Nickerless in Nairobi
Its rather impossible to describe just how exhausted i was in the run up to my flight to Africa. Life seemed to be an endless todo list and even when i tried to relax i couldn't sleep or rest with my mind running in a thousand different directions. Making it through the day was my main priorty and consequetluy i had no head space for trying to sort out how i felt about the whole moving to Rwand for a year thing. Since i left my home in Switzerland on Jan 16, i had been going through the motions so to speak but nothing seemed real, it all seemed so far away even as the time to departure got closer and closer. It was only really when i was finshed packing at 1am that morning that i really began to wonder what the hell I was doing. Particularly after spending the previous week flying around like a blue aresed fly in switzerland. I was truely heartbroken to be leaving my home and my friends behind. I think if i'd have had any energy the sadness would have overwhelmed me.
And here i am in a hotel room on the Kenyan coast still wondering what the hell i;m doing. I've treated myself to air conditioning but my place in Kigali won't have that and i'm seriously wondering how i thought i could survive much less work in such sultry heat. And still nothing seems real, in this cool, clean hotel room i could be almost anywhere. By the looks of the other guests i must be the first european in years to stay in this place and i walked about the area for an hour without seeing another tourist, which is pretty weird seeing as Mombasa is the resort area of package tourists in Kenya. I;m guessing they are all at the beach. But going to the beach involves giving up the air-con and in my feeble state i'm not up to that yet.
Quite predictably from all the stress of the past month and the severe shortage of sleep i'd endured in the last week, the minute i could relax in my hotel room i was taken with a nasty flu. I got into bed yesterday night exahusted and hot, as i tried to go to sleep i was shivering and shaking, Even turning off the air-con and getting into my sleeping bag as well as under the covers didn't help - it took ages to get to sleep. Then predictably enough a few hours later i woke up from being too hot. And so it continued untill i thought i might as well go downstairs and get some breakfast. After which i went to get some paracetomol to sooth my aching bones, some lozenges for my firery throat and some bottled water. i then proceeded to go back to bed untill it was almost getting dark again...some start to my holidays!! I got up at 4pm thinking that i should get some excercise or risk being unable to sleep tonight. Its now nearing 9pm, the painkillers are wearing off so my head is begining to ache and i can feel the ravages of the flu are making their presence felt in every corner of my body. I,m pretty sure the air-con isn't helping, the large temp and humidity differencial between my room and the outside would probably have given me a sniffle under the best cirecumstances but i need to be cool enough to get some decent sleep tonight. I hope to be well enought to go to the beach tommorrow as i am at that unhappy state of illness being too weak to do much but healthy enough to be getting mightily bored. Also given the overdose of socialising and freinds i (happily) had in the run up to leaving i'm getting quite lonely confined to my room.
In any case even if i was up to going out i would still be stuck here as Mombasa is no place to be walking about at night, and most certainly NOT for a lone female mzungo. I had planned to do battle with the rigours of kenyan public transport tommorrow in getting a minibus and then a ferry and then another minibus to the south coast but due to worries about bandits on the 1-2km of track between where the minibus drops you and the beach front,i was persuaded to get a taxi the 30kms or so all the way there...i'm probably not in good enough shape for lugging my bags around anyway and hell itsonly money - i'd rather not run the risk of getting mugged.
The start of the trip was good, i was by chance seating next to Samuel for the 8 hours flight between London and Nairopbi. He was a younf kenyan doctor and was returning from his first trip outside Kenya, he was doing a specility in surergy throught the uk which would require him to come to london several times to take exams. It was interesting to here about his first expereinces in europe. He'd even been across to ireland where he visited his borther who'd been living in Ireland for 5 years and had recently gotten engaged to and irish women. His parents didn't yet know about this and it would be on Samuel to tell them when he got back. @Of course, they would prefer him to marry a Kenyan girl but in time they will get used to it@, he said. We talked about many things including my experience of Kenya, deveoping country economics, the recenlt change of government in kenya but also of my up coming job in Rwanda and my motivation for going there. The good doctor told me i was different and that he would tell his friends about me and one day dedicate 4 pages of his momeories to me!! At the end of flight we excahnged email addresse and he promised to try and visit me in Rwanda.
SO i landed in Nairobi with a severly malfunctioning brain due do tiredness, in flight boredom and dehydration. I had a little over and hour to catch my connecting flight - a simple task i was foolish enough to think. First, the domestic terminal is different from the international one and for reasons best known to the authorities there is no baggage handling done between them, the result is that you need to pick up all your luggage, carry it to the domestic terminal and then check it all in again. I'd been quite slow in figureing out the passport control proceedures which involved filling in a lan ding card, filiing in a visa application, queing for the visa, then queing again to have it all checked. However when i got to the baggage reclaim it still took 15mins or more before my luggage appeared. it was now nearing 930om and my flight was taking off at 10pm, at least they had issued me with a boarding card in Heathrow. Then i needed to do a quick repack so that i could dump most of my bagss in the airport before moving on to the coast for the rest of the week. I reconed I'd managed that pretty well considering except that i'd omitted two quite essential items: my sunblock and any underwear.!! I was now quite literally nickerless in Nairobi!
