Party Time!

The past few days have been a whirlwind of activities. On Friday night I went to a farewell party for two of the volunteers. Both girls were friends from Australia and were returning home after 6 months of working in an orphanage in Kibera, the second largest slum in the world and a ‘suburb’ of Nairobi. I couldn’t imagine how they must have felt; I know I’ll be devastated returning home after only a month over here. The party was great, with people bringing food and booze and a Twister mat. There were about 15 or so volunteers who showed up and we were all trading stories of our experiences thus far, places we wanted to visit, things we liked and didn’t like about Kenya; standard stuff for the situation. Then I mentioned that I would be leaving for Mombasa in about a week and would be staying with a guy named Mike.
The party went silent.
“Crazy Mike?”
Umm, I wasn’t sure. After a bit of questioning, it was clear that, yes, I would in fact be living with this Crazy Mike character. I pressed on for details. I wanted to know: Was this the good sort of crazy, like “Mike’s a crazy guy and a lot of fun to be around,” or Crazy crazy, as in “I’m Napoleon’s reincarnation and you must offer me tributes of papaya and bellybutton lint on the 3rd Wednesday of every month” crazy? Apparently it was the latter.
Oh crap. I’m stuck in a room for 2 weeks with this guy?! I wanted to know why they thought he was crazy. Everyone, it seemed, had a story to contribute:
“He said Kenya is just like Canada.” (I’m honestly not too surprised he was Canadian; Canadians are often a little weird.)
“He slept outside on the first night for some weird reason.”
“He told us he was shot and stabbed while traveling somewhere, but he didn’t have the scars to prove it.”
“He talked about how he wanted to die in Kenya.”
Ohhh Kaaayy. This would be interesting. This guy sounded like a total space cadet, a few fries short of a Happy Meal. I’m going to try to keep an open mind about him. I asked Bonface the next day if I would be staying with some guy named Mike. He laughed for a minute straight. Great. I’ll keep you guys posted.
Later on in the night, it started to rain a little. It was the first rain I’ve experienced since I’ve been here. The rain had a particular feel to it that’s hard to describe, like how English meadows look a little different than the ones everywhere else and how California sunlight is unlike sunlight anywhere else in the world, even though rain and sunlight sound like universal phenomenon that play out the same everywhere you go.
When it was time to head back, Hanna and I split a taxi with two other volunteers. One of them, Justin from Arizona, told me to try khat. Remember that stuff that looked like grass that the child soldiers in Black Hawk Down were chewing? Yeah, that stuff. It has a mild narcotic effect similar to cocaine or meth and is sold in streetside stands. The code for “We Carry Khat Here!” is a banana leaf hanging on the front of the stand. They use a banana leaf because that’s what is used to transport it across the country. It only grows in the Western provinces, and quickly looses potency after it has been harvested. I made a note to myself to give it a try. It’s pretty harmless, like chewing coca leaves in the Andes, and I can’t try it back at home, so why not?
On Saturday, a bunch of us volunteers went to the famous Maasai Market that takes place every Saturday in downtown Nairobi. It’s an open-air market that spans an entire city block and is filled with wooden carvings, fabrics, jewelry, and all sorts of other random trinkets. Talk about a high-pressure sales staff. Everywhere you go, especially if you’re Mazungu, you hear “Greetings! Where are you from? Have a look at my stuff, please!” It was fine in the beginning but began to wear on me as the day progressed. You’re expected to bargain. A good rule of thumb is to go down 300% from the initial offer and work around there. There are other tricks and tips, and I thought I was doing a good job. It was one of those situations where after the deal was done, both the salesperson and I walked away thinking “Sucker!”
After buying some gifts for friends back home, I compared prices with some other people. Apparently, I wasn’t as good of a bargainer as I had imagined. Oh well, I told myself, I still saved money compared to if I had bought the same thing in a tourist shop somewhere else in town. Even if I had bargained as well as an experienced Arab trader, I could never get the best deal possible because I was Mazungu.
Any city as dangerous and wild as Nairobi is sure to have a pretty great nightlife, I figured, and I wasn’t disappointed. Later that night, Hanna, Rachel, her sister, and I went out to a place called Simba’s downtown. It was outdoors, which was great since the weather was especially lovely that night. It reminded me of the Biergardens in Germany, with people sipping beer under large tents, a live band playing local music, and meats being grilled nearby. I was told going in that as a young, attractive Mazungu man, the women would be all over me. I laughed this off when I first heard it, thinking “I wish.”
I had no idea how true it would be.
