The Last of My Vacation (Part 1 - Western Kenya)

I had continued my intensive blogging about my adventures in Kenya and then Uganda, but unfortunately those posts were lost as well as the pictures. Now then, I left Nairobi and spent a few days out west with my friends Daniel and Jeff in Kisumu (they were in Peace Corps with me and have extended so that they are serving for a third year). They were wonderful hosts and hopefully I introduced them to some new exciting recipes in exchange for their hospitality. I was impressed with the amount and variety of fruits and vegetables in the market in Kisumu, but not much else about the city. Maybe I spent too much time in areas with open sewers or had too many arguments with matatu conductors, but I was pretty relieved when I hopped on the matatu out of Kisumu. I don't really know why, but I was having trouble falling asleep before 4 in the morning and was a bit groggy because of that. I probably should have made an effort to visit Lake Victoria, but I decided it was just easier to get out of town.

My next stop was Kakamega, which is famous for the massive forest outside of town. Arriving in town was a refreshing experience after my time in Kisumu. The air has such a fresh feel (probably due to the nearby forest--I grew up just a couple of miles from a wonderful forest preserve) and I was greeted by my friend Elizabeth (name changed as a precautionary measure). We had a few classes together back in high school and now she's a Peace Corps Volunteer in Kenya. Small world, eh? Anyway, I spent two days in her village which is a few kilometers outside of Kakamega and it was really nice. We spent a lot of time catching up on life back home and life in East Africa. She even baked cookies during one of the brief spells when there was electricity in the community. It was really amazing since I haven't had fresh cookies in a really long time.

It was sad leaving Kakamega, and I was planning on heading back to Bungoma to visit some folks there. Unfortunately, when I left Kisumu, I had forgotten my passport there, so I went back to see Jeff and Daniel again. I was also glad to see my friend Jessica who was in the Peace Corps group before me and is now in a nifty MBA program at Colorado State. We caught up for a bit before she had to run and catch a bus. Then Daniel and I made some quesadillas and the next day I was on a bus to Uganda.

The trip to Uganda was pretty uneventful (those are the best kind of journeys) and I arrived in Jinja late in the evening to meet with a donor who has been supporting my work in Tanzania. The organization brought together several of the groups they have been working with in East Africa to brainstorm some solutions to the problems that we've been dealing with and to find opportunities to collaborate moving forward. It was a crazy productive 24 hours and it was great to meet a lot of really cool people. I'm really excited about everyone who I met and definitely have some ideas for working with some groups in Kenya and Uganda.

During lunch the following day, a random person at the restaurant came up to me and asked me if I knew Amy Smith. He added that my IDDS shirt made me a bit conspicuous. Turns out he used to work with an organization that has collaborated a bit with D-Lab in the past. He was telling me some pretty horrific things about that organization, which were pretty depressing. Still, accountability is pretty low in this line of work, so stories like his are tragically common.

In the evening we went swimming in the Nile. It was pretty amazing. The current was super-strong and pulling us out, so we actually had a bit of a struggle to get back to land. Then a short time later, we saw some other tourists hop in the water nonchalantly and just start floating. We were a bit concerned, but we watched as the current took them in a nice circle around where we were and left them right back where they started. We ran back to the water and floated around the circuit twice. It was incredible.

After that, I headed down to Kampala to learn a bit more about a couple of the organizations that I had met there. I was pretty impressed with the massiveness of Kampala and the gaudiness of some parts of the city (outside the main mall and casino, there was a statue with some dinosaurs chasing a group of cavemen and cavewomen--I'm so bummed that I lost that picture). It was beautiful in some places, but there were an uncomfortable number of billboards with the Ugandan president looking at you. The most alarming one that I saw was the one that promised tolerance of most religions. I wonder which ones aren't tolerated.

I visited a group called Educate in Kampala and was pretty impressed with what they were working on there. I was talking a bunch with their technology manager about their work with cookstoves and making charcoal from agricultural waste. We were going on for 20 minutes before I asked him where he had learned so much about charcoal and he answered that he had found a bunch of pdfs online by someone named Amy Smith from MIT. Small world again. Well, we talked a bit more and after that I met some of the trainers who they've been working with in their program. All in all, it was a pretty enjoyable day.

After that, I hopped on a bus back to Nairobi. I opted for Easy Coach, which turned out to be anything but easy. (I've ridden with Easy Coach twice and they are 2 for 2 in disappointing me.) It was an overnight bus, and at 7 in the morning, our bus broke down and we stood in the frigid morning air (I haven't seen winter since 2008, so anything in the 40s is now frigid to me). So yeah, don't travel with Easy Coach.

I made it back to Nairobi to see my friend Jessica again and talk a lot more and then celebrate my friend Maria's birthday. I had a few more things to do in Nairobi before flying to Ghana, but I was pretty much ready to be done with adventure at that point, so I was looking forward to a laid-back 48 hours after that before flying out. Unfortunately, things didn't quite work out that way.