Kenya Trip Part 3

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So we spent the night at the MC house. It was there that I got to have something that I have missed for over a month, a warm shower! It was so nice. I spent time to scrub every part of my body. It wasn't the hottest shower ever but it was better than cold.

That day we followed some of the AIESEC Kenya interns to their projects in the slums. Before going they warned us that we should wear shoes and not sandals because of all of the mud. We all took this comment lightly considering from what we had seen Kampala is way muddier/dustier (depending how much it rains) and just overall more dirty than Nairobi. We headed out in the morning which was chillier than we were used to. We took the matatu (collective taxi) to the outside of the slum. We walked down and entered. The hygiene and general appearance of the slum was way worse that I had expected. The passageways were extremely narrow with thin sheet metal used as walls and roofs for the houses. It's strange that you walk in and it seems like the sun had just disappeared. It hadn't really rained yet walking through there was still mud everywhere. This wasn't the Kampala red mud either, it was dark and smelled. It felt like walking through sewage (because we probably were). Some of the girls who wore sandals immediately regretted the idea. The place was just unpleasant. I wouldn't be able to imagine living there. As we got to the end of the passageway Marie showed us through a door in one of the walls. We entered and immediately it seemed like the sun came out. There was no mud and there was an open area where kids were all around playing. This was the school. There was a courtyard area in the front with little shacks that are used as classrooms. All the of the people I was with were doing the HIV/AIDS awareness project so they went into one of the classrooms and had a session with the kids about HIV and AIDS. I sat outside and talked to Kjell , one of the Norwegian interns, since he didn't have to teach any classes and I since I was unable to do help out with the session. While some students were in classes others were outside playing. It was really great to see that even people who grew up in such dismal conditions can still be happy. Many of them have a very positive outlook on life which is nice. Also when I talked Kjell he said that the interns there had been pretty well received by the locals so it's safe for them to walk around the slums.

After the slums we headed to the city center to meet up with the others in our group who stayed at the hotel. We bought our bus tickets then met up at a coffee shop (mmmmm.... real coffee). We quickly realized that walking around the city in our group of 13 would be impossible. We all paired up and then decided to just meet at the night bus. I walked around some of the parks with Tim and then later around the government buildings (it is illegal to take a picture of them). Afterwards I had to meet up with the others who stayed at the MC house to get our bags. We then met up for one last drink with our tour guide Eric and then said goodbye to Elizabeth who was flying to Europe and then back home.

The rest of us then all loaded onto the night bus to head back to Kampala. Once again the bus was freezing (good thing I bought one of the Masai blankets at the national park). We arrived in the morning and got stuck in terrible rush hour traffic. Since the bus was hardly moving we were able to ask the driver to let us off when we passed by an area close to our home.

We finally reached the hostel around 8am. I took a shower (back to cold showers), did some laundry (my clothes were filthy), and then took a short nap since I still had to give a session that day.

After that it was back to normal life.

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