The first girl grabbed my arm when I was standing by the bar ordering a Tusker beer, the local favorite. She told me I was handsome, that my hair was great, and then pinched my nipples. She was totally hammered. I later found out from her friends that it was her 25th birthday. Nice. I went back to join my friends at our table. On the way back, another woman stopped me, an attractive older woman, and started talking to me. Even in my wildest fantasies I couldn’t have imagined this happening! Yet here I was, a few minutes into the night and I had already had two good-looking girls hitting on me! I felt like a piece of meat, being desired only for my body. It was awesome!
I’ve done a fair bit of traveling, and I can say without hesitation that Nairobi has some of the most stunningly beautiful girls I have seen gathered in one place. And they’re not just vapid eye candy; overall, they’re very interesting and nice and fun to talk to. I could tell tonight would be memorable.
As we were headed out of Simba’s to go to a club called Florida 2000, a Mazungu in his early 30s stops me and says “Dude, if you’re here for one more night, go to Club Topaz.”
“Thanks, but I’m on my way to Florida 2000 right now.”
“Well, that place is fine if you want your crotch grabbed.”
“Umm, what’s wrong with that?”
<*Silence*>
Florida 2000 had a deliciously sleazy feel to it, like a high-class European brothel or something. There were massive bouncers in suits manning the front doors and red lights illuminating the hallways. I imagined some guy in a polyester leisure suit doing blow off a stripper’s back in some room upstairs. We had gotten there a little early. There were only about half a dozen people on the dance floor, with a few creepy old white dudes staring from the sidelines. I got some beer ($1.50 Carlsberg!!) and drank to get myself in the dancing mood. When the dance floor reached a critical mass, I waded into the sea of humanity. Immediately, I found myself dancing with someone I never would have dreamed about having a chance with back home. Wow, was this really happening to me?! We danced for a bit, she gave me her number and told me to call her, and left giggling with her friend. Over the course of the night, about four girls danced with me. We left the club early in the morning. I had had a blast, and promised myself to come to another club before I left Kenya.
The next morning I woke up sore and sick. Last night had finally caught up to me. Through the haze, I vaguely recalled something about going to the Carnivore restaurant for lunch. This is a restaurant which is consistently ranked among the Top 50 in the World. You can try crocodile and ostrich over there (sadly, giraffe is no longer on the menu) along with other more pedestrian choices such as chicken and it was an all-you-could-eat deal. Seeing as how gluttony is my favorite Deadly Sin and how much I love grilled meat, there was no way I was going to miss this before I left Nairobi. And to top it all off, the entire thing would be paid for by a wealthy Tanzanian banker who was in town on business and was friends with Rachel’s sister. Just how wealthy was this guy? He offered Hanna his $4000 watch, just because. He offered to fly us out to Tanzania for the weekend, all expenses paid, no strings attached.
Unfortunately, at that moment my digestive system could hardly process a piece of toast, so a decedent orgy of roast flesh was out of the question. I contemplated staying in bed all day and recovering. Then my stomach started to growl and I figured every time I spent all day in bed, I ended up feeling just as crappy as when I started out in addition to feeling guilty for having wasted the day. So I manned up, put on some clothes, and got some lunch at the Nairobi Java House.
The Java House is at Nakumaat Junction near where I’m staying and has amazing food at reasonable prices. It’s one of those restaurants where you glance at the menu and have a lot of trouble deciding what to order because everything sounds so good. I got the chicken quesadillas with guacamole, sour cream, rice, and refried beans, with a glass of fresh-squeezed Passion Fruit juice to wash it all down. It was a nice break from Ugali. The food, as usual, was delicious, but I was totally stuffed. So, turns out that Kenyans know how to make decent Mexican food after all, which is more than I can say for the Germans (if you don’t know what I’m referring to, let me know and I’ll send you the relevant blog post from when I was living in Germany).
We had eaten later than usual and I was very concerned that I wouldn’t have the stomach capacity to get the most out of the Carnivore experience. I told Hanna that I would force myself to throw up if I still wasn’t hungry by the time we started eating dinner, Ancient Roman Style. She laughed and thought I was joking. Obviously, she doesn’t know how seriously I take food and eating.
Luckily for me, before going to Carnivore we would spend some time at a small waterpark called Splash. I figured I could burn off some of my lunch by swimming laps or treading water or something. But when I got there all I wanted to do was float in the water, read my book in the sun, and ride the water slides. I can now add “Seams between waterslide sections” to my quickly growing list of Things Not to Take for Granted. You’d be surprised how poorly-joined section seams can really bring your waterslide experience to a screeching halt, both literally and figuratively. All in all, it was a nice change of pace, and just what I needed to recover from the night before.
