Vacation.

The biggest highlight of the past few months was my vacation to Kenya. One of my friend’s from McGill grew up there and her parents still live there. They graciously took me in on their family vacation. Nairobi is like another world compared to Lilongwe. I didn’t feel like I was in a developing country that often. Nairobi is large and very metropolitan. There are condominiums popping up on every block, in contrast to the very few number of buildings in Lilongwe that are more than two stories. The city is almost fully paved with street lights. I went to a wide variety of excellent restaurants, better than I have had in Canada. There are ‘real’ shopping malls and coffee shops with wireless internet. Fantastic. Best part was the movie theatre! When buying your tickets, you also get reserved seats. Highly organized. Unfortunately, there was not a lot of choice, and my weakenss for romantic comedies steered me wrong when I chose “enchanted”. A disney movie come to life. Complete with singing animals. Not good. Christine needed popcorn and chocolate simply to stay with it.

We spent Christmas in Nairobi and then went to an island off the coast for New Year. The island is called Lamu and it is fascinating. It developed into a trading centre many centuries ago as it is right on the Indian Ocean. There is a very large Arabic influence on the island and it is expressed through the most incredible architecture. The majority of people are Muslim and the women wear burkas when leaving the house. There are no cars on the island and donkey is the main mode of transport. Swahili language and culture began on the coast and then moved inwards on the continent. Therefore, many people argue that Lamu is that last place where Swahili is spoken in its true form.

We flew into a small airport made out of grass and bamboo (I am not kidding – the waiting room has a thatched roof), and then took a boat to Lamu. We stayed in Lamu town which is a small, bustling town with many narrow winding lanes and streets. Each day we took a boat over to the other side of the island to go to the beach. For someone who has not taken many ‘hot vacations’ - this was an incredible treat. The beach is white and the water is turquoise. There are gorgeous sand dunes covering the length of the beach and the water is so warm. One afternoon, we hired a dhow, a traditional Swahili sailboat, to take us snorkelling. The dhow is made entirely of wood. Aside from the anchor, there is no metal or plastic aboard. Once I became comfortable with the extreme heeling in the wind, the sail was great! The dhow was captained by two Kenyans who were extremely entertaining. We sailed over to another island and did some snorkelling over a small coral reef. Good, although I had to fight feelings of claustrophobia with that mask on!

I extended my stay three times (much to the chagrin of my hosts ;) ) The last time was to network with some NGOs in Nairobi working on gender-based violence and youth issues. It was great to hear what other, more developed, organizations are doing in these fields. It quickly became clear how far ahead of the game Kenya is on addressing human rights issues like gender-based violence.
So instead of returning on the 2nd as planned, I came back to Malawi on the 10th. All in all, an excellent three and a half week vacation. I am sure you are all wondering about the political situation in Kenya. I was always safe, so that was never a problem thankfully. We returned from Lamu right after the first of the violence. Nairobi was a ghost town; with groups of riot police walking the streets (they strongly resembled purple teenage mutant ninja turtles). We were under self-imposed house arrest for about four days. Christine and I were extremely antsy after four days of watching the L Word (fantastic show by the way) – that we volunteered to do the three store family shopping just to get out of the house. One of the most interesting aspects of the situation was the disparity between the headlines my parents were reading in North America versus what was actually happening in the country. Considering the newspapers internationally were announcing “memories of Rwanda” and “tribal warfare”, I give my parents credit for remaining so calm. From everyone that I spoke to, the general consensus was disappointment that after a peaceful election last time, things have turned to violence.