Africa Part 3 of 10

Seeing how we left late, it was getting dark and I was not able to view much of Nairobi from the plane. But we landed and got through the first customs counter, which took about 30 minutes despite the fact that we were able to snake into a short line that had apparently gotten overlooked in the mess of other lines. Next stop; the baggage carousel. There were three distinct belts and all were moving. There weren't any clear markings to say which was ours. After a bit of watching, I spotted the shiny, multi colored ribbons that shouted, hey-this-is-one-of-ours, on a suitcase. I pulled it off and figured that was proof enough that this was the right carousel. Well, that feeling didn't last. After watching for a half hour or so, along with everyone else on our team, no more bags had been located. Hmmm, I checked the other carousels again and again....

There was no rush of suitcases, as the volume was slowing and we were not seeing ours, so I decided to hit the local restroom. Well, here is where I have already noticed a difference in cultures. In London, it's not the "Men's Room", the "Powder Room" or the "Restroom". It's not even the "Lavatory"...it's the "Toilet" and that's the way it is labeled.

Here in Nairobi, it is also different. First of all, there was a label: "WC" with a lady symbol (dress) and arrow one direction, and the men symbol and arrow the other direction. WC, hmmm, that could stand for any number of things. Waste Chute, Water Contamination or even Wapi Choo (Swahili for "Where is the Toilet"). Regardless of what it meant, I figured I would follow the arrow by the man symbol and see if it was indeed a "toilet". Well, I found it, the door was propped wide open, and it smelled like... well it smell's like a WC. The urinal was of the trough variety. Made out of stainless steel (however, this one was stained), and a bunch of smelly, moth-ball-type "sanitizers" thrown in for good measure. There was a small step directly in front of it.

Now, I'm not entirely sure, but this was either a small step intended to be stood on while using the WC or maybe it was just their way of creating a barrier to keep the ...liquids... off the main floor. Either way, because the door was open and standing on the floor would leave me in full view of anyone walking by, I opted for the step theory. When using any of these flat against the wall, multi-user contraptions, you start to appreciate the privacy of the single position urinal along with the, umm, shall we say "splatter reducing qualities" of its curvature. My main objective was to get out of there before some careless Kenyan came in, in which case I may have needed a new pair of shoes even before getting out of the airport. I think we have carried this line of thought a little too far, so I will stop for now, but I reserve the right to bring it up again at a later time.

As another hour ticked by and the carousels, and the airport, were thinning out, we started to form the conclusion that something was amiss. Out of the 16 checked bags, we had only gotten one of them, not very good odds. Well, our Nairobi travel agent met us at the airport and was able to facilitate and translate when necessary. We each had to fill out a form for the missing luggage. Including having to basically look through luggage mug shots to identify what type of luggage it was.

So, let me get this straight, if I put multiple labels on the outside of my bag, a label on the inside of my bag, and you put destination tags all over it, you cannot get it to Kenya. But, if I tell you that I had a black suitcase similar to mug shot 22A along with the color of my underwear, you think you can find it anywhere in the world???

Waiting in line and filling out paperwork for everybody took approximately an hour and a half (yeah, that long). Then, about 12:30 or so in the morning, after about 30 hours of travel, we finally got out of the airport for our first real taste of the Kenya climate. It was very pleasant, not nearly as muggy as I had imagined.

We piled into a couple of taxi type vans and, after a stop at a convenience store for a snack, got to the guesthouse. Although we were only there for five or six hours it was nice to get cleaned up and get a nap. I also seized this opportunity to test my whole "toilet-draining" experiment. For those of you who have not followed my scientific dossiers: I've always heard that below the equator, the toilet water would swirl down the drain in the opposite direction when compared to the toilets in the US, or anywhere else in the Northern Hemisphere (excluding the poles and certain other areas in which water would just freeze and not swirl at all).

So as not to create any undo assumptions or break through any comfort levels, I waited until the other guys were out of the room before I grabbed my video camera and headed to the bathroom. As soon as I opened the lid, I sensed what may be a problem, no, it didn't need to be flushed. The problem being that the bottom of the toilet bowl was a large opening where the water sat. When flushed, the water just filled up the hole and kinda garbled there. The water level would stay about the same and the old water would just kinda go out the back opening, which was as wide as the entire flat part (not really draining down at all). So, basically, there was no swirling at all, this was not suitable for the experiment, so I had to settle with filling up a sink with water, and then pulling the plug.

