Today, or tomorrow, is the Tibetan new year.  And, incidentally, the Chinese new year.  So xin nian kuai le, and losar tashi delek to everyone out there.  

…now that I look at a calendar, I guess maybe it was yesterday.  bu hao yi si

I’m enjoying the pleasant, sunny confines of Nairobi right now.  After wandering around last week, I enrolled in a kiswahili course.  Cheaper than a safari, more useful than a swiss army knife.  The time spent in one area has been a good chance to get my bearings and learn how things work.

For the most part, what you think about Kenya is probably right.  There are lots of elephants and giraffes and other charismatic megafauna (as the legal jargon has it), but you’d have to go at least 10km out of the city to find them.  And, it is also true that the city and the country are not 100% safe, so you’d be right about that.

However.  Brooklyn is also not that safe.  It’s difficult to convey the levels of daily life here, and just how distorted our western vision is:  the downtown streets are mobbed with women and men in suits, jawing on their cell phones while matatus (van-taxis) bump reggae and the odd street preacher screams biblical prophecy.  Occasionally a masaai tribesman might pop out of the crowd.  It’s a regular, mashed-up multicultural, capital city.  It’s true that you wouldn’t want to walk around after dark, but that piece of common sense is pretty much universally applicable.

The young crowd at the hostel are international travellers, and a mix of local students, NGO workers, and artists.  I share a 20 bunk room with the guys from the Kenyan Youth Performing Arts Group.  They have been recruited from all over, and spend their days studying hip-hop and classical dance.  Everyone has a cell phone, and everyone knows who Barack Obama is (his grandparents live in a village in the western part of the country).  The kids are alright.

Kiswahili is a mixture of Bantu and Arabic, created by regular trade up and down the eastern coast.  So, after my last crash-course class tomorrow, I’m obliged to head to the coast and soak up some real cultural fusion.  It’s with a heavy heart that I head to the beach.  A heavy, heavy heart. 

practice with me:

safari – journey, travel

jenga – build, construct

simba – lion

salamuu – greetings

soda – soda

Real quick:  it was a long trip.  4am dash out of Brooklyn to Newark.  An overnight stay in Heathrow, making friends with the linoleum.   At 5am, three hours ahead of scheduled flight departure, there is an enormous queue.  The Kenyan Airlines 767 is booked solid, almost all tourists. 

A late night cab to the hostel, 80mph down the highway.  The next morning is bright, a clear Sunday in what must be the Christian district?  Locals in their Sunday finest clog the streets near the hostel.  First impressions: lush green, trees and grass, a busy, mixed population: dark, fair, short, tall, western and traditional clothing mingling on my three kilometer walk into the cement city center.

Con men pick me out and strike up easy conversations: an artist, a teacher, safari guides.  The day before I arrived, the only other person in the 18 bunk room I’m staying in, a Japanese mechanic in between jobs, gave $15 to two men claiming to be hostel staff in need of gasoline funds. 

For the next few days, I’m seeking travel advice and meeting up with friends of friends.  Excited to be here.  I’m sure the malarial symptoms I’m exhibiting are just jetlag and the aftereffects of three sleepless nights.  Why am I worried?  A major symptom:  I’m seriously considering a haircut.

The original idea was to take advantage of my free time to explore some cheap travel options. A boat, I thought. Perhaps I could do this courier thing, giving up my luggage space to travel deliver a package in exchange for cheap airfare. Then the concept of airhitching came up during my searches, so I decided to give that a whirl.

The idea is interesting and has some progressive politics attached to it. The founder has tried to create a system (not a company) to liberate travelers (not customers) from the devices of corporate travel machines. Great – a refreshing idea. As you may surmise from their semi-coherent website, one must make a bit of effort in order to realize this noble goal.

Unfortunately, after an unsettling chat with the Airhitch staff, that experienced ended today. As it turns out, I am not the first to encounter difficulties.

Should have done my due diligence. The lesson here being, it might be worth it if you need to save a few bucks, but an organization that is antagonistic and pro-themselves isn’t really working towards the ground shaking social changes they profess to want.
A balanced perspective is offered here.

So, what will I do?  Plan D: Take the cheapest fare offered by a bulk consolidator – a bit more expensive but much less hassle.   Nairobi, here I come