Nairobi, weekend two:

if every weekend is as adventurous as this one, i will not have a minute worth changing the whole 7 weeks that i am here ... from one of the biggest slums in africa to a countryside of british and indian estates, we got to see quite a lot

after sleeping in (more than weekdays) saturday morning, we went with pascal, a friend from work, and jenny, one of pascal's friends who works with an orphanage organization in nairobi, to kibera, one of the biggest slums in africa; the most surprising thing about it was the number of people packed into the area (guessed at ~500,000); after seeing some extremely poor communities and rural life in burkina, i was not entirely taken aback by the mud brick houses and sea of tin roofs; of course, with the large number of people comes a large amount of trash, which ends up on the ground (like everywhere else in africa), kibera however, had trash covering a majority of the open ground space; walking was not always on a dirt path, and we passed several surprisingly large mounds of refuse; though seeing the slum did not shock me into a realization of how poor some parts of the world are, it reawakened the question of what to do about it, and how can i help as one single person among hundreds of thousands

and that night i went clubbing with jessi and rich and a few other upperhill patrons; the district of nairobi called westlands has a large section of nightclubs that stay open (and busy) until at least dawn; the black diamond club was quite a change from kibera in the morning, with many whites of all ages, loud music, lights, and dancing, and an atmosphere matching some of the ridiculous descriptions of nairobi nightlife i had heard; after getting frisked at the door (everybody was), the night was entertaining, finally ending in sleep at about 4:30am

before going further, i should explain what a mutatu is; functioning as the major form of public transport for nairobi and most (if not all) of kenya, these toyota hi-ace vans come in one shape, but infinite colors and patterns of window stickers; every single one of them has a replaced audio system, many with huge subwoofers (and some tvs) to pump tunes at enormous volumes throughout the day of driving; there are 4 rows of seats behind the driver's row, all barely upholstered and crammed tightly together, allowing minimal room to sit, let alone climb in and out; depending on the time of day, a ride will cost $.25 to $.60; the drivers hardly stop for passengers to get on and off and are constantly looking for ways to get around traffic, including darting through roadside gas stations and driving in the opposing lane, even when cars are present (they create a third lane in a road that is maybe 2.5 lanes wide) ... needless to say, traffic is even crazier here than boston

we went for another dose of tourist prices and pushy salesmen (and women) on sunday late morning/early afternoon at another maasai market closer to upperhill before taking a mutatu out to the giraffe center; at this place, you can (surprisingly enough) interact with and feed the giraffes ... but we didn't get to experience this, because after taking a wrong turn and walking for an hour and a half, i realized we just might not be where we were supposed to be; so we asked some people on the side of the road, got our directions straight, and eventually found the giraffe center, half an hour before it closed ... but no matter, because the multiple hours and kilometers of walking accumulated that afternoon were spent in the beautiful kenyan countryside with views of wealthy estates (through half open gates and over boundary walls) and distant tree-covered hills; a sight for sore eyes after almost 10 months of concrete (boston and now nairobi)