For those interested in my theory on this alleged phenomenon, please read on. For those of you, who are not interested in my theory, skip this paragraph. Actually "don't care" folks can just skip to the bottom, because if this doesn't interest you, I'm sure none of my little observations, experiences and occasional wise cracks will interest you either. Thanks for stopping by, I trust you can find your own way out!

Back to my conclusions: None of these have been scientifically proven right or wrong, so please read responsibly.

1) Toilets in the US swirl either way, depending on which way the water is introduced into the bowl and, to a smaller extent, internal currents from multiple causes, including, but not limited to, contents.

2) A sink full of water in the US will swirl either way depending on many influences, such as shape of sink, size and shape of drain, momentum caused by internal or external forces, etc.

3) The same is true for toilets and sinks anywhere in the world.

Summary: Hogwash! Although it sounds cool, and somewhat logical, that the earths spin will cause water to drain in different directions, drains are way too small to actually be effected by the Earth spinning.


So there you have it, I traveled half way around the world and failed to prove anything. However, FYI, on a larger scale, things such as hurricanes, do rotate counter-clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere.
End of experiment.

Where was I? Oh yeah, headed to Kisumu (without luggage). We headed out from the guesthouse to the airport, and as soon as we got past the gate and out to the main road, I noticed people walking. Not just a few people walking, like a LOT of people walking. Like thousands and thousands of people walking. It was like New York City without the sidewalks, buildings or yellow cabs. It was like the Boston Marathon but slower and without the colorful outfits, or the skinny little Kenyan guy in the lead... uh, well, maybe he was there, but you know what I mean. It was like rush hour without the cars or public transportation. Speaking of rush hour, with walking being slower, they probably have a rush-3hour or so.


Possible morning traffic report:
"All roads look great and there are no vehicle crashes to report. However, there is congestion BESIDE Main Street all the way into and beyond the center of town. We are just receiving reports of an injury accident BESIDE 3rd street. It seems a group of teens walking North on their way to school suddenly had a change of heart, spun around and headed south. Taking some northbound women by surprise. One of the women, returning from the market, dropped the load of bananas from atop her head. This set off a chain reaction in which up to 12 pedestrians, slipping on the peels, fell and sustained various injuries. Be advised to take an alternate route, but if you cross the street, be sure to look right, left, right.... (They drive on the left side of the road).

This traffic report brought to you by Sole Mates. At Sole Mates, we can install brand new sole covers so you can get more mileage from your shoes. Walk with confidence. Stop by your local Sole Mates today... "
Gosh where was I, oh yeah, trying to describe how many people were walking. Let me put it this way, if I had two bucks for every person that was walking, I'd barely have enough to put $1 into each hand of each person walking. Anyway, bottom line: there were a lot of people walking. I'm kind of assuming here, but I think the fast food restaurants might have walk-thru windows instead of drive-thrus.
Now, if you will let me continue....

In keeping with our airline tickets/baggage problems, once we got to the airport, we had trouble checking in because we had no hard copy tickets. After a minor delay at the ticket counter, and having some tweezers confiscated at security, we got through and went to sit in the waiting room. While sitting there, I got to thinking. I wanted



to be as safe as the next guy, but tweezers? Come on, what's the hijacker going to do with those?

"Well you can tell the tower that unless they release Mohammad by noon, I will begin plucking your eyebrows. Then I will continue to pluck the eyebrows of one passenger every 10 minutes after that."


Across the way, I noticed the restroom (I knew it was the restroom because the door was wide open). As I walked in, I got a dejavu experience, and was instantly reminded of the house of an elderly woman for whom I did yard work for years while in college. She was a very nice lady, but lived alone (with her 6 cats). Apparently she suffered from mottephobia (The fear of moths), because most of her house smelled like moth balls (and the rest of the house smelled like hair balls). After shaking that thought out of my head and checking all three stalls for toilet paper, and finding none, I decided to just use the trough for now. Well, at least I didn't see any moths in there....

We walked out to the plane and had another minor delay as each of our carry-ons had to be checked in with the dude outside the plane, because they would not fit in the overhead bin. He felt the need to hand write each of us baggage claim tickets even though we would just grab our bags as we got off the plane in Kisumu. This was Kenya Airways, it was a smaller plane, one seat in each row on the left and two on the right.

