Pet Peeves

OK, so I hope that you’ve been able to tell from this blog that I’ve been having a great time here in Kenya. However, there are inevitably a few things that are annoying/frustrating about being in a new place, so here is a list of the few things that bug me about Nairobi/Kenya/the UN:

1. The photograph of the dead seal pup just outside my office.

There are beautiful photographs all over the UN compound, but I just happen to work in the part that features photographs depicting environmental degradation (pollution, erosion, dead wildlife, etc.) So just about every time I leave my office, I’m face to face with a dead seal pup that looks like it was crying tears of blood. Now, I understand that powerful images like this can really do a lot to get a message across. But I’m a vegetarian! Who goes out of her way to buy non-leather Birkenstocks! Who would never hunt a seal pup! Who has pretty much dedicated her life to protecting wildlife! I've already received the message, loud and clear.

2. The assumption that I must be in need of a taxi. All the time.

I can’t walk ANYWHERE, at any time of day, without being honked at (or “hooted at,” as they say here) and being asked, “taxi, madame?” Seriously, if I wanted a taxi, I’d ask for one. Actually, I’d call John or Godfrey, two very nice and reliable taxi drivers who never rip me off.

3. Diet Coke costs 10 shillings more than Coca Cola. (10 shillings is about 13 cents)

So not only might the aspartame be giving me cancer, but I also have to pay extra for it?!?

4. The lack of skim, 1%, or 2% milk. (A carry-over from one of last summer’s pet peeves about Geneva.)

Many of you know how much milk I drink, mostly because I love it, but also partly to try and counteract the effects of all of the Diet Coke I drink (see above), which Erin tells me is rotting my bones. Anyway, many of you also know of my distain for whole milk (“It’s like drinking cheese!”). I haven't had a glass of milk in about a month, which is very sad for me.

5. How early it gets dark here.

We’re really close to the equator, and it’s also winter here (and I’m using the term “winter” loosely), so it starts to get dark around 6:30 or 7:00, which is especially annoying since walking around/taking matatus is less safe after dark. I kind of feel like I turn into a pumpkin after dark and have to either already be home, or call John or Godfrey to take me wherever it is I want/need to go. Jess and Alec, I’m so jealous of the midnight sun!

6. The largest denomination of money is the 1000 shilling bill. (1000 shillings is about $13)

Not so fun when you have to pay your rent in cash. (Luckily, my rent here is significantly less than my rent in DC.)

Don’t let this post give you the wrong impression. All the good things here – great Indian food, fun fellow interns, safaris, a great boss, interesting work, amazing wildlife, lack of homework, and tons of cool places to hike and camp – far outweigh the bad.

Amboseli National Park

So I went on my first safari this weekend, and it was absolutely amazing. I spent two days in Amboseli National Park, which is right near the border with Tanzania, in the shadow of Mount Kilimanjaro. Justice, our driver, was quite a bit more knowledgeable than Elvis, our driver from last week. He really knew the park, which at 1,260 square miles, is quite a bit bigger than Nairobi National Park. Also, he had a radio to talk to other drivers about sightings of the animals that are more rare and harder to spot. The two times that we saw cheetahs, just about every minibus and jeep in the park seemed to appear out of nowhere.


The good thing about Amboseli, though, is that vehicles have to stick to the roads, so if the animals want to get away from people, they can. There are some other parks where I’ve heard that the vehicles pretty much chase the animals everywhere. I couldn’t imagine having very much fun if I felt like I was harassing the animals, so Amboseli was a good fit for me. The cheetahs, for example, stuck around for a little while and then ran off to part of the park that was farther away from the roads.

It was really interesting to watch the other animals’ reaction to the cheetahs. I kind of assumed that all of the smaller animals would scatter as soon as they saw the cheetahs approach. They didn’t, but they became very, very alert as soon as the cheetahs arrived on the scene and just sort of stood perfectly still and watched them intently. The cheetahs moved very regally, but nonchalantly, if that makes sense – it was like they knew they owned the place.

The cheetahs were probably the coolest sighting of the weekend, but I also really liked the Thompson’s Gazelles. They’re pretty small and really cute, and they constantly wag their tails (I’m guessing to keep the flies away). But while other animals kind of swish their tales (like elephants and zebras), the Thompson’s Gazelles really wag theirs, and because of that and their coloring, they kind of reminded me of Ladybug (right after she’s come home from the groomer’s and has really short fur).


