50 Nifty United States (Pre-Mombasa Stories)

There is literally too much to possibly catch you all up on but here begins my best attempt. I’m breaking this up into parts, so feel free to skip to what you actually want to know about!

First to finish off my last Nairobi stories pre-Mombasa. I promise I’m not actually being stalked by a Massai runner. I was running in Nairobi and this guy ran past me, motioned for me to catch up, and when I refused he came back and ended up running with me for 20min. He only really spoke Swahili so I’m not entirely sure what we talked about sometimes but I did find out that he’s a professional runner and he was training for the Nairobi marathon. So the exchange ended with me taking his phone number since all us SITers want to go to a track meet while we’re here and I figured who would know where to find them better than a real-live-Kenyan runner. The other trackie who’s here and I decided to call Jack the Massai runner (did I forget to mention his name is Jack, funny right?) that night and since then he’s called me a million times and texted me. Don’t worry though, no harm no foul. And I’m not a stupid msichana mzungu.

We got to visit Carolina for Kibera! The people there were great and I learned that their office is basically in my backyard so I could easily go visit again. They have a bunch of impressive programs but the one I was most excited about is a “Trash is Cash” program where they pay kids in Kibera to bring trash to their center and then they recycle just about all of their trash. Literally the first thing I’ve heard about recycling since being in Kenya.

This is just an example of why I got so excited to learn about a Trash is Cash program.

Then hung out with my Nairobi family on my last night before heading to Mombasa for two weeks. In the course of this meal I learned two things: that my family has significantly more knowledge than me about American movies and significantly less about American geography. My mom and brother started asking me about Massachusetts again (a word they find incredibly hard to pronounce) and then in an attempt to figure out where it is my mom asked if it is near Boston. Then I had to explain that Boston is the capital city of the state of MA. That really threw them for a loop and my mom, in an attempt to understand how that works, asked how many different parts there are. I explained that there are 50 states to which mom responded, “50? Oh, are you sure?” Yes, momma, last time I checked I’m fairly certain there were 50 states. This turned into a game where my family named all the states they know, which included Miami and Manhattan before it got too hard to explain.

Then that night we left Nairobi on the coast bus overnight to Mombasa. It was like a track bus, with wonderful movie selections alá Nicole. We watched The Reef, a movie about a bunch of friends getting shipwrecked and eaten by sharks. What better way to start a two week stay on the coast?