Boy am I white.
We've reached our hotel in Nairobi, Kenya. Between the airport and here, there were many, many people walking and a ton of traffic on our nearly 45-minute drive. But I saw only one other white person. One. I know, I'm in Africa, but it still feels strange. I'm just not used to so blatantly sticking out in the crowd.
The city is chaos. While everywhere else we visited has had a beautiful scent, this place wreaks of environmental toxins - especially rubber and petroleum.
As for the scenery, imagine a dense urban area built entirely without a city planning department. A tire factory stands next to a furniture store stands next to a pasture filled with cows stands next to small shanties built as homes stands next to a park stands next to people lying on the sidewalk. It's incredible.
We're just here on a layover, so there's not much to tell. We don't plan to leave our hotel. This is the only place we'll visit where there's an active, applicable State Department warning, so we're not taking any chances. (Aren't you proud, Mom?)
We also had a layover last night in Johannesburg at the Intercontinental Airport Sun, a super nice hotel where I satiated my craving for familiar flavors with a room service meal of pesto pasta.
To be honest, I miss control over my own food supply. I like to be able to choose what I'm going to eat and when - it makes me feel entirely out of control. It also makes me shove whatever I can down my gullet whenever I can (like the chutney potato chips we had at the airport this morning with a banana muffin in the South Africa Airways lounge) to avoid the potential of being hungry later and having either nothing or something that tastes bland, boring or yucky.
We're off to the hotel restaurant now, and we leave first thing in the morning. Hopefully our Botswana and Zambia posts keep you interested for a while, as we're headed tomorrow to Bateleur Camp. If we can't reach you from there, we'll catch up once we find an internet cafe in Tanzania.
Don't worry, Mom, we're safe!
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4 comments:
Well it took me an hour to read this at work. :-)
Glad to see you are having a great time.
I am very proud! Stay in the Hotel, active warnings sound pretty valid to me! I guess you know how it feels to be black in Satellite Beach now! Of those companies not using any environmental standards, how many do you figure are African? European? American?
I miss you Mom!
When you come back, we will have a welcome back party with pizza and falafel and da kine and doubles and whatever else you have been missing. I can't wait to see what you are going to eat when you are volunteering. Oh, the amusement.
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