datelines

went on my first reporting mission this weekend. courtesy of an ever-humanitarian relief organization that shall remain nameless, out to save the world via satellite phone while they’re drinking duty-free alcohol by the [Olympic-sized] poolside.

dateline: kibwezi. in kenya’s southern rangelands, the poorest, dustiest part of the county, where desertification is most effectively running its course. even my kenyan coworkers had no idea where i was.

note for future missions: never show up on time – since the bus never leaves until an hour and a half later. do go and buy yourself that coffee instead of waiting to leave. it will ward off the creeping hangover that finally decides to set in as soon as you take off on the worst piece of tarmac in the entire country.

visited a number of farmers who are supposedly implementing land conservation techniques but are actually sitting around watching their goats grow skeletal and their grass disappear. each farm was a solid 45 minute drive off anything resembling a real road, down the most forgotten paths in africa. the baboons that ran alongside our vehicle had more of an idea where they were going. or, at least, they didn’t make as many u-turns.

at one point finagled myself into the un spokesperson’s vehicle after bribing him with cigarettes but he talked so much blather i actually preferred the comforts of a shockless, smelly safari van crammed full of environmentalists from all over the continent and the most disgruntled wire reporter i have ever met (no, not me. a german).

we were promised that we’d return to Nairobi by mid-day. but since we didn’t get to our first destination until noon, we all knew this was going to last far longer. but we had no idea that they’d added three field visits to our original schedule of two. our group of thirty-something delegates, press and aid organization officials was shepherded along the entire way by the “goat herder from hell” (as my new best friend ebba calls him) – a local agriculture officer actually in charge of implementing this colossal waste of money, ahem, relief effort on behalf of our fine friends at said humanitarian organization.

we literally drove hours and a half to farms to stay 15 minutes. luckily i was totally drawn in by the barren countryside and amazing village stores, boasting names like mama junior immaculate hotel and makueni machinery and safari lodge. mama junior’s is neither a hotel or immaculate and while the safari lodge does sell diesel engine parts, it also scoops you up a fine plate ugali with bushmeat for lunch.

i had a seventy-five year old man tell me i should move in with him and his wife and they would raise me as his daughter. this is after we toured his farm, saw the 76 foot well he and his wife dug by hand with a hammer and chisel over the past five years, and heard about how the elephants from the nearby national park trampled his mango trees. i had to politely decline but was not able to escape before he whipped out his cell phone and asked for my digits.

finally, finally, finally we were on our way back to Nairobi after having traveled three quarters of the way to mombasa (no small feat in a country where the roads make a 100 km journey last for three days). and then? it started to rain. let’s just say that prolonged the journey by two and a half additional hours. because if there’s one thing worse than african drivers, its african drivers trying to negotiate roads at night during the rainy season.

when we finally got back to town i collapsed at the nearest bar i could find, where conveniently my boss was also drinking and began a binge with him that didn’t end until work began on monday morning. i did get a chance to eat some delicious indian food in there somewhere. or at least i must have because i found leftovers in my fridge last night when i began to make a healthy dinner of beer and pineapple and opted for that instead.

i love stories with datelines outside of nairobi. and, ps, the article didn’t turn out half bad either.

warlording

that's right folks. had my first run-in with a former somali warlord the other night. we drank tea together and chewed qat - leaves east africans are quite fond of for the slightly drunken effect they provide. abshir, not sure if that's his real name but that's what he goes by used to be said barre's former chief of police. he's actually a friend of our somali stringer who pops into the bureau off and on throughout the day to read the newspaper, check his email and use the toilets. which pretty much sums up the activities of most of the local reporters in our office.

today, i went to nairobi women's hospital and interviewed rape victims. it was a depressing afternoon. but worse: upon reporting the attacks to the police, these women were scorned as prostitutes and told to go home. not that the situation in the united states is much different, honestly, but at least there's the pretension of due process.

tomorrow i'm off on my first mission out of nairobi. i'm going to check out the effects of desertification and land degradation in the kamba community, southeast of nairobi. i'm so excited. it'll be the first of many now that i've figured out how to fill out the expense sheet!

so i've finally figured out how to report here: talk to all the white people you can and find out what they're doing to "save the natives." they'll let you watch. they want to feel good about neo-colonialism. oops, i meant "aid work."

