I sat in the departures lounge of Leeds Bradford airport. Shitting bricks. I hate flying. The idea of a big metal thing full of people and luggage being kept in the air simply by the laws of physics has always seemed somewhat suspicious to my technologically challenged mind. I tried to distract myself by looking at the people sat waiting with me. A man who can only be described as Elvis’ illegitimate offspring due to the extraordinary length of his sideburns sat opposite me sweating in the poor airport air conditioning. An intellectual sort opened a book on data analysis with a love heart post it stuck on the inside…data analysis and romantic gestures were never two things I would have automatically put together but I guess we’re all different. Leeds Bradford airport is a bit of a bizarre experience. After you’ve dropped off your baggage you’d be forgiven for thinking that you’d checked into a tacky, tiny indoor shopping centre - I truly don’t see the attraction of duty free or why anybody would want to buy loads of perfume or jewellery just before going on holiday or just after coming back?!
Anyway before long I was walking out to the plane and climbing onto what seemed to be an old double decker bus with wings. I was flying in pensioner plane - with a very artistic pattern of rusty rings along the wing tips. The shitting of bricks continued. I had dosed myself up to the eyeballs with pain medication as my leg was giving me grief and was hoping the side effects of drowsiness would knock me out. However, the pills decided to choose this occasion to give zero side effects of drowsiness but instead to supply me with a nicely timed headache. Joy. I stared out at the rusty wings, regretting asking for a window seat and gripped my seat as we rattled down the runway. The flight to Amsterdam is very short - less than an hour - so I was soon whipping my way through Schipol to board the flight to Nairobi. I watched other people queue for ages whilst I sat twiddling with my Blackberry which was refusing to work outside of the UK. I felt practically naked without my Blackberry - and a bit scared by my dependence on it! The flight to Nairobi was to be 7 hours - great - 7 hours of all the films I watch trailers for but never see at the cinema! Woo hoo! Except my TV screen didn’t work - and watching the Curious Case of Benjamin Button with no sound on your neighbour’s screen doesn’t really work so well. On the plus side I got to read the majority of a book by a guy called Rob Bell called Velvet Elvis. It’s all about how questioning the Christian faith is a good thing and how we are constantly discovering more and more and gaining more insight into who God is, generation by generation - and about how we can see God’s truth and beauty in many things - that we don’t have to restrict ourselves to only finding God within the pages of the Bible…but that the good things he makes in the world and the Bible are actually complementary things. And lots of other things which seemed fairly profound at the time but I’m too tired to remember now! A little girl sat behind me seemed to be using my seat as a kick boxing bag….which was mildly irritating…but on the bright side I was kept awake long enough to make good progress into the book and have a good talk with God in between chapters.
At JKIA I was pleasantly surprised to find that tourist visas have been reduced to $25 - a 50% reduction since the last time I was here. I was less happy to see the lady wearing a face mask who shoved a questionnaire about swine flu symptoms into my face, making hand signals that I should fill it in and tell them if I’ve been feeling ill recently. I started to worry about the headache I was having but then remembered I was severely sleep deprived and told myself to stop being a such a hypochondriac.
7.30am and I’d made it out of baggage reclaim and into a cab. The driver was pleasant enough…chatting along…but by Mombasa Road we were stuck in nose to tail traffic and after having covered the prices of food and oil, recent political events, my career and previous visits to Kenya, his driving career…I was beginning to struggle for conversation. I don’t really do small talk and it’s really boring talking about the same things over and over again - especially if you are the topic of conversation. Very dull indeed. As per tradition with most people I meet in Kenya he commented on my fluency in Swahili. I repressed a giggle - as I am the worst offender when it comes to diluting, polluting and generally destroying the beautiful language that is Kiswahili. Ask my friends who actually speak it properly - they’ll verify my lack of competence. I’m not sure when English, made up words and a few words of Swahili counted as fluent Swahili…but I’m happy to let him live with the illusion if he wants! After the jam followed a breakfast drink with a friend of mine from Nairobi who I was very excited to see. After she’d left to go to a class though I was left to get back to Velvet Elvis whilst waiting for my lift. The man sat next to me started to make small talk though - sheesh enough already! So I again covered the familiar topics of career, past visits to Kenya etc. Thankfully he was keen to talk about his own job - something to do with procurement of tools for generating electricity (I didn’t completely understand what he was saying but figured there was potential for something more interesting than small talk so nodded intently to encourage him to keep going!) I felt very topical talking about the recession and impressed with my level of consciousness given the circumstances!
Then my lift arrived. Kind of. The lady I’m staying with had come with one of the guys who works for her and we weaved our way through the streets to get a matatu (public transport - like a little minibus, usually driven at high speeds and with no regard for other road users) to Naivasha. We crammed ourselves into a packed mat and set off. I looked up at the ceiling and saw it was covered in green and white leather cushions so that as the driver soared over bumps and pot holes our heads wouldn’t be banged too severely. How considerate - albeit slightly bizarre! Halfway there we all piled out - flat tyre. The bus was very rickety - I’m actually surprised we made it that far without some part of it dropping off! Finally at around 3pm we reached Naivasha. The town is as dusty as ever - you can almost taste it it’s that thick. It’s teeming with people - taxis, moterbike taxi drivers, mechanics, fruit and vegetable sellers, cafes, hairdressers and loud Kikuyu music blaring out from music shops in competition to show who has the loudest speakers. After lunch and plenty of hugs for the kids who live at the house I’m staying at I headed up town on the back of a moterbike to say hi to some NYM friends. My moterbike taxi driver suggested dropping off to see his baby daughter and I thought why not so made a quick pit stop to give yet more hugs to a very sweet 9 month old girl. I’m not feeling broody at all (ahem). Still have two more babies to go (one of the CSWs and the NYM team leaders’). Anyhoo after cute baby I moved on to the school where I used to work. A donor friend of mine is funding the construction of a dining hall at the school which is really expanding now. When I originally started teaching there, there was only one proper classroom and a very ramshackle kitchen which miserably failed its health and safety inspection. Now there’s 4 classrooms, a dormitory, a proper kitchen, a dining hall and a farm full of tomatoes and maize - along with 2 cows! Girls education in Naivasha has definitely been given a boost and I’ve been privaledged to watch it happen over the years! So I spent an hour or so fighting a wave of exhaustion and doing the rounds of greetings to old friends. As I was talking to one friend there was a knock on the door from a small girl. She looked about 11 but told us she was 13 - her family was displaced after the ethnic violence and she’d dropped out of school at Standard 5. She was going around houses begging for food for supper. We sent her outside and weighed up what to do, deciding on buying her a bag of maizemeal flour as she seemed like a genuine case. As she left I realised I’d been very detached about the whole thing. I guess it should be more shocking but I just can’t be shocked by this kind of thing anymore. I don’t know if that’s a bad thing?
By 5.30 I was beginning to get a bit wobbly so headed home to bed. I’m frightenly tired. Tomorrow is a daytrip with some of the NYM team’s kids. I need sleep. Lots of sleep.
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