I asked where the Tanzanian banker was and if he would be joining us at Splash. Apparently, he had gotten a phone call from the Tanzanian ambassador. Classy. Turns out that while he was gone, his bank had been robbed. Twenty million Shillings were stolen.
Ouch. Looks like we wouldn’t be eating at Carnivore that night. I felt bad for him, but also a little pissed at the robbers; why couldn’t they have robbed the bank after I had eaten at Carnivore!? Oh well.
Later on that night we ended up eating hot dogs for dinner, which is about as far as you can get gastronomically from dinner at Carnivore. Don’t worry, loyal reader(s), I’ll eat there before I leave and tell you all about it.
The weather was wretched on Monday morning. Hannah and I dragged ourselves out of bed, started on the half hour walk to the clinic, and remembered that we told Dr. George we might not be in on Monday because we were going out to Maasai Land (which, disappointingly, isn’t an amusement park, but is one of the places where the Maasai tribe lives). We just really didn’t want to go to work that day. So we decided to play hokey and check out the animal orphanage at the edge of town.
After being told by a few people that the orphanage wasn’t worth it on a weekday, we decided to check out the National Museum instead. We hopped a bus to downtown and trekked towards the Museum, slipping off to the side of the road every now and then to consult the map in Hanna’s guidebook. If we looked at the map in the middle of the street, people would have been able to tell we were naïve, vulnerable tourists, would descend upon us like wolves, and try to exploit us. Apparently, that was all wasted effort since everyone already knew we were visitors, no matter how confidently we walked the streets and feigned looking like we knew where we were going.
We passed through Nairobi University, which had a pretty nice campus with signs that said “Corruption Free Zone” or something like that. It was funny because just the other day Phil from the lab at the clinic was telling us that if you have enough money and the right connections, you can get into any university program, including law and medicine. Remind me not to get sick or end up in court over here.
The entrance fee at the museum was 800 Shillings for non-citizen adults (about $10), but we managed to charm them and get in for 400 Shillings. We gave the admissions guy 1000 Shillings each and didn’t get any change back. Instead, he scribbled “600 Shillings” and his signature on the back of our admission ticket. He told me to give him the ticket when we were done and he would give us the change.
The entire time there I couldn’t fully enjoy the museum because I wanted to know whether or not I had just been scammed. It wasn’t even about the money, just the principle of the thing. The museum was nice, but was a little smaller than I was used to. There were exhibits on African customs and traditions, some fossils from ancient humans discovered in Kenya, a bunch of mounted animals (Lisa, there was a room filled with 600 stuffed birds. I immediately thought of you and what your reaction would be like in there). My favorite exhibit was called 24Nairobi. A bunch of photographers were sent all around Nairobi and documented a single day. It captured the essence of Nairobi in all its chaotic, ugly, and beautiful glory. I’m not sure if it’s online, but if you can find the pictures, please look at them. Not only are they amazing photos, but they might give you guys a glimpse of what it’s like to live over here.
The moment of truth had finally arrived: Were we going to get our change back? We cautiously approached the admissions counter. Damnit! Some lady was working there!! Of course we had been scammed! How could we have been so stupid?! We told the lady about the change, showed her the writing on the back of the ticket, and were handed 600 Shillings, no more questions asked. Hmm, guess I shouldn’t have been so cynical.
The rest of the day went pretty slowly. We ate at an all-you-could-eat buffet. The staff seemed amused by how much food I could eat. I found out that intestine actually tastes pretty good but has a (I’m not sure if this is the right word) disturbing texture to it. We also talked to Joe about going out to Maasai Land for 3 days to work in a clinic out there. The clinic is run by a 28 year old nurse named Maggie and has no electricity or running water. It’s the nearest clinic for 60 kilometers, is out in the middle of nowhere, and sees all sorts of crazy stuff. It’s the sort of place where you’re forced to do sutures by lantern-light. Just the experience I was looking for.
If things get ironed out in time (which I’m sure they will be), we’ll be leaving on Wednesday and coming back on Friday night. I’ll be leaving for Mombasa Monday evening on the Lunatic Express. Seriously, the railway between Nairobi and Mombasa is nicknamed the Lunatic Express. Look it up. Anyways, if I don’t post anything between Wednesday and Friday, you’ll know why. I’m looking forwards to eating Maasai food, which features delicacies such as fresh-squeezed milk mixed with cow’s blood (they just stab the jugular, drain it, and let the cow chill afterwards. I hope they give it cookies and juice when it’s done donating blood) and a drink called Mursik, a concoction which consists of milk fermented with cow’s urine and ashes. It supposedly lowers cholesterol. I’ll let you guys know how it is.