We Are Wazungu

Mzungu = White person
Wazungu = White people

       We woke up in our Kenya Comfort hotel rooms to the sounds of Nairobi! (Which basically sounds the same as any other city, except 90% of the words you hear are a different language.) We anxiously got ready for the day as we kept our one goal in mind: meet up with Paul. Paul is the man who started the Children & Youth Empowerment Center in 2006, so yeah... he's kind of a big deal. The good news: we had his phone number! The bad news: we had no phone. We tried using our hotel room phone, but of course you can't call out on them. Our last resort was to go buy a phone ourselves, which I was basically terrified to do. People had already been glancing inside our hotel at us, and even the staff couldn't help staring.  After all, we are wazungu. We had also been told that it isn't uncommon for people to openly rob you in broad daylight - just what we needed during our first hour here. We were just about to venture out on our own when some random man reaches for me and says "I want to shake your hand". I went from freaked out to instantly relieved when he introduced himself as.... Paul!! 
       Everything was great from there on. It turns out that getting a phone is super easy, and the stores are pretty much on every block. People stared, people whispered, but for the most part we were left alone. Also, I never once saw anyone get robbed! As for Nairobi itself: insanity. There weren't as many people as I had expected, but still enough to feel the need to stay right with our group. Crossing the main road was a lot like frogger, but with traffic coming from the opposite direction than usual. Crossing the smaller roads was a lot like look-both-ways-18-times-because-I-honestly-had-no-idea-where-the-cars-could-be-coming-from. The buildings were all older, but were much more modern than I expected. Every street is different, though. If I had been blindfolded and thrown into Nairobi on a certain street, it probably would have taken me a long time to figure out that I was in Africa. Others, however, are dead give-aways.

Chance and the kids who were petting his leg hair.

       English is the language that schools are taught in and business is conducted in, but on every sign it was a combination of Swahili and English or one or the other. Basically, anything goes. In front of every store or bank, there were guards. And whenever we went into a supermarket or a public place we had to be patted down or they used a wand and looked in our bags. One thing I thought was funny was that whenever there were guards, there were always both a man and a woman. Women can only be searched by a woman and men can only be searched by a man. Later on Chance tried letting a woman search him and everyone else with us started cracking up laughing at him. They also have these great things called Nakumatt. They’re basically a Kenyan Wal-Mart. And they have EVERYTHING. Four floors of anything you could possibly want.
       So after breakfast with Paul, he took us around the city and showed us different places including Nairobi University. We got more practice crossing streets and plenty more stares. We then ate lunch and met up with a guy named Chris. He was one of the first volunteers at the center, and he worked a lot with helping street children decide to go to the center. Chris has been a great friend to us, and has been a great source of entertainment. He’s hilarious and is always encouraging us to live the ‘free-lancing’ lifestyle like him! Chris took us to a Museum of Kenya, where we got to learn all about Kenya’s history and traditions, and they also had an awesome snake exhibit. After that we went to a movie at a European film festival. It was definitely an experience…. Haha!

Chris!

       The next day, we were with Chris again. We got to take our first bus ride! Did I mention how crazy the traffic is? Well let me tell you, it’s not any better once you’re inside the vehicle. Turn signals aren’t incredibly important in the cities here. It’s more like a honk and then a car is cutting you off. And if we’re driving down a road and people are in the way, the usual procedure is “honk and they’ll move”. I’ve also figured out that stop signs are more like just suggestions. But the weird thing is that no one is ever mad. They might honk a lot, but it’s never in an angry way. And the drivers never yell or cuss anyone out. That’s just how it works. And I also still have yet to see a wreck (knock on wood). It might be crazy, but they’re good drivers.

These guys were awesome!!

     





      After a terrifying first bus experience to the outskirts of the city and a great walk down a red clay road surrounded in amazingly green trees and grass (beautiful!), we got to the Giraffe Center! We got to feed them little pellets of food from our hands… and mouths. It was awesome!! After that, we went to the Bomas of Kenya, where they perform traditional dances. They represented several different tribes, and then it ended with an amazing performance from an acrobatics group. We also made some friends with the Elementary (Primary here) school children that were there. They surrounded Nick and were petting his arm hair during the intermission. I was entertaining some with my attempts at Swahili.

       We finished the night out with some delicious Ethiopian food (don’t ask me what it was because I truly have no idea), pool, a couple Tuskers (Kenya’s very popular beer), and a lesson in Kenyan dancing. We apparently started out like wazungu. But no worries – we’ve improved!
The next morning we were headed to Nyeri!