Hell's Gate

That’s what they call the most beautiful place I’ve ever put my eyes on. It’s a national park just 150 km outside of Nairobi proper and the drive out of the city is a journey in itself.

You descend from the frantic polluted streets of the capital, down a hillside, and finally settle into highway driving along the scariest road I’ve ever driven on in my life. During the day it’s bad enough – cars throttling crappy manual transmissions at breakneck speed with no accounting for lanes or the cow or goat herds that graze alongside (and in the middle of) the road. And that’s during the daytime; at night, it’s much worse because you’ve got all these obstacles to avoid and NO streetlights or moonlight to speak of – it’s rainy season and gets incredibly dark at six because of all the rain clouds hovering, waiting to flood you.

You’re wide-eyed and just trying to process all of this – and then the road drops off and you’re at a plateau with the most spectacular view of the Rift Valley with the volcanic Mt. Longot sulking in the distance and Lake Naivasha glistening in the bright sun.

No matter how near or far the horizon, whether you’re high on a mountain or in the valley below, there’s no way to explain the magnitude or the vastness of the land. You feel as if you’re being swallowed whole by something that you’ll never comprehend. This continent seems to go on forever, the colors of the land are so deep and rich, your senses so heightened and mutated – that’s why colonialism never worked. You can’t own this place. I don’t know why anyone would even try to fight that battle.

Once you turn off the highway, you’re thrust onto a patch of the most poorly maintained highway you’ve ever seen in your life. Let’s not talk about potholes – let’s talk about what passes for somewhat acceptable two by two foot patches of pavement in a sea of broken asphalt. Cars prefer to take the dirt paths alongside the road proper and those, my friends, aren’t much of an improvement. Still, it doesn’t stop the matatus – Nissan minibuses that shuttle people speedily and precariously from place to place to supplement the world’s most limited public transportation system (that’s another posting altogether) – from leaving half their transmissions on the road as they hurtle themselves forth by sheer force of will alone. A mere five minutes driving in these conditions is enough to exhaust and bruise you for a week.

Hell’s Gate is a never-ending patch of grassland encased by amazing rock formations. You’ll find zebra, antelope, African buffalo, and giraffes grazing lazily in the blistering afternoon. No one pays attention to the fact that they’re there except the Westerners. It’s amazing to be in a place where animals you’ve always considered exotic actually call home. Supposedly, you can see baboons at Hell’s Gate too, but I didn’t mind not sighting any. Their asses are a little spooky and I’d rather take a pass on the feces-tossing.

(Exotic animal aside: I heard this huge ruckus outside my apartment the other day, and when I went out onto my balcony to check out the scene, I’m treated to a pair of monkeys frolicking in the tree two feet in front of me. They ate bananas out of my hand, and I would have kept them as pets if they didn’t look so flea-bitten and I knew how to housetrain them.)

The real reason that folks go to Hell’s Gate isn’t for the wildlife, but for the gorges. You trek for three hours along the bottom of a riverbed that’s coursing a river of hot water from the hot springs that shower down from above. The trek is overgrown with lush vines, the rocks are slippery and precarious (wouldn’t be an “adventure” otherwise, eh, Domer?) and completely breathtaking. Screw those “Ithaca is gorges” tee-shirts. I want an “Africa is gorges” version.

After you’ve sated yourself with the bounty of all this beautiful land, there’s nothing better than finding yourself a nyama choma (roast meat) joint on the shores of Lake Naivasha. There’s no contentment you’ll experience like pulling yourself up to a heaping plate of tender goat flank and washing everything you’ve seen down with a few bottles of Tusker beer while watching hippos splash about in the distance before the refueling the gas tank for the (scarier than children with machine guns) drive home.

poverty

part of the reason that i've come to this region of the world is that i'm tired of reading news stories about famine, disease, genocide and POVERTY in Africa and nothing else. so it's slightly hypocritical of me to blog on about poverty, right?

i went to kibera last weekend and it's taken me quite some time to wrap my head around that situation. what was really striking was the complete zest and spirit that the slum's inhabitants seemed to possess in the midst of such devastating filth and need.

the slum covers 250 hectares - which translates into some 618 acres - and is home to nearly 1 million people, but who knows how many people live there.