Anyway, in no particular order, here are the animals that we saw this weekend: elephants, zebras, cheetahs, wildebeests, warthogs, impalas, jackals, Thompson’s Gazelles, egrets, heron, cranes, pelicans, giraffe, ostriches, water buffalo, monkeys, and a whole bunch of birds I couldn’t identify.

A couple of things I didn’t realize: zebra are fat – you can’t tell when you look at them from the side, but if you see them from the front or the back, they’ve got huge potbellies, and wildebeests are really, really scary looking.

What else can I say? We camped at a small campsite inside the park (it was surrounded by an electric fence to keep out any animals that might want to try and eat us in our sleep). At night, I saw more stars than I’ve seen in I can’t even remember how long. And on the second day, we got a glimpse of Kilimanjaro, which is pretty rare, because it’s normally covered by clouds. They parted for about 20 minutes though, and we got to see the snow-capped peak. (Which had quite a bit less snow on it than I was expecting. Insert plug here for An Inconvenient Truth.)

I took over a hundred photos, but these are some of the highlights. I’ll try to upload the rest to a photo-sharing website and e-mail you guys the link when I do. (My internet connection isn’t that great here, so it might take a while).

OK, that’s it for now. Hope all is well! (Oh, and I just realized today that I've been here for a month already -- I can't believe it, the time has totally flown by)!

Out of Gigiri, Part II: The City Centre and Nairobi National Park

So last Saturday, I finally went to downtown Nairobi. Some fellow interns and I decided that we'd spend the day at Nairobi National Park and checking out some of the markets downtown.

Nairobi National Park is literally right outside of Nairobi -- you can actually see the skyline from a lot of the park. But the park is relatively large -- about 45 square miles -- and it has quite a bit of wildlife (more species of birds that the whole UK, and four out of the Big Five -- leopards, lions, buffalo, and rhinos -- no elephants, though). We didn't really see a ton of wildlife, but more on that later...

You can't walk through the park, and none of us had access to a car, so we jumped into a matatu, having read that you can hire a car and driver to take you through the park once you get there. After switching matatus in downtown Nairobi at what I can only refer to as a matatu mosh pit, we were on our way to the park. (I've discovered that matatu drivers and "conductors" don't actually get a salary, they are paid a portion of the money they make from the fares that they collect on their routes. So, at the beginning of the line for a matatu route, there are a whole bunch of empty matatus, but no real line for which one gets start the route first, so the conductors run around trying to to gather up enough passengers for their individual matatu so that they can start driving. We were at a place where multiple matatu routes started, so let me tell you -- it was nuts!)

Anyway, we found our way onto the right matatu, got to the park, and asked one of the rangers if he could tell us where we could find someone to drive us through the park, and he brought us over to Elvis, who said he could take us through the park. So, we negotiated a price for him to drive us through the park for 2 hours, and we set off.

Almost.

In order to pay the admission fee to the park, we had to go through a very long, involved process. First, we had to get a rechargeable card, kind of like a SmartTrip, or the cards you use in laundry machines. Then, we had to go to the building next door and put money on the card, this took quite a while, as there seemed to be something wrong with the machines that the tellers were using to add money to the cards. Then, we got into the car, drove to the gate, and gave the guard our cards, who then ran them through another machine, to make sure we had put the right amount of money on them, and then waved us through the gate (without giving us back the cards). The whole process took at least half an hour and left us wondering, why couldn't we just pay the guard at the gate? I suspect that the answer has something to do w/ record-keeping and making sure that all park entry fees actually go the park, but I'm not sure.

So once we made it into the park, it was clear that Elvis had no idea where he was going. There are a bunch of dirt roads winding through the park, and there are markers at most intersections/junctions pointing out different routes and points of interest, but we didn't have a good map (Elvis had no map, we just had the small one in the Lonely Planet). So really, we kind of drove around fairly aimlessly for a couple of hours. That's not to say it wasn't cool, though -- the park itself was beautiful, and we did see some animals. It wasn't a great time of year or day for wildlife viewing in the park, but we did see lots of ostriches, a huge herd of impala, and a giraffe and an impala that were very close to us.


