It's a different world out here

Today was half play and half work. Well, maybe 3/4s play and ¼ work. I was picked up at 6 am by Jeff and Akinlana for a trip to the Nairobi National Park. It’s an amazing place but all the more so because it is adjacent to Nairobi and you can see the city skyline framing almost every picture of the native Africa wildlife.

The park is very large but seems even more so for two reasons. First, because you really need an off-road vehicle to travel many of the roads and you sometimes have to literally crawl over rocky, rutty roads, it takes a long time to get from point A to point B. Second, the park is really crescent-shaped with a curved barrier on the west-north-east side and open to the south. Animals are free to come and go as they like but are hemmed in on three sides. Humans to the south have to be careful of any dangerous animals (lions, leopards, etc) that may be migrating to/from the area.

Here are pictures of some types of wild animals, not all. We are required to stay in the vehicle and even the windows rolled up (never knowing where a lion or baboon may be lurking). Jeff and his wife came across two lions eating a downed giraffe the last time they came.

All in all, we spent about 4 and a half hours traveling around, missing hippos (sleeping), leopards, giraffes (which I saw last Saturday at the Giraffe Centre), and rhinos. Since the population comes and goes and moves freely, we felt lucky to see as much as we did. The only problem was the zebra rush hour traffic we got caught in.

The three of us had lunch together before I returned to work. Akinlana loves Ethiopian food. I learned it’s usually a very spicy food, which I don’t care for. Since usually one choice is shared among everyone at the table, they chose the least spicy. It’s an amazing dish that has many components and where everyone has a rice-based, rolled up sheet that you tear off and use to pick up the food. I’m describing this terribly but it was pretty good. I don’t think I would choose Ethiopian food over most other types but it did add one more international food to my accomplishments.

Ethiopians love to take time eating. The waiter takes his time taking your order. He takes his time delivering the food. He never comes back to check on you or take the food away. He never brings you the check. He never hurries you away so that he can get other paying customers in. Our meal took almost 3 hours!

It seems that both sides of the Atlantic have agreed to my staying an extra two weeks. The problem is that I’ve run out of money and the ATM at Barclays bank down the street refuses to give me money. We’re working on a solution including someone giving me cash and Wycliffe transferring some of my monthly income into their account. They won’t let me starve.

I was able to spend a couple of hours at work. There is a healthy list of work to be done in the next 2 and a half weeks but I believe it is do-able. Omonge is out now waiting for his first child, a son, to be born. Jeff leaves Monday for a couple weeks in South Africa. I think this is another reason BTL has asked me to hang around. With me, there will still be four IT people around.

Went with Serge and Olivia to pick up a buy-1-get-1 pizza around 8 pm (dark). The wait time was over an hour. Can that… Went to Java House (where the menu is very American) instead and ended up ordering a hamburger, spicy fries and ice tea. You can order flavored ice tea, which I did (lemon). The ice tea is delivered in a tall glass (lots of ice) and with a little metal cup of lemon juice on the side so you can add what you wish. We ate outside. Jealous? It’s summer here (but never hot).

I have mixed feelings about staying. My mission at JAARS is to help centers worldwide. The people have been great and the work rewarding. I love being able to help and fulfill both JAARS’ and my purpose. The exposure to another culture has been eye opening. On the other hand, as I told Serge tonight, it’s just that I’m not quite comfortable living in a place where you can’t take a walk safely, every establishment (and I mean every) has a security guard, everything has a wall and gate with razor or electric wire around it, and banks have guards with AK-47 rifles. Plus the driving style is atrocious over here. I hear that only the driving in Egypt is worse.

I’m looking forward to returning home.