conference week and safari fun

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Nairobi, 27 January 2007

Whew! A weary salama from this girl. I write Saturday afternoon from my new digs at the YWCA. Tomorrow morning I leave headed west, first for Nandi Hills, the fourth of four HIV incidence study sites. All sites completed enrollment of their required 1000 subjects for the study, a remarkable achievement. After a brief visit to the Nandi site Dr. Bukusi and I will continue westward to Kisumu, a rather bustling city on the shores of Lake Victoria and then further to Suba District Hospital. Suba is a very rural district in western Kenya and our tasks include gynecologic consults and CME, continuing medical education. This will likely be the total of my clinical experience here and my first shot at providing CME, so I’m excited but a little out of sorts. This will be the third week I have been living out of a travel bag and while my adventures here continue to be more than I could have dreamed, I will look forward to being in one place for a while.

This past week I attended an HIV conference and stayed at the Panari Hotel. You may want to visit the Panari virtually at www. panarihotel.com to grasp the full picture of what I’m about to describe. After that you can google "panari hotel nairobi" and read the reviews on TripAdvisor.

The conference is usually hosted by the Mayfair, a quaint two story hotel with enclosed gardens, nice and clean with reasonable amenities, but nothing extravagant. Spoken of quite fondly by previous participants. This year the conference got moved to the Panari, in part because of the co-occurrence of the World Social Forum, a humongous global meeting/caucus/get together of many different social change organizations from all over the world. Just the World Social Forum caused this incredible lodging crunch all over the city. At the last minute, like a week or two prior to the conference, we got bumped from the Mayfair to the Panari. The Panari is an 11 floor, modern, glass encased, hermetically sealed, city masquerading as a hotel. Inside the walls you’ll find an ice rink, two movie theaters, some restaurants, a beauty salon, a gym complete with heated pool/sauna/eucalyptus steam room, a pharmacy, a bank, two ATM’s, some shops, including a bridal shop, some conference rooms, a juice bar, a business center, a foreign exchange. Sound familiar…like in that Vegas sort of way? AND this place is located about twenty to thirty minutes from the Nairobi City Centre, so you’re STUCK inside. The only thing missing was a wedding chapel…I should suggest that on my comment card. Having prowled around Nairobi a bit and actually grown quite fond of it, staying here was very weird. There wasn’t any dust. No red dust.

Well, despite the odd accommodations, the conference was incredible. At a brisk pace of 15 minute lectures starting at 8:30 and ending at 5, with one hour for lunch, usually taken up by meetings, and two tea breaks, this conference packed quite a punch. The presenters didn’t even fall behind until Thursday morning! I took full advantage of the gym to first, justify the expense, but also to exercise my body and spell my weary brain for a short time.

Dr. Hitti, my advisor from UW, and friend, attended. I cannot tell you, although Voni can vouch for me, how incredible it is to see someone from home. To not be brand new, to get news from home, to have someone know you is just so relaxing. We had a wonderful time. We met some of her friends and research partners and I observed some research meetings, where they all discussed what projects they’re working on, what they hope to do in the future. Many people from UW attended. Wednesday night her friend, Dr. Bob Coombs, suggested we venture to the next building down the road where he had heard of a brewery! So, we escaped the compound, risked our lives walking about 300 meters down the Mombasa Road and had an absolutely wonderful meal at one of Nairobi’s only local breweries. The porter was actually an amber, the amber a blond and the blond was soda, but they’re new at this! Jared would have been quite disappointed.

Thursday night we escaped for dinner into western Nairobi and shared Ethiopian food with about ten other UW folks and then Friday morning Dr. Hitti arranged a small safari into Nairobi National Park for us so we didn’t suffer too terribly! The Ethiopian was incredible. We were quite the rowdy bunch and this feast with beer all around topped out at about 300 Ksh per person (about $4 give or take).

Our safari driver, Peter, was to pick us at 0600 and return us at about 10 or so. He was kind enough not to show up until about 6:30, so we had more than enough time for a cup of tea. As I mentioned previously drivers are quite common here, so when he showed us to a small Toyota sedan, I didn’t think much of it, assuming that he’d turn us over to a tour guide from the park on arrival. Well, you know what happens when you assume. Peter turned out to be our guide, which ended up being just fine as Dr. Hitti studied primates in college and I studied plants…granted on another continent, but we made it work.

We waited in line, with three huge tour buses and four or so matatu style vehicles with pop tops so folks could stand up and see unobstructed by the sides of the vehicles, to enter the park. I may not have mentioned how lascivious Kenyan pop lyrics are. Well, I noticed this a bit more as I’m sitting with Dr. Hitti while we’re driving to the park. I asked Peter to change the station as well as lower the volume a bit. He hit upon a talk radio show. Talk radio in Kenya is most similar to Maury Povich or Geraldo or best Jerry Springer…except more explicit. This talk radio show was discussing just how crazy homosexuals are and how lost they are from Jesus. I then asked Peter if we could just skip the radio thing, as I really like to listen to the birds.

We made it into the park! The tour buses would stop and we’d know there was something to see. This at first I thought would be really annoying but was actually OK because unless the road was particularly hazardous, Peter would drive like we were driving in town and it was a bit tough to see. The park is wonderful and you very quickly feel quite far from a city. We saw a giraffe, some antelope, some baboons, more antelope and absolutely lovely savannah. Off in the distance, we actually were able to see the Panari. I had to cringe. It was really and truly that huge. When we saw the baboons, we were at this rocky outcrop that also overlooked an incredible lush valley. There were at least one male, two females with little babies clinging as they walked, and then some other adolescents or young adults, about 10 or so. Also joining us were a few tour buses full of other humans. The humans outnumbered the baboons about 2 or 3:1. The humans stalked the baboons, circling them, with cameras outstretched, cooing and calling. More entertaining than the baboons was watching the humans watching the baboons. I snapped quite a few shots documenting this bizarre scene.

I’m positive few people had remembered their animal biology, and while I studied plants previously, I seem to remember that male baboons don’t always like being crowded and are well capable of protecting themselves. I think they can actually be quite aggressive. Well, the worst thing that happened was one of the baboons got on one of the tour buses and stole some food in a plastic bag. Lucky.

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