Elephants Absolutely Everywhere.

We ventured into The Side of Town Where Mzungus Do Not Go. Namely, a place called Eastleigh. Along the way our bus almost tipped over in the process of swerving to avoid totaling a car. It is a place where roads are a joke: buses and cars force their ways over cinderblock-sized rocks that have been dumped into the rutted dusty lanes between blocks. Streets are strewn with trash. Adane, an Ethiopian classmate, led our way through hordes of people and endless lines of tables selling everything from plastic bags stuffed with cookies to burkas. Because, you see, Eastleigh’s population is 95% refugees– from Somalia, Ethiopia, Sudan, and Eritrea. Not only was I the only white girl in sight, I was the only girl with her hair uncovered. My sweatshirt, which had come along as an afterthought, found itself zipped all the way up to my throat. Eventually we arrived at an Ethiopian restaurant where the owner informed us that, as they had run out of food a few minutes beforehand, they were no longer serving. We continued onto another place where we sat down to a stellar Ethiopian dinner for the equivalent of $1 each before proceeding back to downtown aboard a bus decked out in UV and laser lights, a giant HD TV, money and naked girl plastered to the windows, and blaring dance music.

My host mom’s mortification was priceless. “You went to EASTLEIGH? Even I am afraid to go there!” Yeah, but then again, all you see is a neighborhood lacking streets swarming with people in burkas, all of whom you assume are Somalis attempting to take over your city. You are entirely unaware that it contained people from a multitude of countries and cultures, and really cheap legit food that, contrary to your belief, was most definitely not the cause of the next day’s short bout of indigestion.

Wednesday, a field trip took us to a children’s home in a Nairobi suburb called Karen, a government-run farm where we visited cows, bunnies, goats, and chickens, and a wind farm on top of a huge hill overlooking the Maasai land of the Rift Valley. I’m fairly sure the company who manufactured the turbines is the same one that did those on San Cristóbal. Random, but interesting. Anyway, the day was brought to a close with Sukkot services followed by a ridiculous amount of food and wine in the sukkah. Again. Go synagogue.

They lied when they told us all of Kenya’s wildlife is contained in national parks. As Friday dawned bright and clear, 11 of us made our way south through Maasai land, past villages constructed of dung-and-stick or corrugated metal huts in the dry, desolate savannah. Mt. Kilimanjaro loomed out of the sky in front of us, discernable out of the blue only by a small cloud peering out from behind the summit and a finger of glacier extending down one side. It was colossal. It is effortless to conceive that tribes could worship Kilimanjaro as a god. Anyway, we eventually passed a few elephant butts staring out at us from a clump of trees between villages. And then we passed a giraffe, and then an ostrich took it upon itself to run across the road in front of our van. We then arrived at the gates of Ambroseli National Park.

Inside, there were elephants. Giant herds of them. Walking, eating, squelching through bogs, and engaging in mortal combat beneath the setting sun. Hyenas lazed in the sun, bloated with the morning’s meal. Cheetahs hid in the grass. (Yep, I saw cheetahs. Consider my life complete.) Warthogs snuffled through the ground. Giraffes grazed and dipped down on bent forelegs to drink from pools covered in emerald vegetation. Hippos fought within pools, jackal pups scrambled into the cover of dense shrubs, baboons invaded camp and zebra, wildebeest, and buffalo massed beside the road. Cranes, egrets, and storks flocked around water holes and chased elephants. Giant eagles claimed prime tree branches. A small hill looked out over a green strip of river extending into the distance, surrounded by cast, flat savannah, dust devils whirling in the distance in every direction. And Kilimanjaro watched over it all.

Saturday afternoon men, women, and boys welcomed us into a Maasai village with a traditional dance and jumping competition followed by a short prayer. The village itself contained a ring of houses, each built over the span of three to four months, constructed of cow dung on branches with grass roofs, all set within a massive barrier of dead acacia encircling the village. Tiny windows allowed spots of light to seep into the dark interior, which contained cowskin beds and a small cooking area. Within the houses another ring of acacia served as a nighttime corral for the village’s goats and cows. Fire making and traditional medicines were demonstrated and explained, as was the Maasai diet: milk (cow and goat), meat, and blood (cow and goat). Before leaving we visited the school, a small one-room wood building where kids, faces covered in mud, sat squashed behind wooden desks under a painted slogan: “YES WE CAN SAID OBAMA.”

Thus passed my weekend. It was fantastic.

Oh, random side note: No one here thinks I’m from the states. I don’t know how my Swedish, Russian and Polish ancestry combined to do it, but everyone (even those on my program) thinks I’m from Latin America or Israel. Except for one guy in the market, who asked if I was from Spain. Go me.