Hello America! Irene was nice enough to let me out of the country and I’ve been in Kenya since Sunday evening. Though the ride was a bit turbulent, I finally got to the airport, and after a bag scare, retrieved my luggage and met up with the group. Our ride was a pimped out old bus called the “Jazz Quartet” fully equipped with neon lights lining the ceiling.
So about 20 of us SIT students and the Jazz Quartet made our way to the Mary Ward Center, which is a catholic monastery. We’re staying here for the first 4 days of orientation as we begin to acclimate to Kenyan culture and learn more about our program.
Monday we woke up (to a freezing morning!) and headed over to the giraffe center to kiss some giraffes (see the picture below). I figured that once was not enough (I kissed some on my last trip to Kenya) and decided to kiss some more this time as well. (Don't worry, their saliva is an anti-septic)
After learning about giraffes in Kenya (they can kill you with one kick and they only sleep 2 hours each day) we made our way over to Nakumatt, Kenya’s version of Walmart where we bought our Kenyan cellphones. I chose a pretty snazzy Nokia phone that looks like it was made around 1995…but it gets the job done. Kenya’s cellphones are pay as you go and when you run out of minutes you “top up” on your minutes and purchase more. It’s super cheap..calling the US even is about 3 cents a minute and doesn’t cost anything to the person receiving the call. (Nance and Jimbo must be happy about that)
Tuesday we were all split up into groups of three and dropped off at various locations around Nairobi. Two other girls and I were dropped at a women’s hospital where we spent the day learning about a program started there called the Gender Violence Recovery Center. The Center was started by a well-known doctor at the hospital to give battered women, men and children a place to recover from abuse and receive counseling, free of charge. Prior to this center (which was the first of its kind in Nairboi) people who couldn’t afford the hospital fees were turned away and forced to return to their homes which often left them vulnerable to more abuse.
After returning back to the monastery, we had our first Swahili lesson and were told that our language classes (which are 3 hours each day) will consist of about 5 students and one teacher. There are 6 swahili teachers that rotate to a different group of students each day. I was pumped to hear that our class is mostly oral speaking instead of writing or reading because conversational Swahili is what I really need to work on. There was hardly any interaction between students and the teacher in my classes at UNC. I’m excited to be able to communicate with locals and improve my Swahili a tonnnn!
Today was our first day actually seeing downtown Nairobi. Again, we split into small groups and, with our Swahili teachers, were guided around the city. Nairobi is definitely a city—I don’t know what I was expecting, but I guess all my experience in Kenya thus far has been in rural areas so I’m not used to seeing skyscrapers and tall office buildings—but I learned that they do indeed exist here. The air quality is atrocious. There isn’t the regulation over here on emissions so the air is definitely SO dirty compared to that of your normal US city. Besides that though, I really liked the city. There’s this huge park in the middle that I’m excited to explore and tons of cool shops all over.
On our way home from the city we were shown where the SIT school buildings are (which are on the outskirts of Nairobi) and learned that we will be visiting them for the first time on Friday. Tomorrow we leave the monastery and move to a hotel for the night in Nairobi, in hopes of become more “acclimated” to Nairobi-living. Saturday we actually get to meet our host families and move in with them. I’m SO excited to meet my family. I feel like once I move in with a family it will actually feel real that I am here studying abroad. It still kind of just feels like I’m visiting for two weeks or something.
I guess those are all the updates for now…more to come later for sure. I’m loving every single person in my program. The students are all so different, yet we mesh so well together as a group. There are students from Columbia, Davidson, Duke, Colorado College, Rollins, UC San Diego, UNC (duh)…and more. Everyone has such a different idea for their independent research at the end of the program and just listening to what people are passionate about is really fascinating. Even though we’ve only been together for 4 days, I feel like I’ve known everyone for weeks now. It’s such a fun group—we’ve been joking around a ton and just have been having a blast here alone in our little monastery compound (imagine when we hit the big city..watch out Nairobi)
That’s all for now I suppose. Sorry this was so long and detailed—my updates in the future will hopefully be shorter once I settle down into my homestay (so pumped!)
Until next time—
Megan
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