However, as we were driving, we kept coming to marker number 29, but from different directions. There were 3 different roads that converged at 29, and I swear we came at the intersection at least twice from each road. We kept coming to 29 even after Elvis told us that he was heading for the exit. Now, I'd like to take this moment to pat myself on the back for not panicking at this point. Hey Grant, do you remember how I was freaking out when we were lost in Manuel Antonio National Park when kept coming to the same sign, but from different directions? This was a somewhat similar situation (although it wasn't getting dark yet), but I didn't freak out -- I was able to help Elvis navigate our way out of the park. (Memo to Kenya Wildlife Service -- "Main Gate" or "Exit" might be a good thing to put on those directional markers.)

Anyway, we successfully made it back downtown and spent some time checking out one of the markets there. The word that sums up the experience of downtown for me is "exhausting" -- everyone keeps coming up to you and trying to get you to buy something (especially in the markets). But even just walking down the street, people come up to you and ask, "taxi, madame?" "matatu, madame?" Now, I was coming down with a cold at this point, so maybe that's what made it so tiring, but I have to say, even after a very fun day, I was glad to get back to Gigiri.

OK, so this weekend, I'm going camping in Amboseli National Park, which is down by the border w/ Tanzania (it has lots of elephants, and has a really good view of Kilimanjaro, so hopefully I'll have fabulous photos to share on Monday). And after learning our lesson with Elvis, we're going with an established safari company. Have a good weekend everyone and type to you Monday!

Out of Gigiri, Part I: Mathare

OK, so as I mentioned before, I've been living/working/hanging out in a part of Nairobi called Gigiri, which is about 5-7 kms north of Nairobi's city center. It's where the UN is, where all the expats live, and where all the embassies are. Every house is surrounded by a high wall, many with electric fences on top, and most people have 24-hour security guards (askaris). It's still very different from home, but it's basically a peaceful, chill, non-threatening place.

So this weekend, I finally saw some of the "real" Nairobi. On Friday afternoon, I went with a bunch of other interns to Mathare, which is Nairobi's second biggest slum. Kibera is the biggest -- over 800,000 people live in an area the size of Central Park -- and as such, it gets a lot of attention (it was in the movie Constant Gardener, it's in Sarah McLachlan's World on Fire music video). But there are four other major slums in Nairobi, and Mathare is the second largest -- between 500,000 and 600,000 people live there (unsurprisingly, the documentation isn't really all that good).

About a year ago, UN interns in Nairobi started working with the Mathare Community Educational Development Organization (MCEDO), which runs a non-formal school in Mathare. "Non-formal" means that there is no support from the government. The children are taught by volunteer teachers, and the UN interns are trying to help MCEDO get books and other supplies for the kids. They were successful in getting the World Food Programme to donate two meals a day for the children, which makes it a lot easier for them to concentrate on learning since they aren't as malnourished anymore.

There are a bunch of other projects that the UN interns are working on (more on these later, and I might ask one of you DC people to do me a favor and stop by the Foundation Center in the near future to help me do some research on foundations/NGOs that I can submit some grant proposals to). But in addition to these projects, a group of interns goes every Friday to play with the kids/put on skits/talk about HIV awareness/tell stories/etc. This Friday, we were planting some bamboo outside of the schoolroom with the kids, and playing games with some of them on a donated computer.

Mathare was exactly what I expected -- I'd seen photographs before -- but it was still an overwhelming experience to actually be there, to see row after row after row of shanties, to see goats and turkeys and pigs climbing on massive piles of trash, to smell the burning garbage, and to see hundreds of children running around and playing in the midst of it all.

As soon as we got there, a huge group of kids ran over to us, to come see the wazungu (white people). I think that the first thing that every white person they've ever met has said to them is, "How are you?" (Which, to be honest, would be the first thing that I would probably say.) So as they came over, they started singing, "how are you, how are you, how are you" to us. They all wanted to hold our hands, so I spent most of the afternoon with about four kids attached to me. They were very interested in my fingernails, which are pretty long at the moment, and kept trying to lift them up as if to see what was underneath them.

It's hard to really put into words what I felt when I was there. It definitely wasn't pity -- pity is the wrong emotion to have for people who are making the best out of practically nothing and living their lives, many with smiles on their faces. I did feel scared that so many of those children might not ever know life outside of the slum. But I felt hopeful that some would -- a lot of the volunteers at MCEDO have lived in the slum their whole lives, but have managed to educate themselves and are working so hard to improve the lives of the children there. Like I said, it's hard to describe. Let's just say I was feeling a lot of things all at once.

