Look Ma No Hands!

[WARNING: If you are my mom, you may experience slight numbness in your left arm and shortness of breath after reading the following post. Proceed with caution.]

This weekend can only be summed up as the most terrifyingly amazing weekend I’ve ever had. Let’s start it off with the drive from Eldoret to Kisumu (both in Kenya) then to Jinja, Uganda. This would have gone a bit more smoothly if an incident with a bus didn’t just go from Kenya to Uganda  a week ago, so it took us an hour and a half when it should have taken about ten minutes. We had to get out and get stamped for exiting Kenya and exchange money with someone who printed out a nametag for himself that called him a “Money Collector.” We are friends with our tour guide – remember Jay? – so he got us a good exchange rate. They still had to check the car over and over since it was new and then of course we parked in an area we couldn’t get out of since a truck parked behind it and was getting filled up with sacks of stuff. But eventually we got out of Kenya, drove across to Uganda, and got out again to get our stamp for entering Uganda. So finally we were on our way to Jinja where the real adventures would begin.

                We got in around 4:30 (hoping to get there closer to 3:00, oh well) and entered the campsite where we would be taking the buses for our white water rafting trip down the Nile! This adventure wouldn’t begin until tomorrow though, so we just got a few beers with three other friends that we were meeting there and grabbed some dinner in the campsite that we were staying. This was the easy day. We walked around the site a bit, which was amazing. It was all built into the side of a mountain that faced the Nile. There was a long walkway that led to a small beach. The dinner/restaurantish place in the camp looked out over the water as well, which was so cool to see. We all hung out there for a few hours, but knowing the adventure would begin bright and early the next morning, we headed to bed kind of early.

                There were four of us that were going so we got up with the ring of the alarm, threw on our bathing suits, and other layers – thankfully someone we knew went the day before and told us to put on longer layers because the sun was pretty brutal out there. We jumped on the bus with about 40 others and were on our way. Now to give you a bit of a background, we went this weekend because Jessica’s brother, who is in the Peace Corps in Uganda, was going with 30-40 others. If you want to take a time machine back to the 60s hang out with about 30 Peace Corps guys and girls, it’s a trip, no pun intended. So we were off in our rickety, open air bus thing to where we would take off in our rafts. We got a group of 6 together, the four of us plus Jessica’s brother and a random guy who was not part of the Peace Corps. We got sent off with Henry, our fearless driver of the raft. He did not talk much – even with my prodding of questions and general chit chat – but he did an awesome job of directing our tube. So to get the best picture of the trip down the Nile you’ll have to check out all the pics that I downloaded and at some point a video – which I will never be able to upload because of the internet signal, but believe me the flips are amazing on it – but I’ll give some highlights. We went over 11 Class 3 to 5 rapids with some Class 1 and 2 rapids intermingled throughout. Henry gave us some instructions as to what we should be expecting and what we should be doing when going down these rapids, but as someone who has never white water rafted down anything - unless tubing down a tiny river in the back of my house in CT counts – showing is nothing like doing. So he had us jump out of the tube, he flipped over the tube and all the rest, so we could kinda see what could happen. With what was apparently enough instruction, we were on our way and a class 5 was first. There were three important instructions, paddle forward, paddle hard forward, and get down! I was very good at the get down one. At that point you lay your paddle across the outside of the raft and hold on to the rope around the tube, while ducking inside of the tube – better to just see the pics. I’m the one in the light pink helmet with the light gray shirt on. It’s kind of hard to spot me because I was on the wrong side of the camera most times, probably better this way since I know I had a look of panic on my face at all times. So the first two rapids were terrifying but so much fun. It’s like you are zooming down the river then crashing into a wall of water, the tube taking it over, then crashing into more until the water calms down. Very cool.

