The road goes on... after inauguration!

Well, I'm safely in Cairo and settled into my pleasantly homey, surprisingly large dorm room. The city is dusty, the weather is cool and comfortable, and I only forgot one thing: my Lonely Planet Guide to Egypt. Gah. Anyway, I'll give a real overview of this place in a couple of days once I've had some time to explore and get my bearings. In the meantime, I feel a really long discussion of inauguration would be appropriate. And pictures!

I'm so incredibly glad I decided to fly out of Washington, DC, before jetting off to Egypt. I had an incredible week and possibly the best birthday of my life. I took care of most of the shopping, medical requirements, and academic appointments before the weekend. Traffic picked up on Friday night and stayed pretty constant throughout the week. I crashed at Reid's for a few days, then headed to Amanda's for the inaugural stretch. This is the same Amanda from Kenya – we'll be moving in together when I get home from Egypt. Yay!

The concert on Sunday was the first major inaugural event. I met up with a few friends and headed downtown in the early afternoon (we didn't care about getting close to the stage). When we got to the Mall, they had already closed the security gates. We joined the throngs of people crowded around the Jumbotrons near the Washington Monument, about a mile from the stage at the Lincoln Memorial. It's amusing, in retrospect, that I thought the crowd of 200,000 was big... there were ten times that many people on the Mall for the inauguration itself. You can click the pictures to blow them up, I think.

The show was excellent. They had the most incredible lineup: Bruce Springsteen, Beyonce, Usher, Stevie Wonder, James Taylor, Pete Seegar, and Shakira, plus Samuel L. Jackson, Tom Hanks, Jack Black, Queen Latifah, and any other celebrity who felt like showing up. Each artist only sang a song or two (and many did duets/trios), but it was a great time. Highlight would probably be Garth Brooks' rendition of “Shout.” Not because it's Garth Brooks, but because the sound delay caused a massive wave effect as everyone in the crowd threw their arms up. It was fantastic. I'm sure it's somewhere on Youtube – look it up! Anyway, we walked home after the concert, arriving about two hours later. All went smoothly.

Monday was a day to relax before the big show. Tuesday morning, Amanda and I woke up around 7:00, put on about six layers of clothes (not exaggerating), hopped on a bus, and walked in a river of people to the Mall.

By the time we arrived at 8:30, the area between the Capitol and Washington Monument was nearly full. We ended up about 2/3 of the way back to the Washington, so within sight of the Capitol but close to the American History Museum. This trashcan was just in front of Constitution Hall. Disgusting but truly amusing.

The show started a few hours later, by which point we were half asleep and extremely cold. It was incredible, as I'm sure you all saw on TV. Everyone was overjoyed to be there, despite the cold, and we all made wisecracks about Cheney's wheelchair. This is the view from the base of the Washington Monument (looking east).

I've never been in a crowd so big in my life. All I could see in any direction were people. I really liked hearing the audio echo back on the Jumbotrons behind the Washington Monument. Goosebumps. Amanda and I took a picture in the first two minutes of Obama's presidency. Happiness!

So then we attempted to escape from the Mall. It didn't go well. They had completely closed off the west and north boundaries of the Mall for the parade, which would start a couple of hours later. As we live northwest of the Mall, this caused a problem. We (and about half a million other people) wandered the perimeters of the Mall looking for an exit and eventually cut our way through some hedges to get out on the south side. We were then stuck in a totally immobile mass of people. Everyone was trying to move in different directions, but so many of those directions were blocked off, it was an absolute gridlock of people. We spent an hour standing in one place, surrounded by increasingly angry people who were much taller and stronger than us. It was honestly a little scary. About a dozen cops spent this hour sitting inside a tour bus in the middle of the crowd, until one of them FINALLY got in touch with the security folks and stuck his head out the roof of the bus to direct the crowd east.

So we trekked toward the Capitol. The lines down to the Metro were about a mile long, and we could hear screaming down in the tunnels, so we decided against using the subway. Buses weren't running from downtown, we discovered, so we kept walking... for another hour or two. We arrived at Amanda's around 4:00, got dressed up, and headed to our balls. This picture was an hour or two after the ceremony ended... people had taken to walking on I-395.

