Being the first week of classes, I spent a lot of time getting to know my surroundings. For starters, driving into the Central Business District (CBD) of Nairobi to the United Kenyan Club (UKC), which is where I attend classes Monday-Thursday, takes about 30 minutes. The ride is relatively smooth and before long, I'm in my History of Modern Kenya and Gender Studies classes. For lunch one day, my friends and I set out to find Java (an American style cuisine). Although there are a few street lights throughout the CBD, they might as well not exist. For about 3 red light cycles, I watched the cars zoom right through them without a care in the world for the pedestrians waiting to cross. I couldn't help comparing it in my mind to New York City where the pedestrians truly own the road. That is not the case here at all. There was nothing we could do except wait for literally all of the cars to pass through all of our turns to walk until there were no cars left. Mind you there were at least 20 people waiting to cross, but no one took the initiative to forge a path for the legitimate fear of being run over. To make the situation even better, there are police waiting anxiously to capture people jay-walking. I say capture because best-case scenario, you bribe the police officer to let you go, worst-you sit in jail for a day waiting for trial, and then ultimately get fined 500 Ksh (Kenyan shillings) ($5.00).
After classes are finished for the day, we head back to our compound, which is in the outskirts of Nairobi in a neighborhood called Karen. This trip takes about an hour and a half due to the extensive amount of traffic leaving the city at 4:30 pm. Crazily enough, it would take twice as long without Njou (our driver) who asserts himself into the flow of cars quite seamlessly. To say that driving in Kenya is aggressive would be an understatement. There are few stop signs (and when there are, they're ignored), many roundabouts, and most places do not have lines on the roads. Now this could be an example of underdevelopment, but I don't see it that way. Personally, I think it's amazing that people are able to travel on the roads and maintain some semblance of structure without heavily enforced traffic laws. Besides the ban on jay-walking of course.
This week, after finishing my classes one day, I took a trip into town with my friend Sarah to go to Naukumat, the local equivalent to Walmart. The store carries everything from washing machines and refrigerators to nail polish and Lays potato chips. Unlike at Walmart however, the security guards at this store actually waved a wand over me and checked inside my bag, prior to letting me enter, as all the security guards in front of large stores and banks do in Nairobi. The walk into town took about 45 minutes, and it was all downhill. Literally. The trip back up however, called for a taxi as I had purchased too many things to try carrying back up. (Aka, nail polish and chips).
This weekend, Saint Lawrence University (SLU) offered an optional trip to Mount Longonot, which obviously everybody was eager to partake in! This drive there was about 3 hours long, and provided for ample time to catch up on all the latest American Hits (Thanks Spotify)! I also learned that sometimes when there's an accident in front of you stopping traffic, the appropriate response is to drive off of the road to get around it. A two lane highway very quickly became a four lane highway when on either side people drove down a hill onto the grass below. Another interesting component of highways is that there are random speed-bumps that are important to look out for.
Now this wouldn't be a complete blog post without an account of a crazy hike I partook in. After having just made it to the top of the 9,108 ft volcano, my friend Monica and I began our descent back down. It was very steep and very dusty, and a man kept stumbling into me. I went to the side so that he could pass, thinking he was simply rude and in a hurry to get down, or perhaps he was drunk (as many people had been drinking on the top of the rim), but his friends grabbed onto him, telling him he wasn't steady enough to descend and he needed to sit down. Monica and I went down as fast as we could, hoping to avoid having him behind as again. As we were running down a less steep portion, a man carrying a stretcher passed us hastily, making the noise of an ambulance. We spoke about how highly impractical it was to carry that stretcher up because the hike took over 3 hours and it would be nearly impossible to carry someone down on a stretcher with as steep as the mountain is.
As I write this post however, it seems unimaginable to not acknowledge that as we were arriving at the bottom of the mountain, a man from Nairobi was passing away at the top due to complications with his breathing, which I came to know as I was writing this post. The following news article provides a more in-depth account of the issues that occurred in terms of the Kenya Wildlife Service Rangers' response
http://www.the-star.co.ke/news/2016/02/07/nairobi-businessman-dies-during-mt-longonot-hike_c1290570 I thought that it was important to include this because it touches upon the lack of a helicopter response, and further in the comments section, people's opinions on the matter. Most notably: "if it had been a white man, a helicopter would have been found."
Although I originally began this post with the intent of portraying Kenyan road infrastructure in a life lesson kind of way, deeper meaning has been found with the loss of a life because of the lack of infrastructure within the wildlife service. I cannot be certain that the man stumbling into me was the same man who lost his life yesterday, but I can be certain that prior to making assumptions, it's vitally important to be present in the moment and make informed decisions. If I hadn't been clouded by being annoyed, and if Monica and I had stopped to see that everything was okay, who knows that help couldn't have been sent sooner because who knows how long his friends waited to ask for it. At the time, I didn't think anything of it, and even now I'm not certain what I would have done if confronted with the situation again, but I know that life is all about the roads we decide to take, and I will try to be more cognizant of the one's I'm choosing.
Beca
That's wonderful and i hope you'll learn more as you stay enjoy!
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