running out too quickly. We can be at least a little bit innovative and risky day to day. Here, a grant that is $20,000 is quite good. But that money has to be wisely and carefully spent, and there isn't much wiggle room for trial and error. It was a really good question and one I wasn't sure how to answer other than "lean on the experience of others to work out technical issues more quickly so you can move forward more efficiently".

The most animated conversation that came of the day was surprisingly focused on the budget. I hadn't planned to talk much about administrative specifics until I was in a conversation with a faculty member this morning who said that the university "takes" from the research money they receive. She really didn't like this. So I explained the way it works in the US and probably most other places - there are "direct costs" like salaries, equipment, supplies, etc and "indirect costs" that are the institutional overhead (space, administration, electricity, water, etc). The indirect costs at KU are about 15% of the total grant, but the communication between the administration and the researchers hasn't clearly stated what that money is for and how they should budget accordingly. One of the grants administrators (also a research faculty) was present, which was fabulous because she was able to clear up a lot of misconception. And I was able to back her up so they wouldn't be so suspicious. The researchers at KU had started applying for grants independently and taking money directly rather than go through KU because they thought the university was "stealing" what they'd worked so hard for. Or they stopped bothering to write grants at all. I can understand that. I feel that way about Harvard sometimes also where the indirect rate is far far higher. But I was able to explain the purpose for including those funds, and the administrator from research development was able to explain to the audience that they should budget 15% beyond what they think it will cost to do the work so that it doesn't feel like the university is "stealing". Win.


On a less serious note - it's Culture Week! This is fascinating. One week each year, the campus of KU becomes a festive environment of multiculturalism. They have performances each night from all over Africa, so we're getting to feel like we're traveling the whole continent in our very short stay. There were dancers, musicians, and martial artists from Nigeria, Tanzania, and more in addition to the students at KU. Even salsa dancers! Here I was captivated by the students from the school for the blind dancing a traditional African dance in grass skirts when the announcer enthusiastically introduced the KU salsa dancers as "probably the only students on the campus who know how to do this dance." Exotic is clearly a matter of perspective!

Splitting rocks

There is a lot that can be changed at KU but also a some internal resistance. Oddly, the resistance seems to come from some of the same people who want change. There’s an initial resistance that melts a little when you start to ask questions, but then I gently poke and prod and make suggestions, and people open up and start to talk. And I start to feel like I’m making a little bit of progress. The best example is use of faculty time. KU wants to expand their research program and start to be more competitive for grants and increase publications. But when you start asking faculty about the structure of their day, all they do is teach. Some are teaching three classes in a semester at KU and another two short courses at other campuses, plus over seeing the “open learning” courses that are essentially self-tutorial students who work and can’t come to class. Then they’re supposed to be supervising masters and PhD students, many of whom are not even working on this campus because they’ve gone to other institutes or campuses with better resources.
I had a meeting this morning with a faculty administrator. The first thing I asked is how the time is being managed for faculty and if he thought research expansions was feasible. He said that the lecturers complain that they teach a lot, and he sounded dismissive. But his face changed, with some surprise, when I said “Well, it sounds like they do teach a lot”, and I started to ask about his own teaching load. He listed off his responsibilities and said that he actually used to do research before the university started taking more and more students, and his teaching and administrative loads increased. Now he has no time for research and was only able to dedicate about 24 hours to writing his own grant. So I start asking about having graduate students take some of the undergraduate teaching load, and various faculty say “the graduate students won’t teach without being paid, and the university doesn’t have the money”. So then I went to a few of the masters students and explained to them how we structure graduate school in the States – how students are required to teach as part of the curriculum. They liked the idea and said they would actually enjoy teaching and being trained by faculty on how to teach. So there goes that straw man. Slowly slowly, bit by bit, I’m going to jostle this place around and see what happens. The resistance will come from the old folks who say “but this is how it has to be done, because this is how it’s always been done”, but the hope comes from one of the young masters students who said he wants to go through all of his schooling and professional training so he can eventually be an administrator and change the education system of Kenya. And another student who said “if you want to break a stubborn rock, you have to hit it harder”.