as soon as you enter -- we did off a long dirt road and up a steep incline of slippery rock and dust covered in garbage and feces -- the stench hits. there's no preparing for the smell of human decay and it doesn't leave your nostrils for a long time after you've left the area. it's as if the world has left these people here to rot.

most people don't have more to eat than kale, the swahili word for which is sukumawiki - which literally translates into "push the week" meaning, of course, that it's cheap and filling enough for even the most destitute to feed themselves.

there's one main road, and the rest is a maze of metal sheets slapped haphazardly together to form houses that slip, slide and collapse as soon as there's a rainstorm. the road is lined with ditches of sewage, over which vendors set up stalls where they spend their days hocking vegetables, smoking intestines and rotten fish, and cooking chapati. the road is strewn with debris, which chickens, turkeys, goats, dogs and pigs all feast on throughout the day.

no stall is larger than 8 x 5 feet, houses included, and up to a dozen people sleep inside them at night. there's no running water -- they run hoses of water up from one of the more dismal treatment plants. and sanitation? welcome to the land of "flying toilets." the concept: you do your business inside a plastic bag, and after knotting the ends, toss it over your shoulder. where it lands is not your concern as long as it's out of your hair (and oftentimes quite literally in someone else's).

people here spend their days wandering their neighborhood streets, as sitting inside four bare metal walls isn't a very welcoming prospect. so they're either trying to eke out a living with a small roadside business; theiving what little there is from one another; gossipping with their neighbors or getting high on bhang (marijuana), qat (leaves that you chew to get high) & ch'angaa (traditional brew that's more methanol than alcohol).

there's a railroad track that cuts a swath through the slum, separating the poor from the poorest. it's amazing that there's even some kind of economic heirarchy imposed in a place like kibera, but people will be capitalists everywhere you go.

we walked around for three hours, flip-flopping (of course) through the rankest filth i've ever been around, and when i left, i was completely humbled. it's inspiring to me that people can be so welcoming and full of life while enduring (what i perceive - as a privileged westerner - to be) such hardship. the children run circles around barefoot in the dirt, chanting "how are you? how are you?" with eager gap-toothed smiles and claw at your shirt sleeves for the slightest bit of attention as their parents (often barely old enough to have reached puberty) look on shyly from the sidelines.

there's poverty and then there's poverty, and then there's african poverty and then there's kibera. and there'll aren't words for me to describe the magnitude of the squalor or the complete awe that i'm in (really - i know it sounds trite and all) of the people that live there for their ability to withstand and overcome.

asanti sana

just a quick post to say: thanks so very much to everyone for all of your concern - i'm fine, really. there's been no residual nightmares, no detrimental effects on my (lackluster) reporting, and certainly no stopping my exploration of the barstools of the (third) world.

xoxo

night commuters.

us extreme globalites have been having our fair share of troubles this week: dickie's been mugged at gunpoint, granito's battling ecoli and earthquakes, and me, well, last night i was chased by little children armed with machine guns, high on ch'angaa - the traditional brew that can cause blindness and a tendency for homicidal mania, apparently.

after feasting on the tastiest ethiopian food i've ever had and catching up with greg, i returned home around 11 and was completely sick and tired of being confined to my apartment in the evenings. so, i called my local friend, peter, and asked him to accompany me to a bar about 5 km up the road. we decided to walk -- we both thought it would be safe if i was accompanied by a local, especially since i live in one of the posher, more secure areas of town. besides, there's so much security in nairobi, you couldn't even piss in a bush without being watched from six sides.

but on our way home, these high little fuckers saw us and gave chase, firing off three rounds into the trees, squealing with drunken glee and tripping over themselves as they stumbled along the road. i've never run so fast in my entire life. we ended up jumping into a car that was traveling along the road, while it was still moving. we arrived home safely, if a little shaken, thanks to the kindness of kenyan strangers. and then we drank the better part of a bottle of whiskey to stop our hands from trembling.

neither of us thinks that they were actually intending harm. but no one really wants to be around a bunch of hammered twelve year olds with live ammo, do they?

i mean, it's not like i'm living in a fucking war zone here. but i guess i know that it's not just urban legend when they say don't go out at night unless you're in a car with tinted windows or bulletproof glass.