Mom skip this paragraph: So I can say that I only thought I was going to die once, which I think is pretty good when there are 11 very big and fast rapids to overcome. Ironically it was a Class 3, which was wrongly named 50/50. I would like to call it 90/10. This is because I would say 90% of the boats that tried going over ended up flipping. We were one of the unlucky ones. We went over a part and then a big wall just pushed us over. Now this would have been all fine and dandy if I popped back up, but no, I was under water to the point that I thought to myself, hmmm am I getting above the water at some point? Breathing would be nice right now. And then I finally did, and then more water whooshed over me, but of course, they know this happens all the time so there are a lot of guys in kayaks all around us which I immediately swam over to and grabbed on to the handle on the top of it. He brought me back over to the raft where 3 people were and Henry. Two of the girls got swept away and another raft pulled them up onto it. We saw them again a little while later. So yeah that was kinda scary, but you never feel better than that first breath you get after being under for awhile.

 So the rest of the time was crazy, but exhilarating. One of my favorite rapids had to be the waterfall we went over. It was a class five and looking down on it, it looked like there was no way we were going to get over. It was called Overtime, correctly named as it was 3 and a half meters up so roughly tenish feet. This may not seem too high if you are looking from flat ground but when you are going over it in a raft it’s a different story. There are some awesome pics of it in the photo gallery.

 It’s really hard to describe the exhilarating feeling you have going through each and every rapid as you think you could inevitably get flipped, but instead you just barrel through with mountains of water rocketing in your way. The entire trip down the Nile lasted almost 6 hours, so there was a lot of downtime. My arms are still a little sore from all the rowing we did. We also got to jump out of the raft during the down times and swim. So you then have to think to yourself while floating in the water, “hey, I’m floating in the Nile, this is unreal.” What made it even better was everyone got to the side of their tube and flipped off into the water. I don’t know the last time I flipped off of a boat, but I couldn’t miss a chance to do it again, so I climbed up and flipped away. Man, it’s fun to flip into water. Well the adventure for the day was done and we took the rickety bus 40 minutes back to camp. We got an awesome bbq and two drink tickets to celebrate the day’s adventure. Some of us explored around the site and then watched the video they made for us – I’m hoping I get a copy that is supposed to circulate around at some point. So many boats flipped through the course of the day, which made it a lot of fun to watch after the fact. You know, always fun to watch terrifying events after they occur. We hung out a bit more before bed. Now, there is one other thing in this area that a lot of people do, but I wasn’t sure if there was going to be enough time. I also heard that a couple of Peace Corps people were going to go, so I talked with Jay and he hooked it up for the morning.

Mom, you will probably want to skip this paragraph too. What did Jay set up the night before? Why did I not get a lot of sleep that night??? Because I was getting up early to go bungee jumping!!! Yes I am one of those crazy people that if the opportunity arises will do scary stuff that human beings were never meant to do. So I got up after a restless night feeling very nauseous, butterflies flying all around my stomach. I found the two guys I talked to the night before who were getting the other Peace Corps people together and we were already to go. Since we needed to get back to Kisumu as soon as I jumped, I was told to go first. I set up Lauren (the other GW person) and Jay to take pics and video tape the crazy experience. Jessica came up to the top of the plank to take pictures. I’m not sure what to call it, but plank kinda sounds appropriate. The other 5 Peace Corps people came out on the plank too. You’ll see in the pics the process of getting situated in since Jess did an awesome job of taking pictures of all the steps leading to my jump. It’s hard to describe the feelings up to the actual jump, but for anyone who has done it before, the anticipation before the jump is not a good feeling. I had the rope all tied on to my ankles – which consisted of a blue towel and some blue cinch cord – which the actual bungee clipped on to. The guy doing it said it was a Kikuyu tradition and it was 100% safe. I said uh-huh and got up to start my slow trek to the edge. I had to mini jump to one part and then shuffle the rest of the way to the edge. One of the pics caught exactly what I was feeling by showing my toes curled around that edge. I had to put my hands up to a bar to steady myself and prepare to go. When I was ready I was told to lower my arms and say out loud that I’m ready. Lowering my arms from the bar was very difficult, I probably put them back up 3 times, but thankfully everyone was very patient. Then the guy that was leading the whole thing told me he would say 1, 2, 3, bungee! And then I was to jump out like I was doing a belly flop. So he said 1, 2, 3, bungee and I said wait what, no! I apparently was not ready just yet. So we had to try one more time.  There was one point that I really did not know if I was going to be able to do it. Thankfully being a stubborn enough person that would never let me live it down for turning around, I sucked it up and the next time I heard 1... 2... 3... BUNGEE! I leapt into the air. Not sure if I completely remember the whole falling part, but it was crazy amazing. I swan dived with the Nile beneath me and the second I sprung back up it couldn’t have felt better. Then I got to bounce a bunch of times before being lowered a little to the boat below. There were two men there to get me. I grabbed onto one of the paddles and lied down in the boat. Yelling and cheering all around me, it was a feeling that you can only have after jumping into nothingness I guess. Go bungee jump, then you will know how I felt. Terror to excitement in a split second, utter craziness.