On being an American overseas

This was a fascinating day of perspectives. Evans was our gracious host (along with his two beautiful and energetic children), and we were out and about the city of Nairobi. We started with a hillside view of the city where he pointed out the major buildings, including our second destination – the former site of the US Embassy that was bombed in 1998. The site is now a memorial garden and museum. A marker in the garden lists the 218 casualties of the bombing, and the striking thing is that all but about 7 of those names were Kenyans. It’s sad and disturbing when any lives are lost, but even more striking when those lives aren’t even of the nationality the terrorists are bent on destroying. People who are just doing a job. Inside the museum, one of the placards reads off the story of a Kenyan guard of the garage gate who is credited for saving even more lives. The original intent was apparently to drive the van full of explosives into the underground parking garage, but this quick thinking guard avoided gunshots and grenades and managed to keep the van out of the garage. Instead, they detonated on the street and took more lives of passers by – but it didn’t take down the whole building full of people.

After a visit to the very well done Kenyan National Museum (complete with exhibits of venomous snakes!), we drove back to the KU campus through “Embassy Row”. The location is stunning. The embassies are scattered throughout small valleys with all sort of lush tropical vegetation. They look more like garden estates (albeit walled off) than any embassies I’ve ever seen. Until we got to the new US Embassy. Wow. The previous embassy was an unassuming concrete block office building in the center of Nairobi. The new embassy is a gianormous structure with minimal landscaping surrounded by high gates and guards that keep anyone without granted access at least 100 yards from the building itself. It’s a military complex. Understandably.

And now I’m settled back in my room flipping through the TV trying to tire myself enough to sleep before a very busy day tomorrow. It’s news hour. All of the channels are showing local Kenyan news. Except for one. Al Jazeera. It’s fascinating. What’s striking to me is that we hear at home about how it’s a horrible station that’s run by terrorists, but you know what? The anchors are all British and American. And the news they report has largely nothing to do with us. Most of the news is just news – riots in France, cholera in Haiti, Chinese protests against the Japanese. Truthfully, it’s probably far more world news that what anyone in the US ever pays attention to (there is a whole great big world beyond our borders). And even the ones that are about us are quite well done and to the point – like the current story on the impact in public schools of cutting property taxes in Arizona. Of course, I've only watched an hour or so, but I just found it kind of surprising. Something to chew on.

Aminals!

We’ve only been here for 48 hours, and we’ve had a fabulous time already. Yesterday, we met the director of the Center for Linkages which is the office that oversees international relationships at Kenyatta University. She’s arranged everything for us and introduced us to the chairs of the various departments. After lunch, we got a tour of the campus which briefly included the departments of Chemistry and Biochemistry and a long tour around the department of Zoology. The new chair has been in office for only one week, and his enthusiasm shines through. The chairs here only serve four year terms, so I imagine there’s a lot of change and a little turmoil every 4 years. He showed us around a few of the teaching labs with gorgeous dark wood benches and old brass gas fixtures. They were sparse spaces because the equipment is all stored away unless class is in session. I’m looking forward to next week and hope to sit in on a few classes.

But this weekend is all about fun, relaxation, and getting to know Kenya. Hudson picked us up this morning for a 2 hour drive north to the Nakuru Wildlife Park to see the animals! It was the first time we got to see outside the gates of the university, and the road we came in on is even more impressive by daylight. It will eventually be a major highway with four lanes going in each direction, but right now and for the last year and a half it’s been a red swath of dirt. The sides of the roadway are bustling with people on foot, and there is a large outdoor produce market not far from the university. There were hundreds of people milling about mountains of cabbages, bananas, potatoes, etc all stacked inches deep in thick red mud from the rains last night. Mmmm, tasty.

From the corrugated metal shanty towns, we turned down a road leading through a nicer neighborhood that got progressively nicer until we were in the “Runda Estates”. This is apparently the wealthy part of Nairobi, and it shows. The grandeur of the mansions competes with the extravagance of the US with one exception – heavily reinforced gates and high walls that gained razor wire and then electric fences as the houses got nicer and nicer. I had a chuckle at one that had invested in a “green” security system. They’d instead planted 8 foot tall cactus bushes all along the perimeter of the wall.

And holy missionaries, Batman! Ok, I know that I tend to exaggerate for emphasis sometimes. Just a little bit. But I think about one in ten non-residential buildings outside of Nairobi is some sort of religious organization – a church, school, orphanage, something. Seriously. They’ve got the Baptists, the Pentacostals, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Quakers, the Shakers, the candlestick makers. How many souls are there to save in this place? You’d think they must be fighting over the lost, and a main weapon seems to be fear. I saw plenty of signs about the wrath of God and the turmoil of humanity. Yowza.