OK, I'll write more about Mathare and MCEDO later, but this is getting pretty long, so I think I'll stop here for now.

Stay tuned for Out of Gigiri, Part II: The City Centre, and Nairobi National Park (complete with photos)!

World Cup and Kilimabongo

First of all, thanks everyone for your comments and e-mails, they've been really sweet, and it's definitely easier to be so far away since I can still "talk" to you guys.

So people here in Nairobi crazy about the World Cup (probably not quite as crazy as the people where Erin's living, but definitely way crazier than the people back home). Every TV you pass is tuned into the matches -- bars and restaurants have even brought in extra TVs so that everyone can have a good view.

I decided to go watch the opening match at the German School, where some of the UN interns are living. When they mentioned that people would be watching the match there, I just kind of pictured a dorm TV lounge, kind of crowded with people (like Lafayette on wrestling night or Butlers Wharf on West Wing night). When I got there, I realized that I was thinking on an entirely incorrect scale. They had set up a projection TV in the gymnasium and the entire gym was filled with people. It's possible that every German and Costa Rican in Nairobi was there. Outside, they were selling sausages, doughnuts, and Bavarian pretzels (and Kenyan beer, go figure). It was nuts, but a ton of fun.

Then on Saturday, I went hiking with a group of people from the UN. We hiked up Kilimabongo ("buffalo mountain"), which is about 60 kms outside of Nairobi. It was great to see some of the smaller towns and the countryside as we drove there. The hike was great, but it was really, really hot (everyone keeps warning me that the "cold season" is coming, but Saturday was no indication of that). Anyway, here are some photos from the hike:

Some sad news

OK, I know I promised photos today, but my grandpa passed away this weekend, so I thought today I’d write a couple paragraphs about him, and I’ll post photos and write about hiking and World Cup later in the week.

My grandpa passed away peacefully in his sleep, and I was able to visit him right before I left for Kenya, but it’s still hard to be so far away, and not to be able to be there for my mom and the rest of my family. But my grandpa was one of the happiest, most cheerful people I’ve ever met, and he was never one to dwell on the bad parts of life, so here are some of the good memories I have of my grandfather:

My grandpa loved food. He loved my Aunt Cindy’s raisin-filled cookies and my sister’s apple pie, although he always told her that she could use a little more practice (and that he’d be happy to eat her practice pies, if she wanted).

He loved growing all kinds of plants – flowers, fruits, vegetables, you name it. Last summer, he even took a stab at growing watermelons, and they turned out pretty good!

He was an amazing woodworker. For those of you who have been to my parents’ house, just about everything in it that’s made out of wood was made by him (or him and my Uncle Dave). He taught me how to use a lathe and jigsaw and all kinds of other tools in his workshop when I was little girl.

He turned me into a total corn snob. Every August, we would go to my grandpa’s house, pick corn from one of his friends’ farms, husk it, boil it (for 7 minutes exactly), blanch it in cold water (for another 7 minutes), cut it off the cob (making sure to cut enough that you get the whole kernel, but not so much that you also get the cob) and then freeze it right away. The whole family would have enough of “grandpa’s corn” to last the whole year, and it’s so good that I really can’t stand the taste of canned corn.

He taught me how to “drive” his golf cart. He loved flirting with nurses. He loved bird watching (and he really didn’t like rabbits and squirrels). He loved Penn State (although, not quite as much as my grandma did, I think). He loved his family.

He had infectious optimism and always looked on the bright side of things. You really couldn’t know him and not love him. He was a wonderful husband, brother, dad, grandpa, and friend, and he will be sorely missed by all of us whose lives were made better by knowing him.

Adjustments

Some are relatively easy (i.e. looking right-left-right instead of left-right left before crossing the street). Others are a little more difficult (i.e. remembering that my computer doesn't like to multitask and that I have to limit the number of windows I have open so that it doesn't crash). Others are even more difficult -- the one I'm having the most trouble with is adjusting to what feels like a loss of independence since I've been here.