 So we hopped on the road back to Kenya (border crossing a million times better), leaving behind experiences that I can never relive in those exact moments. It was truly amazing. Each weekend passes and is better than the previous… what’s next?

(Mom, nothing is next, don’t worry about it.)

An Amazing Morning

               So I’ll have to go into my awesome weekend - where I met a lot of people from the town and am now very excited for my birthday tonight - for another post since I had such an amazing morning this morning. Well first I guess I have to talk about yesterday where I finally got a lengthy plan of what I will be doing from now until the end of April. It was a nice little vaca while it lasted, but apparently I have to do real work while I’m here as well. Yesterday, Jessica and I, along with Violet (our preceptor), drove down to Kisumu – about a two hour drive – to meet with the person whose dissertation we are becoming research assistants for. She is currently in Kisumu because she is teaching a class for the GW kids who are spending the semester there (you can do that in your first year of Global Health for GW). So there was myself, Jessica, Lauren (another GW fellow who will be doing the same work as Jessica and I), Violet and Tova – the person who is head of it all. We went over a very lengthy plan which resulted in Jessica and I having to move down to Kisumu for 6 weeks then back to Eldoret for the remaining 2 months. Looking on the positive side it will be cool to live in two places in Kenya, but what kinda sucks is that we just met so many awesome people over the weekend that we won’t be able to really hang out with for awhile now. Oh well.

                For all of you who care what the actual project is continue to read, if not skip to the next paragraph J. We will be using a tool developed by the WHO called the Service Availability and Readiness Assessment (SARA) tool. It was created in order to map clinics in rural areas to mark down the resources and services used there (there are more complex things to it as well, but that’s the short of it). We now need to modify this tool so it can be used in the urban areas of Eldoret and Kisumu in order to map these clinics as well. It is apparently a very exciting project that if successful could be used nationwide and inevitably in many other African countries. This seems pretty crazy to me that we will be working on molding a tool that could be used in so many different areas.

So that brings me to this morning. Back in Eldoret, we are visiting two slums this week and going to as many clinics as we can to initially take down what resources and services that are offered there. This is just to create an initial rapport with the site workers and introduce ourselves to the area so when they see us again with the SARA tool they aren’t surprised by it. The overall visiting of the clinics was very interesting (minus the one asshole doctor from Slovakia that decided to make fun of me, but we don’t have to go into that). It is always enlightening to see what clinics from other countries have to provide and the way they go about giving care to their patients. They had many of the same facilities we do, only in a smaller scale. There were TB clinics, HIV testing, antenatal clinics and so on. As you can see this could all make for a pretty interesting morning, but it is not what made it so exciting for me. Jessica and I met with a community health worker (CHW) from AMPATH in the morning who brought us around to these clinics. It is obviously easier to introduce yourself into an unknown environment if someone from the area is with you – and can speak the language. The person who accompanied us was named Walter and he was awesome. I probably could have talked with him for the rest of the day, but we only had the morning to work with, and you are probably thinking I can talk to pretty much anyone for an entire day, but Walter was seriously exceptional.