About an hour north of Nairobi is the Eastern escarpment of the Rift Valley. Stunning view. That was one of those wow moments. Scenery you can’t do justice with a photo because the enormity of it all can’t be expressed in a two-dimensional image. Flat expanses of plains rimmed by volcanic mountains with a tiny little dot of a satellite station in the middle that I am sure seems far more impressive up close when not competing with the space surrounding. Further north, the Nakuru Wildlife Park surrounds Lake Nakuru which is just south of the city of Nakuru. Way hecka cool. I wasn’t sure what to expect but was sort of two minds about the whole thing. Either the animals would be spoiled by visitors feeding them from cars and would swarm in a very unnatural sort of way, or they’d be so skittish they’d be hiding in the bushes and we wouldn’t see anything. My how wrong I was…

This is a moment in literacy when I’m going to break the rules banning “laundry lists” since there is no better way of conveying what we saw: baboons, rhesus monkeys, pelicans, flamingos, zebras, antelope, gazelles, ostriches, rhinos (black ones and white ones), a hippo, giraffes, AND a lion. It was like the zoo but not at all like the zoo. Because they belong here. That’s what kept blowing my mind. This wasn’t the “Texas Safari” gamepark I went to as a kid where some rich eccentric weirdo imported a bunch of exotics to some random location. It wasn’t a zoo with “natural” enclosures where the animals looked bored.

The baboons had babies. Cute nursing babies that clung to mom’s chest until they tired of nursing and clamored up to cling to her haunches. Zebras ecstatically scratched their bums against well-worn trees. Flocks of hundreds of thousands of flamingos made the banks of the lake look painted in pink. Crowds of pelicans fishing in groups that swam together and suddenly circled and dove their heads under the water in unison to scoop up schools of fish. Enormous tank-like rhinos looked like a giant boulder with a snow plow for a head. A slow lumbering hippo surprised us wandering through the grass away from the shore of the lake. They look so goofy and non-threatening when they’re out of the water, but are one of the most deadly animals in this country. The giraffes were quite well-camouflaged in amongst the tall thin trees resembling their necks. And finally, just as we were leaving the park, we spotted a lioness that was only about 6 feet from our van and on a ridge right at eye level. Amazing.

Tomorrow we are touring Nairobi and visiting the national museum, so I am sure there will be much more to share. This post could get longer and longer depending on how the internet goes here. Theoretically, there is wireless internet, but it seems to not be working reliably. The connection in the hotel hasn’t worked since we arrived, but the graduate school next door has a separate router. Millie said it was working this morning, so us email junkies went on an excursion this evening after dinner – to no good end. We snuck through a closed gate and made so much racket we alerted the security guard who was super nice and let us wander around the outside of the building, through a barbed wire fence (there’s a lot of barbed wire here – keeps the students out of the landscaping. Well, clearly not very effectively). After much giggling and finally lining up our laptops in the dark along a low rock wall, we got the router connection but no internet, so I’m just going to be collecting these little stories until I can make a massive upload all at once.

Ga! Ga!

Hello from Nairobi. We made it in last night just fine - after a 6 1/2 hour flight from Boston to Amsterdam, a 2 hour layover, and another 7 hour flight to Nairobi. I was feeling pretty travel scuzzed by the end of that, so the hot shower in the Conference Center hotel and firm bed were very welcome.

We were met at the airport by two of the faculty who were our guests in Boston for the summer - Hudson and Evans. They couldn't have looked any happier to see us, and the warm hugs all around were very welcoming. Kenyatta University is on the other side of Nairobi from the airport, so we got a little bit of a tour of the city - albeit in the dark. What I can tell you of Nairobi so far: small shacks and old concrete buildings juxtaposed with glass highrises and a smattering of Mercedes dealerships selling giant SUVs. I have a feeling this is a country of contradictions. The main road leading from the city to the university is under construction, so it's mostly a two lane dirt highway that is variably converted to three or four lanes depending on the urgency and boldness of the drivers. There don't seem to be many small cars on the highways - mostly passenger vans and mid-sized buses. And a lot of the buses and lit up on the inside with brightly colored neon lights and have and odd combination of corporate advertisement and Bible verses blazed across the rear window.

Waking up in a new country this morning was blissful. It's peaceful but with the soft clamor of folks milling about the hotel. The landscape around at least this part of the campus is gorgeous, and it seems like every piece of vegetation is different from all of the others. The title of this post is referring to what Amanda has called "the Lady Gaga bird". It appears to be some sort of crow or raven but HUGE with a white breast, and it's very verbal. There seem to be a number of verbal birds around here, and they're roosting up in these gorgeous trees that are heavily loaded with purple flowers.

We're off soon to meet with our hosts at the university and get a lay of the land. I think the weekend plans are full of wild animals and a daylight tour of Nairobi, so we're excited to see what there is to see around here! More soon...