Nairobi and Mathare

Let me try to describe for you what being in Nairobi has been like for me. We arrived (jet lagged) and were picked up on our arrival evening around 10:30 or so. We were met by several Amani ladies and the man who works as a driver for Amani (his name is Japheth) driving the Amani "bus". We were ushered out of the airport by these women who were already treating us lovingly. We realized at that point that Kenya has a road system based on the British left-side of the road and the automobiles match. We were a bit buggy-eyed, but saw, even at that time of night, an extremely busy city with huge amounts of nutso traffic and people everywhere. One of the first things that happened to us was that we got cut off by a "matatu" (discussed later) that pulled in front of us to let off a passenger (more like the driver threw out a passenger) who then shouted at those of us who were riding in the van immediately behind that had been cut off. The only rule of the road seems to be that you drive on the left side of the road. Other than that, all bets are off. You nose into traffic, pass people on either side, even if you go on the shoulder at full speed to do so, and there don't really seem to be many traffic lights (very, very few) or any stop signs that I've seen. And I don't think that where (and that's not always everywhere) lanes are marked on the street that anyone really follows them. You kind of make as many lanes as you can possibly squeeze in. We discovered all of that the first night we were here on that drive to the guesthouse.

By the way, you can read about our Guesthouse online. It's nice enough, although very simple. It is comfortable and clean and the meals that they've served us have been excellent. We've not really had much hot water, which provides an interesting story because my room (shared with Debbie) has the warmest water of the rooms that we're all in, so we've had about eight people rotating through our shower at different times during the day to take a shower that is warmer than it would be in their own rooms. :-) The nuns tend to be stern, but what's neat is that they belong to an order that runs a children's home outside of Nairobi and I believe that the profits from the guesthouse go toward the children's home.

When we got up the next morning, Brittany arranged for the four of us (the rest would arrive Monday evening) to have a driver take us to church. Again, the driver drove a van similar to the Amani van - a 10 or 14 passenger van that is being used as a private matatu. We've used that same driver, Patrick, or Japheth for much of our travel around the city. They're good drivers for Nairobi. I certainly wouldn't be able to drive here! Anyway, on that drive, and on subsequent drives I have noticed several things about Nairobi. First of all, it seems to be a city of walls. Most buildings and homes and apartment buildings and so on are all walled in. When you drive down the street you are looking at walls on both sides of you everywhere. Most of the walls are stone or cement. Some of them have barbed wire on the top or some have cut glass shards (really!). In other places, though, the walls are made of a corrugated tin. Sometimes they are painted with advertising, sometimes they were painted with advertising somewhere else and moved in pieces and not put back together in a matching kind of way, and sometimes the corrugated metal is not decorated at all. There is a huge sense of a lack of security.

Second, there are people EVERYWHERE. People walk a LOT to where they're going. Some walk for a couple of hours to get to work every morning and again to go home in the evening. There seem to be masses of people walking the streets and crossing the streets. There don't seem to be enough places to cross most streets, or those places aren't convenient enough or something, but people will attempt to jump out in front of cars and matatus. It seems to be the law that if the person crossing the street does so in a precarious manner in front of a matatu, the matatu driver has to honk the horn as if it were a huge surprise that someone would cross the street in a haphazard manner. Wild!

Next, matatus! I don't really know how to describe them. Wikipedia calls them "shared taxis". I guess that makes sense. They're like large vans that hold a bunch of people. And they function a bit like city buses, although I think that they are run by private owners. There are specific routes that they take, with specific stops. But that's not to say that you can't just suddenly say "I'm getting off here!" and jump out (often they will merely slow down for you to jump out like that!) And many of them have TV's in the front so that you can watch "entertainment" (which usually consists of all of the latest and most pornographic hip hop music videos). The music is usually played so loudly that you can't hear yourself think. It really is like taking your life in your hands. In this photo, the man who takes the money when you get on is riding on the side. Apparently, before they passed a couple of new laws regulating the matatus, they used to overfill them with TOOOO many passengers, many of whom would be riding on the side like that. Amazing!

Finally, Nairobi has to be THE most smog-filled city that I have ever experienced. And, remember, I live outside of Washington, DC, and have even been to Los Angeles in the summer time and driven the freeways during afternoon rush hour traffic. I have an idea about smog. I don't think that Kenya has very strict emissions laws. The air is almost black (you can tell when you use a kleenex) and I'm sure that we've all breathed our share of carbon monoxide while we've been here. At the afternoon rush hour it's amazing to me ... you can barely see up the street to the next intersection. The smog is out of this world!

Before I bring this post to a close, I want to tell you about the first visit we made to the home of one of the women who works at Amani. Her name is Elizabeth. The Amani administration schedules home visits with the women once in a while. Every woman who works at Amani has a home visit eventually. For the home visits scheduled for this week, they added four of the American women from our group (we split into two groups). So four of us (myself, Sharon, Debbie and Betty) piled into the car of Joyce (mentioned in a previous post, director of Amani's holistic ministries) and drove to meet Elizabeth at her home. (By the way, Joyce was the best driver we've had here in Nairobi so far!!)