My friend Reid, who spent last semester working on Obama's advance team, had tickets to both the Neighborhood Ball (where Obama and Michelle danced their first dance, featuring most of the huge talent of Sunday's concert) and Youth Ball (18-35 crowd, including a lot of Reid's coworkers). Reid and I decided to head to the Washington Hilton for the Youth Ball with his brother Aaron, who had also been working on the campaign, and Amanda bought the tickets to the Neighborhood Ball. Both were absolutely incredible. Amanda talked to Shakira and I stood a few feet from Rosario Dawson. Pretty freaking sweet.

Unfortunately, Reid, Aaron and I got shut out of the main ballroom at the Youth Ball, so we didn't get to be in the room when Obama and Kanye West arrived. A very sad end to the day for Reid and Aaron, as they were two of the MANY Purple Ticket holders who were turned away from the gated section of the inauguration ceremony after waiting in line for six hours. A little disappointed, we headed home and toasted my 21st birthday at midnight.

The next day, I grabbed some lunch with Amanda and Reid, ordered my first drink (on the house! Woohoo!), and got ready for the Obama Staff Ball at the National Armory. Wow. The place was gorgeous, the food was wonderful, the bar was open, and the company was really grand. Instead of random people who had scored tickets, the Armory was packed with staffers who were ecstatic to be there and be done with the campaign.

It was a huge party. Arcade Fire (a band that Dunc and I are fond of) played a great set, then Joe and Barack swung by and gave a couple of truly heartwarming, truly unscripted, truly sweet speeches. It was one of the most amazing nights of my life.

Reid and I left the ball before Jay-Z showed up so we could meet a few other friends in Georgetown for birthday celebrations. We stayed a few hours at a delightful bar with a guest pianist. After a short nap, I got up to pack and run my last errands. The flight to London was uneventful. I met up with several friends (and about 30 other students headed to American University in Cairo) in Heathrow, and after a long layover, we proceeded to Cairo. More on that next time. ;)

Wahenga walisema mtu hujua atokako hajui aendako

I'm looking at my final days in Nairobi. On Saturday (Sunday at the latest) I'm hopping on a matatu to Kampala and spending about three weeks traveling around Uganda and Rwanda. That puts me home in Overland Park in mid May. It's weird to think about leaving already, but not entirely sad. I've missed home and friends every day I've been here. I know I'll miss Kenya just as much when I'm gone, but I also know I can't live my entire life without coming back here.

I had my Kiswahili final last night. It's always the proverbs that make me fall in love with languages. The title of this entry is my favorite proverb from any language I've learned so far, I think. It means, “The ancestors say: a person knows where he's coming from but not where he's going.” It says a lot about this trip, also. Every day has been a challenge here. There's an element of that inherent in this program, but it was made significantly worse by the post-election crisis. Nothing is particularly set in stone in Kenya (or life for that matter). I've learned that I have to sit back and let things happen sometimes. Some mornings I'd wake up with every intention of going to work at the Centre or class at USIU, but protests downtown would have paralyzed the matatu system and made getting to town impossible. Some afternoons I'd come home expecting to write a research paper on my laptop, but the power would be out for eight hours. Some evenings I'd go to the internet cafe intending to send an assignment to KJ, but the internet would be down. So you do what you can. Some days it has sucked. Mostly it's been fine with me. Mtu hujua atokako hajui aendako. The only thing you can be sure of is what's already behind you.

It's going to be difficult getting back to the US. I'm a little worried, but I also know that I'm an unusually adaptable person. I'll get used to white people and odorless cities and expensive meals and processed food full of preservatives and judging stares and ubiquitous electricity and changeable weather and drinkable tap water and driving (on the righthand side of the road!) and petty suburbanite attitudes again. I think I'll be okay, but I also think you all should know that it's probably going to be weird for me for a while. There's a new Kenyan restaurant in Shawnee, I've heard. We'll go check it out.

This has been a glorious semester. I've enjoyed myself so much and learned more ABOUT more than I ever anticipated learning. I honestly wish it weren't over. But I've done some scouting of employment opportunities. Maybe I'll end up back here. Maybe not. All I know is that this has been a beautiful chapter of my life, and I'm very likely going to cry throughout our entire end of semester party on Friday, when I have to say goodbye to this place and all the friends I've made.

