A long overdue post...

so... I made it to Eldoret. The ride was... interesting. But let's start from the beginning...

After quite despondantly leaving Mike at the airport (or, he left me there, rather), I had an uneventful flight to Boston. But then the fun started. Of course the plane from Indy to Boston was a little puddle jumper, and we didn't get a real ramp thingy to get out of the plane. We walked down the stairs and into a back door of some sort that led to a maintenance area of some sort that led to a baggage claim area of some sort. Except it was actually the baggage claim area. So.... I had to go BACK through security, which is Boston is a huge deal, and I ended up waiting in line for about an hour. Luckily I had plenty of time. But, of course my bag with medical supplies got scanned twice and then searched (due, I think, to my reflex hammer, which has a sharp metal, dagger-like handle) as it did in Indy, so by the time I got to the gate at Boston, I was quite perturbed. As I left my American cell phone at home, I tried to call Mike on a pay phone, but the first one ate my quarters and then the second one kept telling me I was dialing an out of order number. But by the third phone, I got through.

Flight from Boston to Amsterdam was about 7 hours. I was planning on trying to sleep most of the way, which didn't work out so well. I was in a row of 2, in the window seat, and of COURSE my seat was broken and didn't lean back. But, the seat next to me was never claimed, so I could lay down of sorts. Which really wasn't all that comfortable, with my head jammed uncomfortably against the arm rest, and my feet hanging out into the aisle and getting rammed into by passengers or drink carts or whatever every other minute. The hour or so that I did manage to get some sleep was when they brought dinner around. Of course. After that I couldn't get comfortable so I just ended up watching movies -- Shrek 3 & Spiderman 3. On this plane we had our own individual screens, so that was nice.

So I arrive in Amsterdam, dirty, tired, and schlepping about 100 lbs of stuff behind me. This airport is HUGE -- it really was like being a shopping mall that just happened to have airplanes parked outside the windows. I wandered for a bit, got some breakfast, bought a phone card and checked in with Mike again. Then I met up with Priti, and it was time to -- you guessed it -- go back through ANOTHER security line! Apparently at Amsterdam, security checks happen at each individual gate. After getting my bag searched (again), we get on the plane. And I mean, this was a PLANE. One of those double decker things. They even had 2 separate rams depending on which rows you were sitting in. So I go up my ramp, and one of the flight attendants directing traffic looks at my ticket and tells me to go left. Well, left was the wrong way. I consider myself a fairly intelligent person, but I got totally lost on this plane. The numbers made no sense (plus I was sleep deprived), and the aisles were super narrow, so my suitcase kept getting stuck, plus I was going against the flow of traffic most of the time. I eventually just threw my suitcase in a random bin, and finally found my seat. It was in a little secluded section of the plane, right by a bathroom and a water fountain (fancy!), I was on an aisle seat with no one behind me, and the seat leaned back, so I was thinking this was pretty sweet. I had been sitting there no more than 2 minutes when a flight attendant asked if I would be willing to switch with a man who was traveling with the 2 women next to me (they were African) who didn't speak English, and he wanted to be near them to translate. So I think, ok, I guess, I'm a nice person I will do that. I pick up my bag, fight back through the streams of people entering (seriously, I have never seen a boarding process so chaotic), and we find the guy. Well, he's not even in his right seat anyway, so we were confused about where I was supposed to sit -- but of course it ended up being one of the middle seats in a row of 4. It also turns out that I was once again sitting next to 2 (different) African women who were traveling with this man, and they didn't speak any English either. Now I'm wondering why I gave up my great seat? Luckily, once again, the aisle seat next to me was never claimed, so I moved over to the aisle seat. But apparently, that's what the woman next to me thought she should to too, so she moved over to sit directly next to me again. But atleast I was on the aisle again. All in all, it was a long and uncomfortable flight (there's definitely something to be said about shelling out the extra money for business class when flying halfway around the world), especially since the African women communicated mostly by hitting, nudging, and shoving whenever they wanted something or wanted out.

