Thursday, March 31, 2011

Day 1 :)

We finally arrived in Nairobi, Kenya after our 18-hour flight! Immediately, we felt the warmth of Kenya and the busyness of the city even at 10:00pm. Heading to the vans that would take us to our hotel for our one night stay, we met the program coordinator, Erin, and other volunteers. It was awesome to see how so many countries can come together to help this cause. Our team is composed of members from Sweden, South Africa, Australia, different parts of the United States, and half of the team is from Kenya.
Still a bit jet lagged, Karina only got 4 hours of sleep and Century got about 6. Breakfast consisted of pancakes, omelets, different Kenyan fruits, and a type of thick mango juice. DELICIOUS! After breakfast, we made our way to Nakuru where we will be spending the next 10 days. On our way we made some scheduled stops while others seemed to be unprecedented.
First we stopped at the local Nairobi hospital to pick up Kenyan volunteers who would be traveling with us to Nakuru. Next, we stopped at the viewpoint for the Great Rift Valley. This was an amazing scene and we took it in with pictures and pushy Kenyan souvenir salesmen.  Some people were stronger willed in the game of negotiating or rejecting the sales of the souvenirs while others were weak and gave in to the “I have to feed my family” stories. Karina was a weak link in the situation while Century stayed strong and did not give into peer pressure. Karina-0 Century-1

As we continued driving down the newly paved road, we saw a few small villages and roaming animals. Suddenly one of the front tires went flat, and our bus rolled along to the side of the road.  One of the locals told us to be cautious of the monkeys and zebras that roamed around. This made us supper curious but unfortunately we didn’t see any. PSYCH! We saw two Baboons when we got on the road again. They were just "chillin' on the side of the road"-Karina.


 Arriving at Hotel Merica in Nakuru we unloaded all of the bags and had a nice buffet lunch.
We then went up to our rooms to unpack and organize all of the donations for tomorrow, which is the first day of Screening. We are so anxious to begin working in the hospital!
Thanks for reading :)
-Karina & Century 

1 comment:

  1. Century - thanks to you and Karina for posting all the details. This is my second attempt at commenting - hope it goes through this time!
    We're waiting for more.
    Oh, and please don't lean on that railing (in the picture) It doesn't look that sturdy! :-)Aunt Holly

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