on a far brighter note, i learned how to drive stick yesterday -- i'm still a little shaky on the whole clutch thing and learning how to drive on the other side of the road. it's quite fun but i don't think i'll be proficient enough at it by the time that i leave to balance smoking a cigarette, talking on the cell phone, drinking a cup of coffee and scanning through the radio stations while i'm driving. three maybe, but not all four.

ugali si njema.

ugali, my friends, is probably the blandest food i've ever eaten. think unseasoned mashed potatoes, but that's being generous. thus the statement above - "ugali, not so good."

it's flour boiled in water until it becomes paste-like. it's served warm, scooped onto your plate with a dish in crescent-shaped servings and accompanies whatever stew you happen to be eating - if you're lucky enough to be eating something with it. farmers in northwestern kenya take tea and cold day-old ugali for breakfast and it sits in their stomachs, undigested, for the rest of the day, thus alleviating the need to eat anything else.

but the real reason i've been introduced to this most scrumptuous element of kenyan cuisine? it's what the locals eat before taking a beer, or two, or ten. not nearly as tasty as a slice at your local pizzeria, i realize, but filling and not awful when you dip it in a spicy lentil stew.

today am having dinner with the wife of a classmate of a friend of mine (that's terribly long-winded for the wife of tim's friend at tufts) which i'm looking forward to very much. i haven't yet had much opportunity to interact with kenyan women and it will be interesting to see how they spend their free time (which is certainly not in the bars that i've been frequenting so far).

during lunch hour(s) yesterday, otto and bosire took me to nairobi city park in an area called parklands. while it's nothing spectacular to put your eyes on, it is home to scads of monkeys which spend their afternoons swinging from tree branches, pulling at your hair and eating bread from your hands. totally enchanting.

so the finn is going to take me for a drive this weekend into the surrounding kenyan countryside up into the rift valley, and perhaps there will be opportunity to swing by the state-administered coffee plantation on the way. i'm excited to see what the kenyan landscape actually looks like, as nairobi's a bit of a hole (regardless of how much there is to put your eyes on here).

it's been an amusing day at work ever since i sent out copy to the wire with the headline: 'burundi FUCKERS kill 2 in an ambush' mistakenly. felt slightly relieved after i received an email from the africa desk that read: from now on, karen, if you must, use 'wanker' instead.

apocalypse

first there was yesterday's solar eclipse - amazing to behold. but the natural spectacle of it didn't even compare with the reaction on the streets. apparently, there hasn't been one in these parts for 22 years. people were looking through film negatives and green glass fanta bottles so as not to go blind, squawking with delight and jumping around, with little kids crying in fear of the darkness.

then, i was bragging to my friend last night that i didn't have any pestilence in my apartment - save for mosquitos, perhaps the most dangerous insect in africa, but i digress - while he's waging a war against roaches and ants. i jinxed myself. last evening, i flip on my bathroom light and think that i see a rat running across the tile floor. much to my dismay, i was quite mistaken. it was a cockroach half the size of my palm. no exaggeration. i've lived in new york and seen my fair share of vermin, but honestly, i've never seen anything that approached the size of this beast.

and there's the battle that my digestive tract is waging against me. i've probably spent more time in the bathrooms of Kenya than the city streets. things had been progessing nicely for the first couple of days, and then, i don't know what i ate, but, shall we say, it certainly hasn't been agreeing with me. but things are starting to look up (in case you needed the latest details about my BMs).

furthermore, boss is off to zanzibar this afternoon and says to me yesterday, 'while i'm gone, oversee the desk.' huh? does he think i have any idea what i'm doing here?

not to mention, had a, shall we say difficult?, meeting with the pa guy at the us ambassador's this morning in an attempt to seek out information about initiatives being implemented to improve us-east african muslim relations. even getting information from americans here is hard to negotiate.

enough grumbling. these are minor inconveniences and i feel selfish even relating them compared with what other people here go through. besides, as i've said before, the smallest hardships are big adventures and just make this experience so much more genuine. but someone remind me to buy candles, please, b/c i can't face another blackout with only my cigarette lighter. i've become the world's most bruised woman who isn't involved in an abusive relationship (but my late night drunken stumbling, i'm sure, contributes to that).