Naishi, natumaini, najitoleya daima Kenya. Thank you, Eric Wainaina, and asante sana, Kenya. Tutaonana badaye.

Why you'd want to live here

Sense by sense...

Nairobi is by far the greenest city I've ever seen. It's absolutely full of color. There are acacia trees, weird looking conifers, palms, and lush plants covering most open spaces. Tropical flowers grow on fences, gates, trees, and along roadsides. Buildings and cement walls are hand painted in bright colors, and there are still traces of political graffiti from January. When we got here, every surface was covered with ODM and PNU posters. There are little dukas (shops) on most corners where phone credit, cigarettes, fruits and vegetables, soda, cooking oil, bread, eggs, and sometimes cooked meals of beans and rice are sold in red Coca-Cola stalls or under lime green Safaricom awnings. Streets are full of obnoxiously painted matatus blasting hip-hop. Everything looks a bit faded in the dust that covers everything.

No matter where you are in the city, you smell exhaust, burning trash, and sweat. Even a lot of the passenger cars are diesel, so thick blue clouds of exhaust envelop the bigger roadways. It's not illegal to burn trash, so people do it pretty much everywhere... in backyards, in ditches, on sidewalks, wherever, and you can always smell it, even if only faintly. The weirdest thing about it is that I know I'm going to miss that suffocating, carcinogenic pollution when I'm back in deodorized US cities. It's honestly become a sort of endearing smell that I associate with my home here.

Swahili is mixed with English on the streets, though you'll hear Kikuyu, Luo, Somali, Arabic, Hindi, and other tribal languages as well. The music, especially in bars and clubs, is mostly American (a lot of 1990s hits, a lot of Top 40), but the Kenyan music I've heard is fantastic. I'm developing a serious appreciation for both hip-hop and swingy, plunky African music... haha. Never thought that day would come. KJ rents space for our program's office in the compound where Eric Wainaina, one of Kenya's most influential musicians, has his recording studio. Eric is fantastic (as a musician and in person), and fortunately, we get to hear him play quite regularly. His music is very likable... Afro-fusion is the label he's adopted for it, I think. I'll let you all listen when I get my computer home.

Kenyan food is pretty simple – mostly just salt, a few spices, and whatever is in the dish. Lots of carbs (rice, chapati, or ugali, which is a thick mixture of water and maize flour) eaten with lots of red meat (beef, goat, lamb). You use the carb to scrape up the stewy item with your hands, unless you're in a nice restaurant that uses silverware. The Indian influence has caused a lot of staple foods to be deep-fried and really heavily salted, so I've had to learn pretty quickly what my stomach can and can't handle. There's unbelievably good Ethiopian food – my all time favorite – and decent Indian food scattered around, though you can definitely find whatever type of cuisine you want in Nairobi. I take that back. I haven't found good Mexican yet.

But ohhhh, we must talk about produce. You can buy it on almost any corner, and my flatmates and I take full advantage. Avocados for about $.15, tomatoes, roasted ears of maize, papayas, passion fruit, bananas, and the most delicious pineapples imaginable ($1 on the street). Amanda and I finish off a pineapple about every other day, I swear. I've also developed a taste for mangoes ($.50), which are infinitely better than any I've had in the US. I'm getting spoiled rotten and loving every minute of it.

The best time of day is the fifteen minutes or so directly after sunset. It's called magharibi in Kiswahili, borrowed from Arabic. I'm usually on the balcony reading, talking to Amanda, listening to the birds singing, or just cooling off with my feet propped up. The wind picks up and makes the trees in the back lot squeak as their trunks rub together. Now that it's the rainy reason, it gets a bit cold... the only time of day I need a sweater. There's a mosque tucked somewhere in the neighborhood behind our field, and the call to prayer at sunset is carried in little clusters of notes to our balcony on the wind. Very often, clouds roll in that bring us rain in the middle of the night. As it gets darker, the men living in the field behind the apartment light a campfire to cook and stay warm. Its smell mingles with the usual scent of burning trash.

This place is home, at least for another two weeks. I'm starting to realize how much I'm going to miss it.