My god, I’m finally in Kenya. It took two days of cramped flights, twelve hour layovers, and luggage scares, but finally, we are here.  Even though two eight hour flights separated by a twelve hour layover may seem ungodly, I had it easy. The group flight we took to get to London departed out of Newark. For the local Philly girl, this was not a big deal at all. It took about an hour to drive to the airport. Many of my classmates had it much worse than I.  In fact, very few people were as lucky as me. Let just put it in perspective for you, two or three people had to file from Portland to get to Newark. Others got to Newark hours before the first (or for them, second) flight even departed. So yes, much worse off than me. The twelve hour layover in London was not as horrifying as it sounds; in fact it gave many of us time to catch up on some much needed sleep. With the amount of problems that often occur with flying, our group got extremely lucky and did not have any of those problems.  No luggage was lost, and no flights were delayed. So all in all, it was actually pretty easy traveling.

We arrived in Nairobi at around nine in the morning and were greeted by two of the SFS staff at the gate. Let me tell you that I’ve never had an easier time getting my pass port stamped and gathering my luggage. The Nairobi air port is an easy airport to navigate (especially when you have a group of locals directing you where to go what to do and pulled your entire luggage off the belt so it was sitting in wait for you). But that was not the end of our travels. After we left the airport all thirty of us were escorted to our camp site in the stereo typical green safari trucks. The ride to the camp took about four hours, but it was well worth.

The moment I walked out of the airport and felt the warm sun on my back (even though it made me even more gross and sweaty after two days of the same clothes) and saw all of the acacia trees, I knew that all the stress of packing, flying, and meeting new people was all a thing of the past. At that moment, I knew that I was about to be doing something very special.

Once we were in the safari trucks we made our way on to Mombasa high way (which we learned had just been recently paved making for a much safer journey) on our way to our camp site which is four hours away from the airport. About two minutes into our journey we looked to our left and saw three of four giraffes foraging by the side of the road. At that moment, everybody knew that we were not in Kansas anymore. It took a lot of time to let the fact sink in that we actually were in Africa (which is so exciting it still doesn’t feel real).

 During the drive we saw a few more animals but unfortunately not a ton (although giraffes seemed to be the most common on the side of the road).  When we arrived at the camp site, my breath, along with everyone else, was taken away.  Huge pink flowers lined the entrance to the chumba (our classroom, dining room, and social hub), and after turning around, the most breath taking view of Kilimanjaro greeted all of the new students to Kenya. As we all spilled out of our cars, every staff member lined up along the flowers to welcome every one of us. Each staff member shook our hand and said “welcome home”. I have entered new communities before as a foreigner and normally I have to make my own way into the community, but never have I been welcomed so warmly and sincerely as I was by the staff at SFS.  They had made their home our home, the most welcoming and kind gesture that anyone can receive.

 We finished dinner around eight o’clock sleepy-eyed and suffering from jet lag. After we finished washing our dishes, the staff gave us our welcome dance. Every staff member sang and danced the jambo jambo song to us. The jambo jambo song is the welcome song of Kenya, by them singing and dancing like this for us, we were made official members of the community. In the song they are basically saying, welcome to Kenya, a place of no worries, and beautiful Animals, welcome to Kenya. What a way to start our first day in Kenya.

Orientation in Kenya is not the same as orientation in America. Instead of being told that we will be meeting certain days or are required to read fifty pages a night, we were told about all of the different diseases we could contract, ranging from parasites to simple infections. We learned what to do if we encounter an animal while walking around, which is just amazing to think that we may run into them at all (I guess coming from a densely populated city, it makes it more interesting). The biggest dose of reality came after Molly, our advisor, told us stories about our resident big male baboon fallowing her to our house. She let us take a break after that story, and who should be sitting outside in front of our banda’s but our huge, swarthy, male baboon. After all of the eager students hastily made their way to the back porch of the chumba to see the baboon, he clearly had too much pride to have a bunch of college kids stare and ogle at him. He swaggered off into the bushes disappearing from site. I always heard that baboons were big animals, but until I saw one in person I didn’t understand how big. He was probably the same size as a full grown adult, with canines about three inches long. The type of animal you want to give a wide birth (which, in case anyone is concerned, we did).

On Tuesday afternoon, the women put on their skirts and the men through on respectable pants, and we made our way to the once weekly local market in the town of Kimana. Kimana is a tiny town that explodes with visitors every Tuesday looking to barter and sell goods. We were warned that because we are white, we will stick out like a sore thumb in the crowd, which was really very true. We were constantly chased around by the Maasai mamas trying to sell us all of their jewelry. The mamas are very relentless and will do anything they can to get a mzugu (foreigner/white person) to buy their jewelry. The mamas ended up cornering me, so now, I have five of their bracelets.  Even though the constant harassment was a touch daunting, the market was the biggest indicator of the level of poverty in which most people live in Kenya. The only food that was available were tomatoes, potatoes, rice, papaya, and a few other green veggies. The clothing and shoes that were being sold were all badly used second hand donations. The desperation of the mamas also showed how impoverished Kenya is.

We started classes on Wednesday. Everyone sits in the chumba with their note books in hand while a professor stands at the board lecturing us about Swahili, wildlife conservation, environmental protection and so on. All of our professors are native Kenyans who are some of the leading scientists in their fields of wild life biology, conservation, etc. It is humbling, albeit slightly intimidating, to learn from them. They gave us a three hour lecture yesterday about what they expect from us academically (you know the usual).

Just so you all know, my internet connection here in the bush in Kenya is extremely week, so I will try my hardest to update as often as I can, but there will probably be very few pictures. Bumber.  (Except for this one. This would be the big male baboon that likes to knock over our trash cans and run through our camp. In this photo he is sitting in a tree right out side of our camp. In the background is Kilimanjaro). 

Kwahiri every one, I’ll update you all soon on this wild semester! 

Location: Kenya