It was a shorter flight (about an hour and a half), then we finally reached our final destination, Kisumu, Kenya. As I walked off the plane and grabbed my "nearly carried-on", I noticed that we were the only plane at the airport. We had to walk from the tarmac through the chain link gate and to the parking lot. It was quick and easy, due to lack of luggage.

Once at the house, we had a little time to get settled which, again, didn't take much time without luggage. Then we met the team from Kisumu Baptist Church (KBC) for lunch. Each team member from Kisumu was paired up with a team member from Broadway. The Kisumu team was one short, so one was paired up with two of us from Broadway. I didn't want to miss out on getting acquainted with a Kenyan, but this worked out good, because I would be frequently wandering around taking pictures anyway.

They all seemed welcoming and nice to talk to. We had BBQ chicken and, although I've never been a fan of snapping veins off chicken bones, I couldn't help but notice how they would totally clean all the meat (and anything else) off the bone. We had time to talk to each other a bit and learn a little about each other, and then they left on foot and bike (no cars among them).


Sunday, August 8th, was a long day. I woke up at about 6am local time, so seemed to be over the time difference. This was our basic schedule for the day:

9:30 - 10:45 Sunday School
11:00 - 12:30 Church Service
1:00 - 2:30 Lunch
3:00 - 6:00 VBS
6:30 - 8:00 Dinner Out

Well, no major decision had to be made on what to wear; I only had two shirts. One was my, heavy rugby type I mentioned earlier and the other was a white pullover with a couple stripes on each sleeve, yup, white. I also had one pair of jeans and one pair of shorts and one pair of shoes. I did have a couple changes of underwear and socks, but I don't think we need to discuss that (at least not right now).

We left the house about 8:30am and it was another beautiful morning. Again, there were a lot of people walking, please don't make me go into that again. The church was maybe about 15 minutes away. All along the sides of the road there were people trying to sell their wares. There was too much variety for me to remember it all, but some types of things seen:

- Ladies who would lay out a blanket and had their fruit stacked in little pyramids.
- People with cheap looking electronic stuff.
- Mini Coke Depots, where you could get a coke and sit at one of their two tables, or you could buy cases for your business. We saw some cases on the back of bikes.
- Sheets
- Tarps, some small, some very large; for big trucks.
- Newly made Furniture
- Meat, freshly sliced from whatever was hanging there attracting flies.
- Shoes, not only in pairs, but also sold separately, because they didn't have the match.
- Clothes, mostly second hand from the states.
- Corn, "cooked" on the cob, but looked about ready to pop to me.
- Lumber, of sorts. These were just a bunch of skinny trees without branches. I saw a rather large 3 story building under construction with scaffolding (made from these timbers) all the way around.
- Live chickens
- Some of these little shanties were labeled "Chemist". I'm not exactly sure what they sold or what services they offered. So I thought maybe I would go check one out.
-Yeah, uh, jambo, uh, could you mix me up a petrie dish of saline solution, a shaker of NaCl and maybe a beaker of bacteria infested H2O??
- Pretty much whatever you may want, you just need to know where to find it.

The main roads in town weren't that bad, as far as pavement goes. The problem was that you had to share it with Mutatus, livestock, bota-botas (bikes, pronounced like boata boata), people and crazy drivers. Mutatus are basically taxicabs; you have your little four-door type (mainly Peugeots 404s) and your larger van type. As is probably the case in a lot of third world countries, traffic laws, if they exist, are not exactly followed in day-to-day activity. The Mutatus drive pretty crazy, they weave all over and stop whenever and wherever they want to, so they can cram as many people in as possible.

Imagine, if you will, a whole city of teenage girls learning to drive a stick shift, while talking to each other on the phone, with wet nails.

Uh, somehow, I think I might pay for that last comment. Anyway, once you have that mental image, throw in a mixed bag of random cows, goats and pigs wandering aimlessly (I guess, to be fair, these would represent the teen boys). To add to the confusion, the bota botas are in and out of traffic, people walking across the streets, people pulling water carts, a few delivery trucks and private vehicles. There you have it, always an adventure. We ran into somewhat of a traffic jam.

Someone had spilled a whole load of baggies full of popcorn (on the way to market). Traffic slowed a bit while he risked life and limb scampering around the street trying to salvage every last baggie.
Flashback to when I dropped the radio in the road in Vegas, but that's an entirely different story.
Eventually, we pulled off the main road and down into a rutted dirt road. No vehicle traffic here, just people walking. A couple blocks down this pseudo road lined with trash is the entrance to the church. The guard opened the gate and we drove into the compound.