Walter became a community health worker in AMPATH (after you read this please google AMPATH, it’s an amazing organization that saves many lives every day from HIV/AIDS) after he was diagnosed with HIV himself, five years ago. He has taken the time to empower and educate himself of the disease and has grown into an amazing person because of it. Throughout talking to him it seems as if HIV has turned into a positive reality in his life instead of a devastating life sentence. We talked about the education he brings to the slum areas and how he is trying to empower others like himself. He understands that it is education that will help more people get tested and return for treatment. He is also very interested in the stigma that surrounds HIV/AIDS and the second he said that I was hooked. If you don’t know already my main focus for public health is not only HIV/AIDS in Africa, but the stigma that surrounds the disease and prevents so many people from getting tested and receiving the proper treatment. Walter just solidified everything I thought I knew about stigma. He described how many people will go into the hospital to get tested instead of AMPATH because they do not want other people to see them go into this building, since it is so well-known for treating HIV. He talked about how the men in the area are sooo uneducated about the disease and will not get tested because they do not believe they need to. There are so many cases where the women will get tested, but cannot tell their husbands due to the fact that these men will blame the women for getting infected and bringing it into the family, which could result in the man leaving her. What is known too is that the majority of the time the man brings it into the family, not the woman. I could probably go on forever discussing these issues, but in the end Walter was an amazing person to travel around Langus with. He is the prime example of a person who has seen the bottom, but was somehow able to climb back up and find the positive in it and reach out to his own community.

The most telling part of the morning was when we were sitting on a bench waiting for the taxi to pick us up to bring Jessica and I back to the IU house. He started talking about when he first found out that he was HIV positive. He said that he had decided to commit suicide because he was ashamed and did not want to bring it into his family. He said that he was at the edge of a building and all he wanted to do was jump off. Somehow he was able to step back and realize that he did not want to do that to his wife and children. From that day on, he sought counseling and group therapy. To know that there are groups in this area where people living with HIV can go to discuss the disease seems like an amazing feat for the town. He was able to relate to others like himself who are also living with this disease, and in turn help educate and bring hope to more people that were just like him. It was truly an inspiring story, which he told with such fervor I was speechless. I hope to stay in contact with him throughout the time I am here and afterwards. These are the stories that make public health kids like me want to continue to come back to these areas and promote better lives for the people living here.

These are the times that make me want to be in Africa.

Billy Blanks has Nothing On Him

I've had a pretty busy, non-work-related week this week. A long walk around town on Monday which adding the morning and afternoon walks together ended up being over four and a half hours of wandering around. It definitely helped to get to know the town better. Tuesday was a super busy day filled with all sorts of stuff, even a little bit with what I'm actually supposed to be doing here. So it started out with going to the Sally Test Pediatric Center. I went with another girl here, Sarah, and spent most of the morning there. The Sally Test Center is a place for the children in the hospital to go when the doctors do not need to see them. It allows them some fun while having to spend long periods of time in the hospital. It was created by Sarah Ellen Mamlin, who is the wife of the man who created the place where I am staying. He has done a million other things as well, but that is for another post. Definitely look him up though, his name is Joe Mamlin and has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize twice already - yes the Nobel Peace prize - how cool is that? So Sarah Ellen helped to create it, but a woman by the name of Sally Test put up the initial funding to make it all happen. That morning was wonderful. We played with plastic blocks, playdough, and foam clay stuff and just tried to interact with the kids as much as possible. I know how to say my name is and what is your name in Swahili, so I could communicate a little with them. We also went over to the baby area, where four babies were being looked after. Most of these babies were orphaned by their moms who had left them at the doorsteps of the hospital. The Sally Test Center will then take them in and care for them until they are old enough to be able to go to another center. I held this one baby, named Jeremy, who was adorable. He couldn’t have been more than a year old, and seemed a very happy baby. There was another baby there that loved the music that they were playing and one of the people who worked there danced with her a lot. Many of these children have sad stories, but this center provides such a great outlet for them to play and have an opportunity to be kids while they have to go through certain hardships during their very young lives. I think if I ever have any real money, giving back to this place would be amazing. There are some pictures in my photo gallery of the center and me with the kids. I guess some maternal instincts may be appearing just in time for my nephew to arrive. We’ll see about the babysitting Justin and Milana!

