We arrived in Nairobi in the evening of July 5th. We are here for five weeks while Kim is on an assignment for work. We are lucky to have an extremely comfortable arrangement for the summer as we are house-sitting for someone who’s in the U.S. for vacation. Our first few days in Nairobi were spent settling in, learning our way around our neighborhood (we know the city a little: Kim has been to Nairobi a few times and we were here together this past April for a week), and doing some grocery shopping.
Kim will be quite busy this summer. (Actually, in Kenya we’re a bit south of the equator so we’re actually here for the winter. It’s quite comfortable, consistently in the low-to-mid 70s.) She’ll be working with local staff to help support a variety of local projects. Nate, therefore, is in charge of shopping and cooking and has thus far made good use of the barbeque.
There’s a car here that we can use. Traffic in Nairobi can be horrendous and, at times, a bit chaotic. We also have to learn to drive on the left side of the road. However, we’re going to take our chances. We went out with the driver from Kim’s office for a few hours on our first Saturday in town to practice driving on the left and to get a feel for the city. We passed the test. It does take 20 minutes or so to get the feel for driving on the left to re-set the instincts involved when making turns. Of course the roads are narrow and full of pot holes, so that adds some extra excitement. One eye on the oncoming cars, one looking out for potholes to dodge.
We had a great outing our first Sunday in Nairobi to the suburb of Karen (Blixen), named for the lady in the Meryl Streep/Robert Redford movie, Out of Africa. We visited an elephant orphanage where about 17 baby elephants (ages 5-28 months) live. These elephants have been orphaned due to their parents dying for being killed by poachers or other reasons. They raised them until they are about three years old and then reincorporate them, slowly, into the wild. We also visited a giraffe center where a few giraffe live. There’s also a museum where Karen Blixen lived, so we checked that out.
While Kim has been busy with work, Nate had the chance to visit a local organization that provides street kids and orphans with a home and education. There is also a golf course very near where we are staying, so Nate investigated that as well.
On Tuesday July 13th, we flew to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, for a five-day visit. Kim is working to support two local offices that have programs throughout the country involving family planning and HIV/AIDS. Whad the chance to enjoy some great Ethiopian food at a few different local spots.
While we have spent time in poor countries, and seen poverty up close in the Dominican Republic, as well as in Kenya, in Addis Ababa the poverty is on another level. Ethiopia is one of the poorest countries in the world, and this is reflected by the relatively dismal state of the infrastructure in its capital city. The condition of the roads and buildings, and the state that the urban poor find themselves in, is much more difficult in comparison to capital cities in other developing countries we have seen. That said, it is a comfortable city to walk around in the sense that it feels, and has a reputation for being, a relatively safe city. We are here during rainy season so there has been some rain each day and since we are at 7,500 feet in elevation, temperatures are mostly in the mid 60s. Addis is very green, covered with lots of trees.
Nate has spent some time relaxing at the hotel, but also getting out to wander about the city and visit some local museums, including the National Museum which has a lot on the historical archaeological discoveries that have happened in Ethiopia. He also had an incredible opportunity to visit some garden projects run by the USAID Urban Gardens Program for HIV-Affected Women and Children. A former colleague of Kim’s runs the program here in Addis. Nate visited two local schools, a primary school and a secondary school, where students who have been affected by HIV (usually one or both parents have HIV or have died of the disease) have the opportunity to develop gardens within their schools. (Funding comes from PEPFAR, so it is target towards individuals who have been affected by HIV/AIDS.) The schools donate the land to the program and students are trained in agriculture and grow vegetables. The food is eaten by the students’ families and also sold to local stores—providing these kids and their families with healthy food and some income. However, this is just the start as the gardening program is used as an entry point to also provide business and health education to the kids, as well as providing them with emotional and psychological support—not to mention a sense of community within the youth group they work on their gardens with. Nate also had a chance to get a sense of the two public schools he visited, where conditions are appalling and classes crowded beyond belief (one school housed 3,000 students, with an average of 60 or 70 kids per class). However, it was an incredible opportunity to get a glimpse of what seems like a remarkable, sustainable program.