coffee tonight with the finnish fin after my swahili lesson. tho, i got an email from him yesterday afternoon informing me that he's not allowed to talk about what kind of work he does with MSF, so apparently this is a social call, not a professional one. but i'm kind of excited to meet someone closer in age to most of the westerners (or as they like to refer to themselves round these parts, 'expats') i've been hanging out with thusfar.

but good news on the horizon: lulu is heading to egypt in january for a dig in luxor - she's happier than a pig in the foulest smelling shit. but i can still gloat over getting to egypt before her - courtesy of medill's deep, grant money-filled pockets. i'll make it a priority to scope out all the trekkies before her arrival so she can jump right in...

where the streets have no name

seriously. it's not just a trite U2 lyric anymore. i was asking my friend what the name of my street was and he told me that there isn't one; upon further inquiry, i found out that my address is simply the name of my apartment complex, with "off Gitanga Road" thrown in for good measure. Good thing it's only 2km off Gitanga Road, otherwise i think the postman would have gotten confused. no wonder there's no mail delivery here.

that's the observation of the day.

i'm totally exhausted and would write more, but it's been a long day of subbing crappy french stringer copy and the thought of typing one more sentence, even if it doesn't contain the words 'rebel' or 'peace treaty' or 'civil war-ravaged' is going to be the end of me.

confinement

so, i'm currently holed up in the newsroom (yes, that's right folks, news never stops) because there's a demonstration (read: riot) going on in the streets below and if my kenyan colleagues don't want to leave, i'm thinking that i probably shouldn't attempt to leave the building either. if that makes me a pussy, then fine.

finally found an apartment and moved in yesterday afternoon. so exciting! it's lovely, furnished and in a safe area between two major shopping areas. and it's down the road from the best ethiopian restaurant in town.

am feeling slightly overwhelmed still by my inability to get anywhere by myself. public transit is a series of poorly-driven buses and matatus (nissan minivans packed so full that they don't even bother closing the doors) that are more likely to break down before you get to your destination than not. so, yes, am currently weighing transportation options. i was hellbent on getting a motorbike, but everyone i've mentioned that idea to has looked at me like i'm completely batshit. so now, it's back to learning how to drive a stick. my colleague bosire has a car but no driver's license and has kindly offered it up.

oh, and ps, he's in the hospital with malaria right now. we're considering bribing the hospital officials to keep him admitted for two weeks to fully recuperate as he's in and out of the hospital constantly and heads directly to the office once he's been released. i admire his dedication, but lord, take a day off if you've got a tropical disease.

have been treated to quite a bit of the local nightlife. thursday went out for beers with my colleagues and boss, but boss left early and i was treated to a night on the town with the locals. basically, we went to a bar and made fun of malaya -- that's swahili for prostitute.

on friday, i went to my boss's house after work and we sipped cocktails on his veranda in the gated community in which he lives (next door to the british ambassador, for god's sake) before he treated me to dinner and a tour of the local expat hangouts. was quite good fun. he's a truly interesting fellow and has great war stories that he doesn't lord over you.

last night, marco, the photographer, had a 40th birthday party at his house up in another palatial area (yes, that's right. just like the states, folks. all the white people flock north). there were tons of westerners and met a finnish dude, appropriately named Fin (i kid you not), who works with MSF who i'm going to have coffee with next week. i felt really green among all of these established foreign correspondents, but, ah, it'll come with time. they had all these adventures to impart, and i'm just sitting there thinking, going to the grocery store is a big enough adventure for the time being.

i guess the main complaint i have is that i'm so dependent upon everyone else: for transportation, housing suggestions, cultural differences, story ideas, etc. i know i can't fully expect to know my way around or how the city operates after a week, but i'm generally a very autonomous person and haven't been very comfortable with being so reliant upon everyone. but they're incredibly generous and more than happy to help me become acclimated, so it's not as if it's a huge burden on anyone. it's just the realization that being in africa, and being a woman in nairobi after dark is much different than i'd expected and how much that actually effects the way i go about daily life.

on tap this week: a tour of Kibera with my coworker. we're going to take the bus there. it's the largest slum in africa and is home to more than a third of the city's population. and that's just one of the 3 major slums here.

xo xo