I ended up having to run from the center, back to the IU House to change then back to the hospital because I found out last minute that I actually had a meeting with my preceptor to talk about the project that I am supposed to be doing here finally. My Preceptor’s name is Dr. Violet Naanyu, and she is amazing. She is so down to earth and personable. We both saw though, that neither of us really knew the project that I was supposed to be doing and that a lot of questions needed to be asked to the person who organized this whole thing. Thankfully Dr. Naanyu was cool enough to take this in stride and planned on contacting this other person shortly after our meeting. She has also planned a dinner for Jessica and me for tonight which we are very excited about.

Next, the real “fun” came in for the day. So there is this gym in town called Billy’s Fitness Depot where many IU House residents have gone in the past. The true kicker is the guy who runs the place (not named Billy). His name is Javin and he is a two-time placed body builder in Kenya. He has come in first and second. He may be a mere 5’ 7” about, but he is all muscle, and like scary muscle. Seriously his thigh to ass muscle is ridiculous and then his shoulders are enormous. I’ll have to take pictures next time I go so you can get a better picture of him. The best part is that he is seriously one of the nicest men there. Why I’m going into all this is because we took a Tae Bo class that night. I don’t think I’ve ever been to a harder class in my life. The “warm up” even killed me. You are jumping and running and squatting and kicking and punching the entire time. I stopped after 25 minutes. The fact that I was seeing white spots and thought I was going to fall to the ground kind of let me know that taking a break was a good idea. Thankfully he did abs twenty minutes later so I joined back in. During the class though he is super motivating slash scary. He will yell at you to do better but then go ayayayayayayaya in a high pitch yell so you can do nothing but smile at him even if you are in a lot of pain. And then he will get in your face and tell you to kick higher, so there are good and bad parts to it. I told him at the end of it that it was my goal to actually be able to finish an entire class by the end of my four months here, may be a lofty goal because he said this class was actually slower than normal… I’m going to die. Next class is next Tuesday, which seems like the perfect birthday present… :)

Well the fun just couldn’t stop from there. We all came back, scarfed down some dinner then had to jump in the showers because we had to get ready for the night’s entertainment, karaoke! I thought I was leaving my musical prowess back in the states, but oh no, at Club Spree in Eldoret every Tuesday they have Karaoke. So we jumped in the cab to check it out. Kenyans here take their Karaoke very seriously. They have a book of all American songs, many from the 90s and early 00s, and all amazing of course. For most songs only one person would get up on the “stage” area and sing their asses off. None of them had good voices, but this didn’t matter to anyone. You got up there and gave it all you got. After the Armageddon song was done I knew that this was a must for my birthday next week. Now, I did not actually go up myself this time around; I’ll have to get used to getting the guts to go without flip cup confidence behind me. Next week I’m hoping we can all put on a show. It will help that the large beers here are only 150 shillings (almost $2). One really cool part that night was that the actual singer of one of the Kenyans most popular songs was actually there singing that song! None of us knew it of course but most everyone in the bar was up and dancing and having an awesome time. It’d be cool if he came back again.

So as to not make these posts too too long and deter people from getting through them I’ll stop here. Each day though it seems like some cool new things are here for me to do. Many new experiences and ones that I will be able to really become a part of after these four months have passed.

When in Africa I Recommend the Chinese Spicy Chicken Pizza

So the title might seem kinda weird, but it will all make sense in a few minutes. On Saturday morning, after my long trip was put behind me and I slept for about ten hours, the other person from GW arrived. Her name is Jessica and will be doing the same project as I am for these next four months. I just sat around for the morning watching her put away her clothes - since she got her bags - with envy. I had grabbed some food from the kitchen - peanut butter and jelly - which I think I will be living on for the majority of my mornings here, and went back to my room. Jessica and I decided we should explore around town for a bit, to try to get acclimated to the area.

