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.
Saturday, October 30, 2010
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
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!
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!
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
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”.
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.
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.
Sunday, October 24, 2010
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.
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.
Friday, October 22, 2010
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...
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...
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