We were told ahead of time that Elizabeth lives in one of Nairobi's slums. I have done a small amount of reading about the slums in and around Nairobi. They would make the poverty in the United States look like upper middle class, I believe. If you are familiar with the slums of Nairobi, you have probably heard of Kibera, which is NOT where we went. But it might help you to read about Kibera to get an idea of what I'm talking about. Kibera is Nairobi's largest slum. Three million of Nairobi's four million residents live in one of the slums. We visited Elizabeth in Mathare, which is a smaller slum, but very similar in idea. When we arrived at the entrance to the area, Elizabeth was waiting for us at the side of the road. She refused to get in the car with us, wishing instead to walk along in front of the car to show us where we were to go. The streets were VERY narrow, and all of the "homes" were small (teeny) shacks made of the corrugated metal described above. By the time we maneuvered to the street where Elizabeth lives, we were on a very narrow road. People had come out in droves to see the mzungu (white people) in the nice car. There were people with piles of bananas or like goods sitting on the side of the roads, and the road wasn't really straight, so it was interesting driving. The most interesting part was that I could see that, after we got about 100 yards down the street, I knew that there was no where to turn the car around to leave again. Hmmm....

The streets in Mathare, by the way, were more than just narrow and haphazard. The color of the ground was black. The streets weren't paved, and the dirt in Kenya is usually red. I'll tell you more about that in a minute. There is also a deep rut down the middle of the streets with liquid flowing through it down the incline. I doubt that it's raw sewage (although you never know), but definitely run off water from the shacks which don't have any running water (latrines are located in other parts of the slum).

When we got out of the car, we were instantly surrounded by little children who wanted to say hello to us. It was like something out of a television commercial, really. I made a point to touch most of their hands. Then Elizabeth rushed us around a corner and down an alley to her home. Again, the home is made of corrugated metal. We only were shown the "living area", and saw that there was a kitchen which was blocked from view by a hanging piece of cloth, serving as a doorway. We thought that there might also be a sleeping area behind the kitchen. For a home made of corrugated metal with holes in it, she had made it very livable! On every wall were hung linens or long pieces of lace (like shower curtains) to cover up the metal. (But the little boys of the neighborhood were all pressed up against all of the holes in the walls, looking in at us and talking loudly and excitedly.) There was sitting room for at least eight on two couches and two arm chairs with little room for walking around the coffee table.

She had a friend there (Esther) to help her serve her very important guests. Before we ate, Esther came to us with a pitcher of steaming water and a basin so that we could rinse our hands. It was fabulous! We were served chapati (a sort of flatbread - to DIE for!!), a curry rice dish, a potato/veggie dish, and beef stew. The food was fabulous! We ate and ate. Talk about someone with the gift of hospitality. Elizabeth was an amazing hostess. She was absolutely delighted to have us as her guests. We all felt SO comfortable in her home, and thoroughly enjoyed the conversation and the food. I can't imagine enjoying having dinner at the home of a Beverly Hills mogul as much as I enjoyed my visit with Elizabeth.

Elizabeth's story made me so very sad, and I know that hers is representative of many of the Amani women. I won't give you all of her personal details. But imagine living a life of significant loss at every turn. I will tell you that about four years ago, while living in Mathare, Elizabeth's home was burned, along with the entire slum area. They were given enough warning to get out with their lives, and then hired thugs poured kerosene all over everything and torched the place. She lost absolutely everything, including a couple of pets (dogs and cats). As a "squatter" (her word) she had to stake a claim to her space, so she and her family stayed right there on the spot (through their fall rainy season), sleeping on sheets of metal that they dragged there. She told us that if they had left the spot, they would have lost the option of having their home there. According to Elizabeth, the government came in and built them their new homes (what we saw), making sure that the streets were wide enough to get emergency vehicles down them. (I doubt that is the case!) I think that, had it been five years ago, we wouldn't have been able to get Joyce's car into Mathare at all!

The most amazing part of the story is that Elizabeth kept telling us over and over and over again that she is SO blessed by God. She would open her arms and point to everything in her home (which, by the way, is shared by many members of her family, including two daughters, two grandchildren, and several other family members) ... and she would say, "Look at all I have! God has truly blessed me!" Well, Elizabeth, I'd have to say that God has truly blessed ME by allowing me to visit you!

When we had to say goodbye (all too soon!), we knew that Joyce would have to back her car out, and we (the four white ladies) offered to walk up the 100 yards to the area where she could get the vehicle turned around again. Elizabeth (who is very sweet and mild) immediately insisted that we get in the car immediately, that she did NOT want us walking, and that there would be too many people coming out of their homes and would crowd us. So, we got in the car and prayed as Joyce backed out (she did a GREAT job!).

It was an amazing day and a truly blessed visit to this dear lady who exudes her love for God! I don't know that I can describe to you what that day meant to my heart, and I'm sure that I will continue to think about and learn from the experience over the next several months (and years!).

I guess that I will not have the chance to talk about our visits to the Maasai market, the orphanage, the elephant orphanage, the giraffe park, or our safari in this post. But I will definitely type more as soon as I can. I'm not sure when that will be as we are working at Amani the next two days (Thursday and Friday) and will be on our flights home (most of us) on Friday evening. I have a long lay over in the airport in Amsterdam on Saturday. Maybe I will be able to find an internet place at the Schipol Airport there and update you at that point.

I hope that you are well! Thank you for your e-mails and comments. I will look forward to seeing you all when I arrive back in the U.S.!