...For Kenya

On the way to Eldoret we stayed at a camp on Lake Naivasha.
This grove of green-bark acacia was quite picturesque at sunrise.

On the flight to Nairobi I chatted with an Indian guy from Dubai who works in hydraulic repairs for a shipping company. He is from Gao, a city in India whose residents are eligible for Portuguese residency, grandfathered in by colonial occupation. On the drive home from the airport I was amazed at the poly-story buildings which have since I was there six years ago. The roads were smoother, I was told a bypass was under construction to alleviate traffic, and I saw far less scattered trash than I remembered. The jam passing through Nairobi was all too familiar however, as was the ungainly ornamentation of Marabou storks along Mombasa Road.

Storks and traffic in 2009...
 (look closely at the tree farthest from you and closest to the road)

...And in 2016

The sunset I found wandering dirt paths on Aram's bike.

The view from the esccarpment.

 I spent a few days in Nairobi hanging out with Aram and Debbi (brother and sister-in-law) and the kids. It was lovely to have a yard with trees, and be able to bike out into cattle fields and green. I played some ultimate, met cool people (Nairobi Ultimate draws a disproportionately large concentration intelligent, accomplished, and mindful people), and generally enjoyed myself. I braved Nairobi roads and got familiar with the city via piki-piki (motorcycle). I actually became fairly comfortable on the bike, learning to exploit the flexibility of traffic laws. As has become the usual pattern, as soon as I was becoming at home in Nairobi, it was time to move to Eldoret to the new challenge of acclimating to a foreign city on my own.

Aram and the family accompanied me for the move up there and helped shop for the apartment. With a spare afternoon we visited Kerio Valley, an escarpment which is apparently one of the worlds premier paragliding destinations. I sadly didn’t get a chance to pursue that, but I did sit on some rocks watch the acrobatics of sparrows while a dust devil, storm, and rainbow crossed the valley below. Aram and I also threw a disc around among the hotel’s terraced gardens. The slope and wind off the escarpment made for quite a challenge and we amazingly left without any dislocations.

Priska joined from atop a honeysuckle encrusted retaining wall.
She missed plenty of  bid-able throws.

Shadrach had his own dragons to fight.

Then they went back to Nairobi, and I jumped into the work here. In the last two weeks I have been attempting to learn everything, from the language to sales to accounting and operations. I worked ten to twelve hours a day my first week, and didn’t have time until the weekend to finish setting up my apartment. It was all made up for by a lovely, rainy Sunday afternoon with tea and a book. Everyday tasks are more interesting here than in the US. The bike ride to and from work is remarkably challenging in the chaos of traffic. Matatus, the minibus public transport, completely ignore traffic laws creating an ever shifting gauntlet to test the cyclist. I have realized that it's much like mountain biking: you pick a line, stick with it, and hope you don't die. Buying vegetables is a battle of wits with the sellers since there are few set prices (and even those are a mystery to me). After my first trip I was happy to learn from my coworkers that I had not been ripped off too badly.

     So now I live in Eldoret. I work, eat, sleep, and bike, and look up as often as I can to see how cool this opportunity is. Simply my skin tone is enough to excite shouts from kids I pass and stares from the adults. The neighbor kids come stand in my yard and watch me sweep, and two of them wandered into my apartment while I was writing this paragraph to see what I am up to. It is draining to be the center of attention everywhere I go, but I’m working on not being frustrated about it. My saturdays have consisted of bike adventures, (stay tuned for a post about that, it was amazing: Waterfalls, swamps, and disappearing roads) and I think I was probably the event of the week for many of the villages I passed through. This is my life for now and I’ve no doubt that as soon as it becomes normal I’ll be off to the next challenge.