Good times in Nairobi

Two entries in one week - lucky you! I am posting again so soon because we have another trip coming up. It is called the educational tour, and there are two options. Some people in the group are going to Uganda, while the other part of the group is going to Tanzania. I am heading to Tanzania tomorrow, and am so excited. Among some of the things we are going to do is spend a few days with Pete O'Neil, a founder of the Black Panthers who now lives in exile there with his wife, spend three days with the Maasai learning about their culture, mainly dancing and bead work, we are going to the War Crimes tribunals and to the spot where humanity is thought to have begun. So you can see why I'm excited - I'm sure there will be at least on long entry when I get back - so get ready for that.

I have been in Nairobi for about a week, and have been very busy. I've been doing a lot of work to prepare for ISP, as well as some assignments and papers for SIT. We also had some amazing visits to different organizations in Nairobi that I wanted to share:

UN Habitat
This is the UN's branch for urban housing development, and since they are based in Nairobi, they do a lot of work on slum development. The city of Nairobi is home to two of the biggest slums in Africa - Kibera and Mathere. We met with one of the people from the Office of the Director, an American named Chris Winters. He was actually a former SIT Kenya alum and a former Academic Director for the program. He gave us some words of advice about our ISP which I think was helpful for all of us. Then he gave us a brief background on UN Habitat and what they do. After about 20 minutes on that, he opened it up to questions and stayed with us for about another half hour. It was absolutely one of the best lectures I have ever had. He was amazingly smart and competent, and actually talked about the reality of the situation, and not just policy. One of the major complaints about the lectures so far has been that the people just talk about the government policy and not what is actually happening in reality. So this was a great change. He also went on a few rants about how development theories need to change and was just so eloquent about it. I was a little shocked to hear a UN guy speaking so freely, and he even said "I love talking to students this way because I could never say any of this to diplomats". He gave us all a lot of new insights, and after the hour talk with him, my brain was definitely in shock - it was a lot to take in. Another encouraging thing about the lecture was that I understood the vast majority of it and followed all of it. He used a lot of jargon and talked really fast about some semi-complex stuff. I'm not sure if I would have understood half as much of what he was saying last year. That made me feel good - as much as I dislike my classes at GW and the American academic system in general, I guess I am learning something!

MYSA
The Mathare Youth Sports Association. This is an amazing NGO that works in the slum in Mathare. Their main focus is sports as a mode of development, and they are doing an awesome job at it. It was started by a Norwegian man, but is now completely run by young people form Mathare. In order to be a member of MYSA, you have to be either playing on or coaching a team, and the teams start as young as 8. Once you are a member, you have full access to all their resources and information, of which there is a lot. They have a library with 2 computers, an HIV/AIDS resource center, peer counseling for HIV/AIDS or anything else you may need, and they also offer scholarships for various things. Every team has to participate in a community service activity at least once a year to try and help clean up the slum a little bit. If they don't participate, they can't qualify for the MYSA league tournament no matter how many games they have won. They also do a lot of leadership development and the people that were taking us around for the day were all about 20 years old and had been involved in MYSA for at least 8 years. One of the women even got a scholarship for high school through MYSA and said that she wouldn't have been able to go with out it.

There were two main highlights form this trip: one was getting a tour of the slum. I have seen pictures and videos before, but it is still always a shock to see it in real life. All the garbage everywhere, dirty water running throughout and kids playing in all the muck and garbage. The saddest part for me was that I realized that most of the young kids probably have no concept that that's not what a childhood is supposed to be like. They don't understand that most kids in the world don't play on garbage all the time and that they have houses with running water and electricity. The other thing that really struck me that you don't get in the pictures is the smell. It was really bad, and I couldn't imagine being around it all the time. I'm sure you get used to it after a while, but again, no one should have to get used to living in that kind of environment. I am very glad that I saw it and got a chance to walk through, but it was something that was really hard for me to do.

To lighten the mood after the slum tour, they brought us back to the MYSA headquarters where their dance troupe, Haba na Haba (Step by Step) did one of the most amazing performances I have ever seen. They started off with traditional dances and music that was great and a lot of fun to watch. There were both boys and girls doing it, I would say from ages 8 to 13. Then the acrobatics group came out and blew us all away. These kids (all male) were between 11 and 15 and were probably some of the strongest people I have ever seen. They did all these amazing flips and jumps and stunts for about 15 minutes. And to top it all off, they were doing it all on a concrete floor. No mats, no padding or anything. None of us could believe that they were doing this for real. They would just jump around and make these crazy pyramid like formations like it was nothing. Since again, I would never be able to describe it in words, here's another pic:

Football
The day after the MYSA visit, we got treated by SIT to a football match! It was the Harambe Stars (the Kenyan National team) vs. the Swaziland national team. It was a qualifying game for the Africa Cup being held in Ghana in 2008, and Kenya won! They still have many more games before they get there, but this is a good step. The score was 2-0. Everyone was getting really into it, and all the Kenyans were yelling in Swahili, which we all really enjoyed. The stadium was pretty small and nothing fancy at all,and had a capacity of about 30,000. But add all the people who sneak in and sit wherever they can (on the grass, on the stairs, etc) and there were at least 35,000. It was a really fun afternoon adn made me realize how much I like football! I will definitely have to go to some games back in DC (anyone want to join me?!) Another cool thing about this game was that it was the first official game for Kenya in about 6 months. FIFA banned Kenya from football for 6 months due to government corruption and interference in the league. But the ban was lifted about 3 weeks ago, and this was the first game since then. And to make it better, we won! So it was kind of historic as well, which is a cool little side note.

Maasai Market
The Maasai are a very famous tribe in eastern Africa, and are known for their beadwork and cloth. Every tuesday, there is a market in city center where they just come in with all of their stuff - everything from bead work to fabric to paintings to clothing, and baskets and handi -crafts. For you DC folk, think Eastern Market but about 300 times better. And the best part is that no price is set. They expect you to negotiate, so you can get some crazy good deals. And its also a great place to practice Swahili - and they'll give you better deals if you talk to them in Swahili. Espcially if you go at the end of the day when they are packing up. I got a lot of cool stuff, and after I got home just spread it out on my bed and stared at it for a while. I got braelets, head scarfs, and lots of other fun stuff. Its an amazing market that I'm really going to miss when I get back to the states.

That about sums up my fun activities in Nairobi. Like I said, I am leaving for Tanzania tomorrow, so I may not be able to post until after I get back. But save your energies for that, because I'm sure it'll be a long one.