"Well, we made it. I'm sitting at a desk in my own private room on the top floor of a Jesuit University (yep, we spent our first night in Africa at a Jesuit University). It's been an incredible journey so far, and we've only just embarked."
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| A little figurine my dad got me from Singapore before I left for Africa. Our family's big into traveling. |
Where did I leave off? Ah yes, we had just finished proving our pompous independence and Americanized youth by desecrating London's most prized landmarks. I'm still not quite sure how we managed to catch our 5:30am train back to Heathrow, but we did. And a good thing too, because I'm about to recount to you the most tantalizingly liberating and ethereally invigorating experiences of my life. And I'm not just talking about summiting Kilimanjaro.
British Airways took us the rest of the way from London to Nairobi. Not much to recollect here, I slept through 99% of the 8hr 15min flight again, and again I became cranky upon the realization that I had missed the Cajun Chicken dinner.
I somehow always manage to wake up whenever the captain (supposedly) announces their initial descent (I can NEVER understand what the damn pilots are saying; ENUNCIATE for crying out loud, the speaker systems are bad enough as it is without you people forcibly commanding your lips to move as little as audibly possible). So I was lucky enough to be awake for my own personal descent into Africa. It was a monumental moment for me; I had dreamed about coming to Africa for years, and it was finally happening. [Unfortunately we arrived in Nairobi at 9pm, so strictly visually speaking this touchdown was not dissimilar to any of my other evening flights. But the skidding tension of wheels against an airport runway had never elicited such raw emotions than that night, such overwhelming... overwhelming... something. A convoluted array of excitement, precursory fulfillment, a somewhat dispersed sense of anticipation, joy... I suppose the best way to describe it is to simply say that it was personal. Complexly personal.]
Moving on, how was Nairobi International Airport? I think it was exactly what I expected it to be; not unpleasant, but no overtly welcoming either. I didn't feel particularly vulnerable, but considering Nairobbery's infamous reputation (Nairobi+Robbery=Nairobbery for those of you who don't follow), we were very glad that Solomon's friend Paul (who very quickly became our friend Paul) was kind enough to meet us at the airport. The 6 of us clambered into a sizable van that was relatively small when you consider how much gear we had per person. After Tetris-ing our bags and bodies to just barely fit inside the van, our openly friendly and talkative driver Alex took us to grab a small dinner before retiring to our Jesuit home-away-from-home. This quick bite was our first meal in Africa, and I must say it was both anticlimactic and disappointingly ironic: first drink I had in Africa = orange Fanta; first meal I had in Africa = fried chicken and fries. There appears to be no escaping Westernization.
"It is now 1:53am, and I must sleep. Tomorrow we meet Paul at 8am then venture off to Arusha, Tanzania at 1pm. It's surreal, I'm writing in my journal in Africa. S-u-r-r-e-a-l."
