Kakamega

Hello everyone,

I'm in Kakamega! I arrived last night after a 9 hour bus ride from Nairobi. The ride was long, but the scenery was incredible! I never stopped looking out the window (which made for a very sore neck). I'm staying in a hotel in town, and I'm writing this from an internet cafe about a 2 minute walk away. Kakamega is nowhere near as big as Nairobi but it is one of the biggest towns in the region. If you google map it it will come right up. It is crazy out today because of new year's. Lots of people and music everywhere.

My day in Nairobi was also really great, but more on that later. I just bought an outlet adaptor so I'm going to type out a longer post tonight and come back to the internet cafe tomorrow to post. I'll leave you with a teaser, though-- I got to pet some baby elephants and kiss a giraffe!

Goodbye, America!

Made it to Amsterdam… halfway to Nairobi! My flight out of Atlanta was a bit delayed but I was scheduled for an 8 hour layover here in Amsterdam so it was no big deal. I was kind of a mess when it came time to leave, but luckily Atlanta TSA agents react really well to a sobbing white girl trying to get through security (who would have thought?). The 7.5 hour KLM flight wasn’t too bad—I watched The Help (didn’t live up to the hype) and then tried to sleep in EXTREMELY tight quarters. I have never been that cramped on a plane before. They did feed us a pretty good meal, although it was a little bizarre to be served dinner at 2 am (side note—next time you have the opportunity to choose a meal option on a flight, choose vegetarian because you’ll be the first to be served!).  It’s cloudy and dark here in Amsterdam so I didn’t get to see much of the countryside on the descent. I DID, however, see an offshore wind turbine field off the coast of (what I think was) England! The environmental studies student in me was very excited.

My next flight leaves at 8:40 pm local time, and 8 hours later lands in Nairobi at 7 am. Peter, a Davidson alum who lives and grew up in Shikokho, tells me that a man named Moses will pick me up at the airport and take me to my hotel. Moses also has my bus ticket, so Friday I can walk across the street form the hotel and get on the 10-hour bus ride to Kakamega. From Kakamega I’m not positive how I’ll then get to nearby Shikokho, but I think it will involve the famous matatus I’ve been reading about in the guidebooks (from what I understand, picture 15 passengers crammed in the back of a van).