Starting Off With a Bang

Hey, everyone!

           Let’s get something out of the way at first: Kenya is awesome! This past week and a half has been mind-blowing. I’ve learned so much already, and I’m anticipating that the rest of the summer here won’t be too bad, either. Brace yourselves, though, because I have a lot to talk about, so this won’t be a small post by any means.

The Journey to Kenya

           After my last post, my team and I immediately boarded a plane headed for Dallas/Fort Worth Airport. While that flight was only an hour and a half long, it was still exciting as both the biggest plane I’d ever been on, and the second flight I’d ever had. We touched down at DFW around three in the afternoon, and after an hour, boarded our jet liner headed for London, England. This flight was very cool, as an 8-hour international flight is much different than your standard trans-American flight. We were given two different meals, and every seat had a personal TV for you to watch shows, movies, listen to music, and view the flight path on. I couldn’t barely sleep at all during this flight, which took a weird path. To take advantages of some strong winds and other super-important airplane stuff, our flight path took us all the way across America, across the Great Lakes, and into Canada, where we finally turned and headed across the Atlantic Ocean. We breezed the tip of Greenland, flew over Ireland, and finally touched down at 7:30 in the morning local time… and 1:30 in the morning Kansas time.

We had about an hour and a half at Heathrow International Airport, until we boarded our second long flight from London to Nairobi, Kenya. I’d love to tell you about the sights and countries that I had on this flight, but for one, I was seated in the exact middle of the plane rather than the window. Secondly, I fell asleep for 7 hours out of the 9-hour flight. Before I knew it, we had finally touched down in Nairobi at 9:00 p.m. local time, or 1:00 p.m. Kansas time.

Besides the traditional excitement of traveling to new places, my flight was made interesting by the people my team and I met on the way. One woman, Diana, flew with us from Kansas City to Nairobi, so we shared every flight. She had an 11-month-old daughter named Zoey, who, as you can imagine, was extremely cute.  On the U.S.-London flight, I sat by an Indian man named Vikram, who was returning to Mumbai from a jeweler’s convention in Albuquerque, New Mexico. On my final flight, I sat next to a native Kenyan with a name I couldn’t hope to pronounce or spell, who told me much about the local culture and places we needed to visit.

Nairobi

            When we finally touched down in Nairobi, we went through customs, and attempted to get our baggage. Unfortunately, three bags out of our ten were delayed on the flight, so we would have to wait until the next day to retrieve them. We grabbed a shuttle to our next destination, the Kenya Comfort Inn in the middle of the Government District in the city.

We went to sleep, and the next morning, we had the good fortune to meet Paul, the Director and driving mind behind the CYEC. He’s one of those few people you’ll meet whose charisma is obvious in everything that he does. He's incredibly inspiring, and to hear about his life's journey was amazing. We had breakfast with Paul at Java, a local coffee house that had good toast, and better coffee. After talking with him for a while, we walked for about an hour around the city, and he showed us some of the sights, and helped us get our bearings. After lunch across the street from our hotel, we met Chris, a former youth from the center who is attending university in Nairobi. Chris led us to a museum and snake house, where we made some new, scaly friends. That night, we went to a foreign film festival, where we watched a Swedish film. It was especially strange to be watching a Swedish film, with English subtitles, in the middle of Kenya, but we made it work. For the finale to our first day, we made our way to an Ethiopian restaurant where we met back up with Paul, for some of the best food I’ve had anywhere. If you ever are lucky enough to eat Ethiopian food, the shekla tips will not treat you wrong. Fun fact about Kenya: the drinking age is 18! Alcohol is just an expected part of Kenyan culture here, and it’s no big deal to people having beer or cocktails at 12 in the afternoon. In particular, there’s a beer called Tusker that may be bigger here than Budweiser is in the U.S. While I had an amazing day, it was eye-opening in some ways. On that day alone, we saw a youth in the street who was either passed-out or dead, countless street children, beggars, and cripples, and the other expected symptoms of a society where poverty is a serious problem. You could glance around, and see those that were unemployed, those who lived on the street, and those who made a living hawking street goods and preying on tourists. You had to have your wits about you, or you would be taken advantage of.

The next day, Chris took us to a local giraffe park. The ride to the park was an hour long, and like the previous day, it was sobering to see the stark difference between poor, rich, and white. After going to the park, and kissing some giraffes, we watched a show called Bomas, which was traditional songs and dances from African culture. When the show ended, we met up with Paul one more time for dinner. We decided to go to bed early, because the following day, we would be going to Nyeri, to actually settle in at the CYEC.

Nyeri and the CYEC

           

            The ride to Nyeri was long and eventful. We started on our way out of the city, then stopped for lunch and animals at the Blue Post Hotel. Hotels aren’t places to stay here, by the way, they’re just restaurants. The Blue Post had quite the cool assortment of animals, and we also got to see a beautiful waterfall while we were there. The ride showed us the Kenyan countryside, which was bursting with animals, plants, and color. Like the previous day, though, you could see how to most people, having the leisure time and money to travel would be an unreachable dream. You could see the poverty, or what we think of it in the US, everywhere. It was even one of the first things I thought of when we actually arrived at the CYEC in Nyeri. I looked around, and I saw the broken windows, the dirty walls, and the way some things were broken down and in disrepair. It took one day for me to realize that the real value of the center wasn’t in any of the facilities; it was in the people that work there. The staff, the older youth, the kids… Everyone here is completely inspiring, in their own way. Most of the kids are from homes and families that can’t care for them anymore. Some of them are straight from the streets. Some are even from jail. And all of them are doing so much better, because of the efforts of the people here. There are 96 children here in 8^th grade and below, and around 25 in high school and beyond.

As for volunteers, there are quite a few from Penn State University. Some others are from Australia, Finland, and other parts of the U.S. We arrived here on Monday, and for the past week, we’ve been working on everything from remodeling rooms and buildings, to helping run an open house for the center, to our main project now, which is setting up a system inside the center that will basically be an entire economy based on doing extra jobs, earning credits, and spending them in a shop.

As I mentioned earlier, the kids at the center are the main part of our days! I get up around 5:30 or 6, go on a run, and walk with the kids to school. After breakfast at 7:30, we start on the projects for the day. We have lunch anywhere from 12-2, and the kids return to the center from school around 5. We get to play and have fun with them until about 7:30, when they have workshops. Dinner is anywhere from 6-8, and bedtime for this guy is around 10. It’s been hard, especially since so much is actually on Kenyan time, which means everything is very fluid, and the schedules are nowhere near as set or easy to understand as ours. I’m doing my best though, which includes trying to find the time to write posts like this! I’m going to try to keep updating at least once a week, so that all my posts won’t be as huge as this one. Keep an eye out on my Facebook for pictures from my trip, and this summer will fly by before I know it.

Tutuonana,

Chance