But, we FINALLY made it to Nairobi after a little over 9 hours. The scene at the airport was total chaos. We stood in line to exchange money, stood in line (for over an hour) to get our visas. Luckily ours were pretty much the only bags left by the time we got through immigration. And everything made it intact! Then we stood in line to go through customs, and then we had to try to find our driver. If I thought the airport was chaos, then the transportation area was an absolute zoo. Or a circus. Or a zocus. We were told to expect it, but people just start randomly grabbing your things, telling you that they are your driver, or they will take you to the hotel, or whatever. So that wasn't fun. But we did find our driver eventually (who by this time was wondering if we had made the plane or not), and he was very friendly and took us to our hotel.

The hotel in Nairobi was quite nice. It had a nice little work out room and a fabulous breakfast in the morning. We felt quite safe, as our driver had to pass through 2 security checkpoints, and the locked front door was guarded by a locked gate. We sort of crashed when we got there, ordered pizza and watched some American TV (J.Lo is present even in Africa). After breakfast the next morning, we checked out and our driver met us to take us to Eldoret.

Our driver's name was Netta, and she is a "white Kenyan" as she said -- having been born and raised in this country, now working mostly as a safari guide. She knew a ton about the city and the country, and answered all of our random questions. The ride out of the city was awesome, as it was the first time we had seen Africa by day, and there were people everywhere. We passed most of the downtown buildings, and an enormous market with thousands of people selling millions of things. A little farther out of the city, we passed an area that wasn't a game preserve, but near it, so we got our first look at some African wildlife. We saw several herds of anetelope and some impala, as well as many random herds of zebra grazing along side of the road. The coolest thing was the baboons, though. They sat on the side of the road eating whatever was thrown. We got to see them running, too, and they are quite quick!

The scenery along the drive was phenomenal -- we drove up to the peak of a mountain that overlooked the Rift Valley, drove down into the valley to Nakuru, then climbed back up into the hills where Eldoret sits. Overall, the trip took about 6 hours. The first 2 hours were awesome, as the road is brand new and there was so much to look at. About halfway to Nakuru, it started to not be fun. This is where the new road ends and the old "road" begins. I say road in only the very broadest and most generic sense. Certainly, it was paved, at some point in the past, but that was it. There is no repair whatsoever and the potholes are unbelievable. To get around this, people drive pretty much wherever they want (though technically driving is on the left here), and you just avoid other cars and people (both of which there are many) as best as you can. The best part is when you're clearly on the wrong side of the road either avoiding potholes or passing another car(s) and the plumes of dust are rising so high that you can't tell if what's coming directly at you is a bus or a bike. The other not so fun thing is the random police stops every few miles or so. Netta said they really like to pull over matatus (taxis) because they tend to break the most laws regarding safety belts, speed limit, number of passengers, etc. If they get stopped, they usually have to pay a ticket (ie bribe) in order to keep going. So that's frustrating on a personal and institutional level. At any rate, we only had to actually stop once, and as soon as Netta started speaking in Swahili, they knew we got to leave again pretty quickly. We stopped in Nakuru quickly, then we climbed the mountain to Eldoret. Again, the scenery was just amazing.

The best part of the drive was stopping at the Equator and taking pictures (of course), and a local guy there showed us the water trick, which I'd never seen before. The water trick involves a pitcher of water and a bowl with a hole in the bottom. When standing north of the equator, the water, when poured into the bowl, will come out the hole in a counter-clockwise fashion. This was demonstrated by putting a piece of straw in the bottom of the bowl, which did in fact turn counter-clockwise. Then, while standing south of the equator, the straw turned clockwise. And when we stood directly on the equator, the straw lay perfectly still in the bottom of the bowl while the water poured out. It was the neatest thing!

