First Days

My first experience in Kenya, involved anxiously watching all the luggage that was not mine pass me on the carousel. Nairobi’s airport gives passengers a view of the bags as the handlers unloaded them and the police canine sniffs each one, leaving me a bit more worried every time a cargo truck pulled away without dropping my bags. As each moment passed, I took note of the contents of my carry-on: one pair of jeans, one set of boxers, a pair of socks, and the flannel shirt I wore leaving a blizzard covered New York two days before. It was 87 degrees outside.
When the last truck pulled in, my anxiety peaked. I had barely started a three-month trip to work in an AIDs clinic in Africa and everything was already going terribly wrong. And then it appeared, my blue and black backpack coasting along the carousel. The dog stopped for a brief second on it, reigniting all the angst, only to move onto the next one. I walked out of the arrivals, stiffened immediately by the heat. Standing amongst all the others, stood Oliver, one of the Fadhili Community workers, holding a ripped piece of cardboard with my name scrawled across it, and Robin, another volunteer.
On the way to my transition housing at Pastor Regina’s, Oliver sped through the streets of Nairobi, swerving across three lanes of traffic and back at 80 kph, while pointing out the zebras and other “interesting” points. Robin, the lanky volunteer from England, talked about his time out in Masaii Mara and why he had lost his job as a uranium miner in Australia. A pervasive mix of exhaust fumes and sweat filled the car, and rolling down the window did little for the smell or heat. When we slowed in traffic, young boys, in ragged clothes and with faces caked in the red African dust, came to the window hawking different fruits, car accessories and some mystery products.
I spent my first weekend in the slum that Pastor Regina resides. For all its lacking in modern convenience, Pastor Regina’s orphanage provided a glimpse into a life I had never known before. The dirt streets of Deliverance, named after the local corrugated tin church, run with foul water and burning garbage, mixed with smells of cooking meat and nuts. To some this may seem strange, but my senses danced with discovery, nothing is muted here. The sounds of the neighborhood rang everywhere, bleating goats, men bargaining their wears of used shoes and rusted tools, people coming and going about their business, and always a friendly “jambo,” the formal Kiswahili greeting here and there for us “muzungos,” or white people. Pastor Regina’s concrete house stands as an oasis in the wooden and corrugated tin of the shanties surrounding it. As we pulled past the metal gates a dozen or so children, dirty from the Kenyan dust and dressed in the hand me downs of volunteer donations (one boy wore a t-shirt emblazoned with the logo of a well-known New York City adult store), congregated around the car as arrived, pressing their faces against the window, bright eyes and smiling as they peered in.
I first met Virginia, one of Pastor Regina’s employees, who showed me to my room. The small concrete space had two sets of rickety bunk beds, with mosquito netting over each and a window that peered out into the garden. Stacked into tidy, but unorganized piles, the clothes and other backpacker’s supplies hinted to the other all ready in-country. I soon met Cheryl, a young bubbly Canadian, working in the same program as I am. And not long after, Melissa, a jetlagged English girl emerged from one of the other rooms. She would be working in the orphanage program for six weeks, before returning to start a child nursing program in university.
As we sat in the modest, but nicely furnished sitting room, we shared stories of our travels and our intentions for our stay here. But, one common factor seem to be an excited, but restless desire to know what capacity we would fill and what lay in store for us. Orientation would be the first Monday following the weekend, but for now the trip has been one of many unanswered questions.