Arrival and first day

Well I've safely arrived and am having a great time so far. I was lucky enough to get a row to myself on the plane from Amsterdam to Nairobi so I could stretch out and sleep.

I didn't see much of the hostel but Nairobi looked magical at sunrise on the taxi ride to the bus station. The driving is just something else here. They are as crazy as anyone, including the Italians, when it comes to road rules. The driver was running all the red lights so I asked him about it and he said they don't apply before 7am because "there isn't much traffic." Of course this didn't stop him getting into a game of chicken trying to merge with a bus. When he lost he beat the car door with his hand I guess because his horn sounded more like a bicycle horn than a car horn, but it was more of a congratulations to the other driver than anything like frustration. People here are far to easy going to get road rage.

The driving around the village where I'm staying is different basically because not many people have cars so the roads are covered in people on bikes and on foot. Somehow the drivers manage to get up to 80km/h while dogging people and mortor-sized potholes.

The farm is nice. There were 2 other volunteers here when I arrived and 2 more arrived last night, 1 day after me. And they are all Canadian!!! The 3 girls are part of the health care program so they run moble clinics where they drive to different local communities each day to provide care and medicine.

Dave, the other volunteer, and I work with the Microenterprise Development Program (MDP) and drive to local communities and groups to give seminars and administer micro-loans.

Yesterday, my first day, was so incredible. I was shadowing Dave as he gave a seminar to about 7 people and then they offered us lunch, which consisted of a chicken from their chicken "farm" and ugali, a tasteless substance of flour and water. (You have to eat it too because it would be offensive to turn down the food, especially when they have so little.) By the way, when I say chicken farm, I just mean the ground around the hut we were in, which served as a small church and living accomodations for the paster, each room being about twice the size of my cubicle at work.

We were driving back and the "road" (which was just a track through some people's back yards) was blocked by a tree and a half-dozen Kenyans standing around trying to fix a chainsaw. So we stopped and the driver and translator got out and hung out with the Kenyans while we waited for the chainsaw to be fixed. Nobody said anything about the delay. Nobody yelled at them to hurry up or to get out of the way. They just got out and casually sat around waiting. "Hakuna Matata!"

By the time we did our second seminar, Dave had to leave for a meeting in town so I was thrown head first into giving the seminar to about 12 people. It actually went pretty well, mainly because I plagerized all the stories from Dave's seminar and the translator convinced them all I was telling the truth. It is great though. Fascinating, beautiful, fulfilling, exciting...

Today we had to go visit a group that was delinquent in their payments by about 15 months. The officers of the group were away at a meeting (even though our meeting was pre-arranged - or perhaps because it was pre-arranged), so we met with just one woman who didn't have any of the paperwork (we're not convinced there is any). It was awkward for 2 rich Mazungus to say to a poor African woman that she has to come up with the equivalent of $25 in overdue payments or we would have to send an agent to sue her. To put that in perspective, we just bought lunch for 2 in town - 2 large cokes, a small meat pie, and a giant curry and fries - for about $3.

Anyway, I'm having an amazing time, loving every minute, I haven't had any issues of any kind so far (knock on wood!). Kenya is very much what I guess I expected - as stereotypically African in every way as portrayed in the western world. And I sure don't miss the cold!!