I managed quite well with washing my one pair of knickers in the sibnk of my hotel anfd letting them dry every night untili found the Old town markets and got some emeregency supplies :)
And here i am in a hotel room on the Kenyan coast still wondering what the hell i;m doing. I've treated myself to air conditioning but my place in Kigali won't have that and i'm seriously wondering how i thought i could survive much less work in such sultry heat. And still nothing seems real, in this cool, clean hotel room i could be almost anywhere. By the looks of the other guests i must be the first european in years to stay in this place and i walked about the area for an hour without seeing another tourist, which is pretty weird seeing as Mombasa is the resort area of package tourists in Kenya. I;m guessing they are all at the beach. But going to the beach involves giving up the air-con and in my feeble state i'm not up to that yet.
Quite predictably from all the stress of the past month and the severe shortage of sleep i'd endured in the last week, the minute i could relax in my hotel room i was taken with a nasty flu. I got into bed yesterday night exahusted and hot, as i tried to go to sleep i was shivering and shaking, Even turning off the air-con and getting into my sleeping bag as well as under the covers didn't help - it took ages to get to sleep. Then predictably enough a few hours later i woke up from being too hot. And so it continued untill i thought i might as well go downstairs and get some breakfast. After which i went to get some paracetomol to sooth my aching bones, some lozenges for my firery throat and some bottled water. i then proceeded to go back to bed untill it was almost getting dark again...some start to my holidays!! I got up at 4pm thinking that i should get some excercise or risk being unable to sleep tonight. Its now nearing 9pm, the painkillers are wearing off so my head is begining to ache and i can feel the ravages of the flu are making their presence felt in every corner of my body. I,m pretty sure the air-con isn't helping, the large temp and humidity differencial between my room and the outside would probably have given me a sniffle under the best cirecumstances but i need to be cool enough to get some decent sleep tonight. I hope to be well enought to go to the beach tommorrow as i am at that unhappy state of illness being too weak to do much but healthy enough to be getting mightily bored. Also given the overdose of socialising and freinds i (happily) had in the run up to leaving i'm getting quite lonely confined to my room.
In any case even if i was up to going out i would still be stuck here as Mombasa is no place to be walking about at night, and most certainly NOT for a lone female mzungo. I had planned to do battle with the rigours of kenyan public transport tommorrow in getting a minibus and then a ferry and then another minibus to the south coast but due to worries about bandits on the 1-2km of track between where the minibus drops you and the beach front,i was persuaded to get a taxi the 30kms or so all the way there...i'm probably not in good enough shape for lugging my bags around anyway and hell itsonly money - i'd rather not run the risk of getting mugged.
The start of the trip was good, i was by chance seating next to Samuel for the 8 hours flight between London and Nairopbi. He was a younf kenyan doctor and was returning from his first trip outside Kenya, he was doing a specility in surergy throught the uk which would require him to come to london several times to take exams. It was interesting to here about his first expereinces in europe. He'd even been across to ireland where he visited his borther who'd been living in Ireland for 5 years and had recently gotten engaged to and irish women. His parents didn't yet know about this and it would be on Samuel to tell them when he got back. @Of course, they would prefer him to marry a Kenyan girl but in time they will get used to it@, he said. We talked about many things including my experience of Kenya, deveoping country economics, the recenlt change of government in kenya but also of my up coming job in Rwanda and my motivation for going there. The good doctor told me i was different and that he would tell his friends about me and one day dedicate 4 pages of his momeories to me!! At the end of flight we excahnged email addresse and he promised to try and visit me in Rwanda.
SO i landed in Nairobi with a severly malfunctioning brain due do tiredness, in flight boredom and dehydration. I had a little over and hour to catch my connecting flight - a simple task i was foolish enough to think. First, the domestic terminal is different from the international one and for reasons best known to the authorities there is no baggage handling done between them, the result is that you need to pick up all your luggage, carry it to the domestic terminal and then check it all in again. I'd been quite slow in figureing out the passport control proceedures which involved filling in a lan ding card, filiing in a visa application, queing for the visa, then queing again to have it all checked. However when i got to the baggage reclaim it still took 15mins or more before my luggage appeared. it was now nearing 930om and my flight was taking off at 10pm, at least they had issued me with a boarding card in Heathrow. Then i needed to do a quick repack so that i could dump most of my bagss in the airport before moving on to the coast for the rest of the week. I reconed I'd managed that pretty well considering except that i'd omitted two quite essential items: my sunblock and any underwear.!! I was now quite literally nickerless in Nairobi!
I managed quite well with washing my one pair of knickers in the sibnk of my hotel anfd letting them dry every night untili found the Old town markets and got some emeregency supplies :)
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