first day in nairobi

July 11
Wednesday

After 20hours of traveling... here we are. Nairobi. It’s 6 in the morning but i’ve been up for about an hour. I was awakened by the early morning muslim prayer at 5:15. such a strange phenomenon.... to be sitting in your lightly illuminated room listening to this prayer song echoing across the city. So foreign. Yet my time here feels so familiar. It’s been a little less than a year ago that i was here with jeremy and david. And yet i feel like i know the place. It is true that fear in traveling really just comes from unfamiliarity.

I just woke holly up from typing. She’s going to take a shower. I can’t wait for mine. I’m still a bit groggy from the whole traveling experience. A shower and some good kenyan coffee will do me wonders. One good thing about traveling to kenya is they have killer coffee and tea. Not watered down stuff like you find all over the states. But rich dark tasty black coffee. I know there are other things to focus on while here, but being a seattle coffee snob, i appreciate the brew.

There is one thing that i want to write about this morning.... and it will probably get me in trouble later on... and reveal what a cynic i am... but i want to write about how much i hate traveling in large american groups. I’ve lived over seas a few times in my life so far. When i was 18 i lived in strasbourg france for 7 months. The great thing about living in a foreign city is after awhile, you fit in. you get how things are done and run, and it gives you perspective on how you act and the culture that you come from and act out from. When in france, i could always pick out the americans. One they didnt’ look european... so that helps. And two... they are so stickin loud! Everywhere they go, if they are in a large group, there volume level is above everyone else.

I must admit that i was just like that as well. when i was 15 i went with a christian mission group to scotland and worked alongside other local churches. The group leaders were very cool and had a lot of cross-cultural experiences. On of the things we talked about early on was how loud we could all be in public places. It was a struggle for me a first but i remember being in the glasgow train station and being next to another group of americans, a realizing “man, they are really loud.”

So that’s one aspect of the group we met up with. I must say that they are a great group and i am looking forward to getting to know them better. A vast majority of our group is younger than 18 and i think that has something to do with the noise level as well.

My second thing about big american groups is the matching t-shirts. From living in europe , i see that our american fashion style is very lazy and sloppy. So when we showed up in brussels with all of our matching t-shirts and name tags, i just couldn’t take it any longer and i went and changed in the bathroom. My own issues, i know. I get the reason we all wore matching shirts – so we could recognize each other and be able to stay together on a long journey. But why do shirts have to be so ...”american” looking? My advice: smaller logos and black shirts. The heart for africa shirts are black, so way to go. And despite my own finiky desires, the shirt where brough about quite a few questions from fellow travelers ... so maybe it’s worth it.

In the nairobi airport though, there was another group from the georgia that had matching tan shirts. And on the back was a verse about them bringing light to the nations in really big letters. Now if you were at your local airport, and you saw a group of goofy matching looking foreigners wearing shirts that say they are bringing light to your nation (refering to you as dark), would you think that was a little egotistical? I would. That’s a weird thing about american missions as well.... this unconscious belief that we have so much to bring.

In my experience with cross-cultural experiences, i feel like i know enter into places feeling like i have so much to learn. So much to listen to and reflect on. I feel very humbled coming into kenya. What about a t-shirt with small writing that says “blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” That seems more appropriate.

Ok. Shower time.