In DC, I cook for myself, I do my own laundry, I drive/walk/bike/metro/bus wherever I want to go, whenever I want to go there. Here, my food is made by a cook, my laundry is done by a maid, and although I can matatu/walk pretty much wherever I want during the day, at night I'm dependent on taxis and my host family's driver.

The control freak (um, I mean independent spirit) part of me is just annoyed at what I see as a loss of self-sufficiency, but there's another part of me that is just really fundamentally uncomfortable with the idea of people waiting on me. I have two hands, two feet and a brain -- if I'm hungry, I should cook something and then clean it up when I'm done; if I notice I don't have any clean clothes left, I should throw them in the washing machine and then move them to the drier when I'm done. It feels really, really strange to have someone else do these things for me.

I do know that the service sector is a very important part of the economy here, and that people's livelihoods (and lives, even) depend on their jobs as cooks, maids, and drivers. And I am happy that I'm able to bring business/money into the economy, but I have to tell you, it just feels really, really weird, especially when there are people only a few kilometers away from here living in abject poverty. I doubt this is something I'll fully adjust to in my three months here (and to be honest, I'd be a little freaked out if I did).

In happier news, I'm going to Ol Donyo Sbauk National Park this weekend, so I promise photos on Monday!

Happy World Environment Day

It’s not that well-known of a holiday, but today is World Environment Day, so I thought this might be a good time to write a quick entry about what I’m doing here in Nairobi this summer (sorry if it’s boring for those not as excited about international environmental law as I am).

OK, so in a nutshell: since 1972’s Stockholm Declaration on the Human Environment, literally hundreds of treaties (also known as multilateral environmental agreements, or MEAs) have been established to deal with a wide range of environmental problems – two pretty well-known MEAs are the Montreal Protocol, which deals with the phase-out of CFCs and other chemicals that deplete the ozone layer, and the Kyoto Protocol, which deals with climate change. But there’s also the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Basel Convention on Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, and the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands of International Importance, to name a few others, and the list goes on and on.

But even though we have all of these MEAs, environmental degradation is still occurring, and in many ways, it’s getting worse. So it’s time for what I like to think of as International Environmental Law Version 2.0 – we’ve got all these treaties on the books, now we have to figure out how to actually get them implemented so that we actually achieve improvements in the state of the environment. So that’s what I’ll be helping out with this summer – implementation and enforcement of MEAs.

One way of improving implementation and enforcement of MEAs is enhancing the ability of developing countries that have the will, but not the capacity, to comply with the MEAs that they’ve signed onto (by providing technical/legal/financial/institutional support and training, among other things). Another way is to improve coordination between existing MEAs to try and cut down on duplication of efforts and also take advantage of information and resources that can be shared.

OK, I hope that wasn’t too boring. And I have to add this disclaimer – because I’m a paranoid law student – this blog is in no way affiliated with UNEP or any other organization, it’s just my own personal thoughts and reflections.

In other news, I found a place to live for the rest of the summer (woohoo!), so more on that later.

Also, for more information on World Environment Day, you can visit http://www.unep.org/wed/2006/.

One week!

So I've been in Nairobi for one week and I just realized that I've never actually been to Nairobi. If you think of DC as an analogy for Nairobi, I've been living/working/hanging out in Bethesda/Chevy Chase since I've been here. Hopefully I'll get to downtown Nairobi this weekend.

But for now, I'm definitely starting to know my way around this part of town. I took a matatu for the first time yesterday (and I even convinced the driver to let me pay the locals fare instead of the foreigners fare!). Matatus are Nairobi's form of public transportation -- they're minibuses that go along set routes, but they will pretty much pick you up or drop you off anywhere along the route (you don't need to stand at a matatu stop in order to catch one). Some of them are just painted white and yellow, but others have really crazy paint jobs -- I've seen 2 Bart Simpson matatus, 1 LA Lakers matatu, and 1 Bling matatu -- seriously, it just had the word "bling" and a bunch of $ signs all over it in sparkly paint. I promise photos soon!!

Other than that, I'm just looking for a more permanent place to live. My host family is not going to be in town all summer, and I'm trying to roll with the punches (sometimes a challenge for me, but I'm actually staying pretty chill) as I look for a new place. Anyway, that's taking up most of my time right now, but once I get it all sorted out, I'll write more and take/post some photos. All in all, things are going really well here and I hope all is well at home! Take care, everyone!