Nairobi: beads, giraffes, slums, movies

After the end of the long flight, I arrived in Nairobi, and made my way through getting my Kenya visa, collecting baggage and customs & immigration, all very easy and smooth. Even before my luggage showed up, I saw our guide outside, holding the OAT sign. I felt like a little kid who was reassured they were going to be picked up after all! And right next to him was someone holding a World Vision sign. That interested me because I’ve been a World vision donor for years, and one always likes actual confirmation that there is more going on than a glossy brochure with pictures of starving children. As it turns out, I saw World Vision all over the place, so at least now I’m confident that they are really on the scene.

After a good night's sleep, we have breakfast and go for a walk in the city, then return to the hotel for lunch. After lunch we set out for the giraffe sanctuary, the bead factory, and the Karen Blixen house, but we pass the Kibera slums on the way.

This is heartbreaking and inconceivable. 700,000 people living in shacks side by side, with almost no electricity or plumbing. We’re told that many of the people are refugees from Sudan. I can’t help thinking of something I heard a World Vision representative say. When a community has no functional infrastructure, sometimes it takes outside resources to provide enough hope for the village to then help itself. One glance at these slums makes that evident. How can an individual who grows up in the middle of this even have a vision for change, if his entire world is encompassed by the slum?

The shacks lining the street are actually shops, selling clothes, bananas, soccer balls, corn, hardware, eggs, shoes. Raw sewage seeps in a ditch by the road. Interspersed with the shops are medical clinics, a Montessori nursery school, and numerous hair salons. We see ads selling everything under the sun, and a bravely hopeful school motto: “hard work pays”.

After passing the slum, we arrive at the Kizuri Bead factory. Kizuri means small and beautiful. The factory was started to provide work for single mothers. We see women forming the clay, glazing it, and placing the beads in kilns, after which they are strung into necklaces. . Then (of course!) they are for sale. It’s not really a style I normally wear, but I buy one just to support the factory. As the clerk is processing my order, another woman behind the counter asks her something in Swahili. ‘Mojo tu’ she replies. I think I can figure out what she said – ‘only one’. Oh well. But it's a great example of outside resources starting something that helps people help themselves.

Then on to the Giraffe Center, where we feed the giraffes. Just for my friend April, I feed a giraffe from my mouth to get a picture of me ‘kissing’ the giraffe. I wasn't going to post the picture, since it looks so bizarre, but my friends are already trying to blackmail me with it, so I might as well let you enjoy it too.

The ranger keeps insisting that the saliva is ‘very antiseptic’, but I’m glad that ‘my’ giraffe is so delicate I don’t even feel him take the pellet. Some of the guys get totally slimed, with strings of elastic saliva shooting out with eager abandon.