After about a twenty minute walk down, stop in a grocery store, and what felt like a little longer back, we were exhausted. Who knew that coming from a place that had a 300 foot elevation to one at 7000 feet would have an effect? Breathing wasn’t exactly fun, but we trudged through knowing we needed to get used to it. We were glad we just made a short trip though because we were nowhere close to being able to breathe well in this environment yet. On the way, I had bought minutes for the phone I am renting here so I could call the baggage claim at the Nairobi Airport. In Kenya, what most people do is buy a phone then get what they call Top Up cards. You scratch off a code then program it into the phone and that gives you additional minutes to use so you can call anywhere. So I loaded my minutes onto my phone and began the process of getting my bags back. Because no one wants to read about the lengthy process and miscommunication between the Nairobi Airport and myself (millions of calls, never an answer, and lying about when they would be on a plane here), let me just tell you that I did finally get my bags on Sunday and I feel sooooo much better now. Being able to put away your stuff has got to be one of the best feelings ever. I didn’t actually feel like I was settled in at all until they came. Changing into clean clothes has to be up there too. J

Oh so for the pizza, Jessica and I went to a restaurant down the road called Mama Mia’s for dinner on Saturday night. Normal name for a Kenyan restaurant don’t you think? So we each got pizzas and they were great. Mine was obviously the Chinese spicy chicken pizza, which had a great sauce, chicken and onions on a thin crust. Mmm Mmm Good. We could have gotten other Italian dishes or Indian dishes which were also on the menu. I’ll just have to wait for next time.

Every Sunday afternoon some of the people here, along with many Kenyans, go play soccer at 3 pm on a field nearby. So I don’t upset many of you I will now go ahead and call it football, as it should be called. I decided to watch the game this time around, since I haven’t played since high school and I was still getting used to the altitude. It was also kind of intimidating since there was just one girl from the IU House playing and because many of the Kenyan guys are much bigger than the rest of us. I will potentially try next week… or the week after. Check out the pics of them playing in my gallery in the link on the upper right. I’m going to try to get some video of the game next time I go, too. It’ll definitely be a fun thing to go to each week and a great way to meet a lot of the people in town.

The week is about to begin, so here’s to hoping that I find out what I will be doing the next four months here soon.

At the Elephant Orphanage

For Ryan Hart - the elephant in the water in the second video reminded me of you... you know the one getting kicked repeatedly :).... i think the one kicking might be Brian

The Adventure Has Begun

Since I've been awake since 3am this morning and no amount of reading is helping me fall asleep I figure I will account for the past few days. First, leaving from Newark was a breeze, no waiting in lines and plenty of time to spare. This will be the only easy part of the trip. The flight was fine, watching Inception, Charlie St. Cloud, and the last part of Eat Pray Love on the way. The tricky part comes in once we land. We are half an hour late and there was only an hour and twenty minutes between flights. This began the race to the terminal. There could not have been more turns, escalators, long hallways with moving sidewalks than there was in the Heathrow airport. Virgin Atlantic planes are supposed to be all in the same terminal and if this is true, that’s one helluva terminal. I had to stop at an additional security point where I had to rescan my carryons, which I of course was too anxious to wait in. I politely asked most people in line if I could go ahead of them, and with my charming smile J, was able to move through it pretty quickly. I then got my backpack back on, threw on my purse, grabbed my belt because I didn’t want to take the time to put it on, and began to run Home Alone 2 style through the rest of the airport. I regret now only running once since the Army Ten-Miler because I was exhausted by the time I got to my gate. Now they say they close the door thirty minutes prior to the time of departure and I made it within one minute to spare. Phew! I walked towards the jetway, stopped to put my belt on finally – didn’t look weird to do this right there at all – and then walked to my seat. I was very relieved I didn’t miss it. But then, for what seemed like an additional 20 to 30 minutes, people kept coming onto the plane. Lies! Apparently they say they don’t close the doors when they say they will, which I guess I should have assumed, but nervous Nancy here wasn’t going to take the risk. The flight was also fine, watching even more movies – Wall Street 2, Scott Pilgrim v. The World, and the first part of Eat Pray Love (beginning to end, end to beginning, really don’t think it would have made it better). If Virgin Atlantic has anything, they do have a large movie selection.