Once in Eldoret, we came to IU house, where we're staying for the weekend before going to the student hostel on Monday. IU house is actually a compound of houses owned by IU and used for the staff, residents, and visitors that come here. IU house is where computer access is, as well as laundry and some meals of the week. It's about a 10 minute walk from the hostel (and the hospital, which is across the road from the hostel). After getting settled in, we went out for Indian food (which is apparently quite popular here) with a ton of people. I was so tired at this point, I barely remember the meal.

This is long.... but... on to today.
Today I went to Kisumu with 5 other girls. Kisumu is the 3rd largest city in Kenya (Eldoret is actually 5th -- it has a population of 1 million), and it sits on Lake Victoria. We took a matatu for 300kSH (about 5 US dollars), and it was a 2 1/2 hour ride (once again, on not so great roads). Again there was chaos when we got there, because the matatu stand is right in the middle of the market. Of course it was Saturday, and of course we all stand out as blatantly tourists, so we were getting sales pitches left and right. We made it to the edge of the market, where we each hired a bota bota (basically an elongated bicycle -- there's an extra seat on the back and the drivers make money by peddling people around) to take us to Hippo Point. The lake was absolutely beautiful, and I got some great pictures. We spent about an hour at the lake, and we did actually see some hippos. They were about 50 yards away from the shore, and they were feeding and sunning. It was pretty cool. We had lunch by the lake, then hired bota-botas back to town. This was more of an adventure, as the chain broke on Dayna's bota bota, so she got left behind (the other drivers did not stop), and my driver was last in the pack and had no idea where he was going. We were speeding down a hill and I saw the rest of the group, I shouted STOP and the driver stopped to fast I thought we would both flip over the handlebars. Eventually Dayna made it back into town, and we walked around for awhile. Erin really wanted some fried Tilapia, which we found, and it is actually a whole, entire fish, pulled from the lake and fried. Needless to say, I declined. We meandered back to the market and did some shopping, then got back on a matatu and headed for Eldoret.

Once back in Eldoret, we got some dinner, then wandered over to the video store (bootlegged DVDs, apparently most of them are obviously filmed in a theater). By this time I was exhausted and getting nervous, in that the #1 thing they tell you NOT to do in Eldoret is be out at night. I was apparently the only one concerned. By the time we left the video store it was definitely dark (it gets dark about 7 here), and there are no lights. So, we are searching for a cab, can't find one, dashed in and out of traffic (again, the driving is just crazy here) to get a a corner where the cabs and matatus leave, and no cab will take all 6 of us. We didn't want to split up, so Dayna called a cab driver who knows the med students, but he took forever to show up (turns out he didn't actually know where we were), and the whole time we're standing there (again, standing out like sore thumbs) getting harassed by drunk guys and matatu drivers -- "where you go, where you go? You go to Nairobi tonight?" Yeah, no thanks). Luckily there were 6 of us, but it's still not a situation I want to be in again. I was actually really mad about it, as it was a stupid situation for us to get in, especially as it's only my 2nd day in Eldoret. Eventually our cab showed up though and we made it back to IU house fine.

The group I was with today was actually pretty diverse in terms of culture & experience. There's me, there's Priti (who's Indian though born in the US), then we met Erin, a 1st year Candian medical student who's been here for 10 weeks (she leaves Wednesday), Dayna, an African-American 4th year IU student who's here for July/August. We also met Venus, a business major doing a project here. She's also from Canada, but her parents are Chinese; the last girl is Laurien, a 6th year med student from Holland. So overall, we really REALLY stood out today.

I know this has been very long, but I feel like so much has happened already. I'm sure it will all start to seem more common and less amazing as I get more used to being in the country. Tomorrow is kind of a relax day, and Priti and I will meet with our medical directors to figure out which services we'll be on while we're here. Then we'll move to the hostel either tomorrow or Monday, and start work at the hospital on Monday. I'm very excited.

Asante sana for all of your thoughts and prayers.