We arrived with no problems at all. The flights all went really well to get here. We hung out in the Nairobi airport for several hours, which wasn't bad at all. When we landed in Nairobi, and had to walk off the plane to the airport, it was 18C outside! And this was at, like, noon! Brrrrr! I was freezing, but it felt so good!
During the rest of our stay in the airport, I just wandered around the shops, and we made a booth at the Java House our little base for the day. I had a bagel with cream cheese for lunch, plus a Latte Frostie (sorta like a frappacino). It was absolutely amazing. So different from Jb. And so what I needed.
The whole way along, we were coaching our African colleague on how airports work. He'd never been on a plane before, and he has to travel back from TZ on his own (since me and Jackie are going on holidays!), so we were trying to give him as much advice and information on how airports work so that he could find his way back without ending up in Nigeria or something.
One of the best parts of the day was when I saw a big group of folks, obviously travelling together, getting lessons on how to get off the escalator. I mean, think about it, if you've lived your whole life in a place where they rarely even have electricity, you've probably never seen an escalator before. And in the Naiorobi airport, when you come in through immigration to the departures area, you have to go up the escalator - no stairs at all. So people are all carrying all their carry-on hand luggage (and believe me, folks here know how to do carry-on!), and then trying to navigate the escalator for the first time ever. This group was great because they were all cheering each other on, and making sure everyone was ready when they got to the top step. You could really see the concentration on the faces of the people who were approaching the top, getting ready to leap off onto solid ground again! I could totally understand how they felt, though, as I remember being a little kid and being really quite anxious about getting to the top of the escalator!
Anyways, it just struck me again at how many things in international travel that I just take for granted now. I know that you can't lose your boarding pass. I know that your luggage is going to come out on a belt after you go through immigration, I know that you have to fill out forms at immigration, I know that you have to go through various security checks and that you have to take off your belt and cell phone to go through them... so travelling internationally with someone who had never even been to an airport before was a pretty eye-opening experience!
But we made it!
I was deposited at the guesthouse by the taxi who was sent to meet us, and I met up with a friend from Kenya, with whom I'm sharing a room. I had a good winge to her about how tired I was and how much there is to do in Jb, then I had an amazing hot shower, turned on the A/C in our room, and basically just went to bed. The pillow on my bed is terrible; I'm going to have to do something about it tonight, but otherwise, things are pretty nice. It was a bit hard to get to sleep, as I didn't have the breeze from my "brick tent" whispering against my mosquitoe net, or the sounds of Celine wafting through the air, or the "crunch crunch" of the rats chewing through the styrofoam insulation... but I was cool and refreshed when I woke up!
Which was good, because today was a bit of a long day at the conference! The venue itself is at the University, which is quite a beautiful campus. Lots of trees and green growing things everywhere. The weather was deliciously cool, sunny, but a nice cool breeze blowing all day. And there were lots of folks from other parts of Africa who I know from previous conferences and work, so it was good to meet up with them, too.
Today was just the registration and opening ceremony day; tomorrow the conference starts with a vengeance. There was a great choir from the university singing at the opening. They were accompanied by drums, which were amazing! They were also accompanied by a trumpet, a trombone and two clarinets, which were not so amazing. sometimes I shake my head because some of the whole colonial thing has really stuck in certain domains in these parts - and bits of the good old brass band, along with some really terrible music from the 1940s has stuck. The "western" instruments put a real damper on the gorgeous African style singing and drumming!
Our lunch was also pretty late in coming. Leila, my friend from Kenya, is diabetic, and took her insulin when she thought the lunch was coming. But it was rather delayed. So she took matters into her own hands and went and got the folks in the kitchen to get her a plate of food. Then one of our other colleagues decided she was tired of waiting, so she went and lined up, and those two things nearly caused a stampede of people to the food line! At least I was near the front of the line :) I'm not one to shy away from a food line, after all.
Here's a photo of Jackie and Leila before we got too grumpy while waiting for lunch:
I promise I'll try to take some more interesting photos tomorrow, so I have something better to post...
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