About a million hours later we landed safely and it was time to go through customs and baggage claim. Customs was pretty easy, didn’t take too long, and they didn’t even check my yellow fever card. So glad I took the time to contact Penn to make sure they sent it to me right away. I then proceeded down to baggage claim where I got myself a cart and was all prepared to grab my two big bags and go on my way. Well this did not turn out to be the case. Apparently I can run a mile through the airport to make sure I get on the plane in time, but the men with bags can’t organize them so they know which ones they will need to get out first and to the correct plane on time. But hakuna matata (it really does mean no worries), Nairobi Airport was kind enough to put a piece of paper on the belt that listed all of our last names who would not be receiving bags that morning. I was actually too tired to care at that point, so I went over to what looked like a lemonade stand to let them know I didn’t have my bags. They wrote it down and told me to call them to figure out how they could get them to Eldoret. Call? I don’t have a phone. I told them I would figure it out and the woman assured me they would get on a courier flight that would arrive there on Sunday (I would later find out that they don’t have courier flights on the weekend). I just said ok, and didn’t want to think about, knowing I had a full day ahead of me.

Not realizing that I may be a little tired after traveling more than a day on a plane I had booked a trip with a recommended tour group so that I could go to an elephant orphanage and giraffe park. So I found some reserved energy and was excited to go. I met my guide, Jay, outside of baggage claim and we proceeded on our way. First stop was the elephant orphanage. They are only open to the public from 11am to noon, since this is when they can show off the animals during feeding and play time. Jay and I went in the park, with probably every other Mzungu (white person) in the area, to see the elephants. They were all babies, and absolutely adorable. They drank special milk from big bottles and played around in the mud and water. For a much better description I have pics and videos coming soon. The best part was when they would roll into one another and knock each other down in the water. Very cute!

Next stop Jay and I had lunch at the Nairobi National Park where we ate outside. The coolest part was that it was as if we were eating in the park itself, since there were baboons and antelope roaming all around for us to see. Jay said that giraffes usually came by as well, but not that afternoon. Nonetheless, it was definitely cool to eat with the monkeys and I was about to see giraffes anyways. Last stop for the day was the giraffe park, which I was happy to get to since exhaustion was creeping in. There were about 7 giraffes roaming around the area, ranging from babies to adults. The coolest part though, was that you could feed them! I walked up the overhang where I was given pellets. I put my hand out to the giraffe’s mouth and he slurped them right up. Their tongues are black, really long, and slimy. It was definitely a cool experience to be so close to a giraffe. Pics of this are also coming soon!

Back in the car, we went back to the airport so I could catch one more flight to Eldoret – a short 45 minute flight to the western side of Kenya. I boarded the mini plane, which apparently doesn’t have to follow all the same guidelines as other planes. Without going into too much detail in order to prevent giving my mother a heart attack, the girl next to me picked up her phone as we started speeding up to take off. I asked her if she should turn that off and she said it was ok, so I closed my eyes to “sleep” and said uhhhhh ok. Well I obviously landed safely since I am writing this post now, but it just added to the overall fun of the trip.

I was picked up at the airport and driven to the Indiana University Housing (IU House). We picked up a woman, named Purity, who then showed me around the area and to my room. There is actually wireless in my room, which is amazing, so I could catch up on some things, including skyping my dad to tell him I was alive, before going to bed. Skype is pretty amazing and will be used often while I am here. Well I was beyond exhaustion at this point, being awake for what I think was close to 40 hours, with short naps on the plane. The adventure has definitely begun; the frustration of getting my bags though is never-ending. Hopefully the next time I write I will be able to say that I am no longer wearing the same jeans from last Thursday.