Habari!
After just over 30 hours of travel time, I have arrived safely in Kakamega! Once we landed in the Kisumu airport, the rest of the Duke Engage group and I met up with our FSD site coordinator and local Kenyan, Peter Ingosi. Peter already had our names memorized and recognized our faces; it was reassuring to have someone welcoming me in completely foreign surroundings. Everything including the airport was so different. A small old building served as a check-in and gate next to a landing strip for the planes, and baggage claim was an outdoor free-for-all. Kakamega is a short 90-minute caravan ride away from Kisumu, and the ride was my first time driving over the equator and my first chance to see the Kenyan countryside. It is gorgeous here; since it’s the season of “long rains” (it rains most days for about an hour or two) the landscape is very green with cool African-style trees (like the ones in the Lion King.) I was pleasantly surprised with our accommodations- for the next week, before moving in with our host families, all of the FSD interns will be staying in a hotel just a short walk from Kakamega Town (the city center). My bed has a mosquito net, which I like to call my princess canopy, to prevent the malaria-carrying mosquitos from eating me in my sleep. The bathroom has a flush toilet (exciting!!), there is running water for both a shower head and a sink, and there is electricity. J
This week is orientation week, where I will be learning a lot about FSD and the culture in Kakamega while acclimating to an entirely new environment. FSD, which stands for Foundation for Sustainable Development, is an umbrella program that partners with various NGOs to establish a grassroots approach to promote growth and progress. To help ease us into our individual programs, the three FSD site coordinators have been explaining expectations, answering any questions we have, and giving us plenty of rest and recover time.
Yesterday the group of FSD interns went into the outskirts of town to change dollars into Kenyan schillings and buy cell phones and internet modems. I was shocked at how large the supermarket was- I was expecting to come to Kenya with no access to even toilet paper or shampoo, thus I filled my suitcase with a nine-week supply of virtually every “necessity” I could think of. Instead, I found just about any western product (most made in Kenya, very few name-brands) that I might need. And the supermarket is only a three minute walk from the hotel! Today we walked to the city center, Kakamega town. Our site coordinators wanted us to start getting a feel for the city as we will be navigating on our own in just a week. I have to admit, after just one visit I still feel completely lost; Kakamega is a lot bigger than I expected! The walk to and throughout town was very cool- we walked along dirt streets (about a 30-minute walk) past a lot of banks and restaurants. The streets were crowded, mostly with pedestrians but also with some forms of public transportation like vans or boda-bodas (bicycles). It was quickly made clear that pedestrians do NOT have the right-of-way! As the only white people on the streets, our group got a lot of attention. Almost everyone we passed by would stare, smile, or call out “hello!” My favorite part of the town was the marketplace. Everything felt so authentic, from the mud-and-stick huts to the ripe fruit to the bustling people speaking in Kiswahili to the smell of freshly fried termites that Kenyans enjoy as a snack.
I feel like I have so much more to say but I’m out of time for tonight! Have to get some rest before another exciting day tomorrow.
Bye for now!
Lainey
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