Things are Changing!
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Brooks
Many
of the things traveling around East Africa for the past 10 years sadly,
yet wonderfully, I’ve become accustomed to. However, that was not the
case this morning!
Today
we start our trek home. The journey begins with battling it out with
Nairobi traffic at possibly the worst time of the day, early morning,
and us needing to go from one side of town, through City Center out to
the airport.
Little
did I know that the Southern By-pass had been completed. It’s been part
of the scenery for a long time providing jobs for Kenyans with the
Chinese winning the contract and overseeing the job. In times past we’ve
been on a very short completed section of it, but today Julius, the
driver from our guest house, assures me that now that it’s completed, we
can accomplish the journey from guest house to the airport in perhaps
only one hour instead of the usual two or three at this time of day.
Today
I saw parts of Nairobi I’ve never seen…just to getting to the on-ramp
of the by-pass. Once on it, it was crazy! Instead of the congested, no
lanes policy on the typical one or even three lane streets of Nairobi,
here was a California two-lane marked freeway, cars moving about 50 mph
(ok, that’s not so much CA!); very few matatus—the bane of all of
Nairobi driver’s and pedestrian’s existence, filled to the max with 12
people in a 9 passenger van, weaving in and out of cars at will;
“lorries” speeding along undeterred delivering products up-country; and
relaxed drivers motoring away respectful of the road and each other. It
was almost a bit disappointing. East Africa is changing—at least in the
cities. They call it “coming up,” as in coming up to a higher level with
“first world” countries. After two months of travel in typical, rural
Africa, my brain was seriously scrambled!
But,
hooray!!! All is not lost!!! Indeed, I am still in Africa! While things
may be changing, change comes slowly and while the new begins to seep
in, some things, thankfully, are slow to relinquish generations of
tradition and lifestyle.
Here are some examples:
Suddenly
slowing down, I looked up to see why Julius was putting on the brakes,
but no big deal and barely worthy of a comment by him, it was just two,
traditionally clad, red plaid-blanketed Maasai warriors fresh off the
plains, crossing the road with their small herd of goats.
Alongside
either side of the “freeway,” streams of people were walking mostly in
single file hurrying in the early morning fog to get to a job or buy or
sell at one of the many traditional markets. Women were dressed in
longish skirts with double kangas (traditional African piece of fabric),
one to keep her warm, the other to double wrap herself and her small
child or baby strapped with another piece of fabric to her back; and men
were wearing big parkas to ward off the dampness and cold from the
rains last night.
And,
yes, as is very typical, there was a herd of skeleton-thin cows herded
by two Maasai men, spears in hand used as a walking stick, a cattle
prod, a leaning stick or to ward off predators. These protectors of the
community’s wealth are constantly in search of grasses for their
precious cattle, and if it happens to be alongside the freeway or even
in the middle of busy Nairobi, so be it.
As
always, stately acacia trees stand tall. They speak so profoundly of
the ones in Maasai Mara providing shade for lions, food for giraffes, a
limb for a leopard to haul their kill up, so they can eat without being
interrupted. In the city, they provide shade for folks to sit on the
ground and rest under. Oftentimes their vast branches provide
precariously balancing nesting spots for huge, loud storks and their
young. They seemingly could care less that crazy, hectic Nairobi life is
going on all around underneath them.
And,
in very common entrepreneur style, many people have set up their
businesses in make-shift wooden stalls alongside the road to sell
morning African tea (half hot milk, half tea and about 4 teaspoons of
sugar) and mendazi (fried donut type triangular breakfast item) to
potential customers.
Stretching
out alongside the road was believe it or not, the western boundary of
Nairobi National Park where nature co-exists with urban life…well, ok,
limited, but there is acreage designated to give value to definitely one
of Kenya’s most prized resources—if not to Kenyans at least to the
hundreds of tourists coming each year. Lions, zebras, rhinos and many
other animals find safety in this space. Today we saw far in the
distance a family of giraffes majestically walking in single file across
the plain, oblivious to the frantic pedestrians racing to work and
speeding cars, like us, anxious to get to Kenyatta International
Airport.
These are
just a few of the things I saw early this morning. For absolute sure,
there’s no place like home in California; but I can confidently say,
there’s definitely no place on earth like Africa.
Here
are some rather poor photos, taken from our dirty-windowed car speeding
by traditional sites. Hopefully, they’ll give you an idea of some of
the things we saw.
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Then
there are the strategic planning sessions with national team leaders.
This helps them to frame vision and goals for the coming year. They
often surprise me with their measure of faith. At the same time, they do
not just pull numbers out of the air. They think strategically, look at
where and how the work is progressing, then make plans to move further
and faster. The team from Kenya has set the following target:
