This blog is back and this time I decided to write it in english so that
all my foreign friends can read it as well. How thoughtful, right?!
So, I have been in Kenya for two weeks now. We came here the 1st of
September with another Finnish student, Enni, who is also studying at the
University of Eastern Finland. Since we arrived everything has been pretty
hectic. We have had a lot of trouble with the accommodation and course
registration.Here I can practice my patience, that's for sure haha. So almost two weeks in and we still haven’t got our student ID numbers
and because of that we can’t register for courses. We are also currently living
in a hotel since the student hostel that we were booked in was well… not
good.
Let me tell you a bit more about the hostel, now that we don’t have to
live there anymore. So the deal is that internationals are always staying in
the guesthouses that are located in campus due to safety and privacy. Something
went wrong and all the guesthouses were full booked when we arrived so we had
no choice but to stay in the hostels. The hostels are in campus as well and
mostly the first year students live there. The rooms have two bunk beds and
couple of chairs and tables. They are not nice I tell you that. Toilets and
showers are shared with the whole floor of students and they were the worst
part of the hostel. Toilets are just a hole on the floor and really dirty and
showers have ice cold water unless you are very lucky. (Yesterday I had the
first proper hot shower at the hotel since I left Finland two weeks ago and it
never felt better.) We got a bit used to the hostels already but apparently the
biggest problem of us living there was that it was not safe. That’s why we
couldn’t (thank god) stay there for longer. After a lot of work and negotiation
and a lot of help from our teacher we were able to move out from the hostel to
our own apartment! A hotel nearby has couple of apartments that are affordable
and quite nice and only 5 minute walk away from campus. We were meant to move
there this week but we had to come to the hotel saturday morning since we are
both suffering from food poisoning or something like that and the hostel just
wasn’t an ideal place to be sick. And yep, it took us less then two weeks to
get the first food poisoning. But anyways, just got the keys to the place and I
am so glad we are staying here! Although it's a bit ridiculous that we are practically living in a hotel for four months... But it's nothing fancy, I swear!
Okay, that’s enough about the accommodation for now. So the reason that
we are here is a program called Global Foodnet. It’s between University of
Eastern Finland, La Molina University in Peru and this one, Jomo Kenyatta University
of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT). We attended an intensive
course last week with students and teachers from Finland, Peru and Kenya. Most
of them were from Kenya of course. The aim of the course was to develop a new
food product using amaranth or quinoa in groups. I really liked my group and we
developed a tomato sauce where we used amaranth flour as a starch. And it was a
great success! We are probably even taking it further and trying to develop it
more which is going to be interesting. I really liked working with Kenyans!
Hopefully this week we can attend classes as well. I am taking two courses so
I’ll have lectures only on Thursdays and Fridays. That means heaps of time to
travel!!
The university is located in a small town/village called Juja, which is
about 40km outside Nairobi. The campus is pretty modern, clean and really
peaceful compared to the surroundings. When you step outside the university
gates there’s dust roads, roadside markets, food stalls, animals, lots of
people, crazy traffic and a bit of chaos. It’s quite the opposite compared to
Finland and like nothing I’ve ever seen before but I really like it! There’s
definitely not many white people here so we just have to get used to people
staring at us A LOT, strangers saying hi and asking how are you, being called
mzungus (mzungu is Swahili language for white person), asked for money and
getting every child’s attention. The attention can be a bit stressful at some
points but mostly it doesn’t bother me. Of course we draw attention because we
just look so different than the rest in this small town. I will probably wonder
why no one is staring at me when I come back to Finland hah. People that I’ve
met here are really friendly, helpful and warm hearted. One thing that I’ve
also noticed is that people are looking to each other’s eyes for example when
passing by which I like a lot.
To get to Nairobi there are buses and small buses like vans that are
called matatus. They are really cheap and the ride to Nairobi costs less than 1
euro. Especially in the buses there’s always really loud hiphop and reggae
music during the whole bus trip. And the way they work is that they always
leave only when they are full which in my opinion is really smart. Who needs
timetables, right? We have only gone to Nairobi couple of times so I can write
more about that when I know the city a bit better!
I am really excited of all the travels that we are going to do here. Our
plan was to go to a 4-day safari in Masai Mara National Reserve yesterday but
these stomach problems and a safari just ain’t a good combination... But that’s
definitely a must see here! Other places that we plan on going are Mombasa and
the South coast, Lake Nakuru, Tanzania and several lakes and national parks
located near this area. I plan on going to Ethiopia as well since my mum is
going to be there in October. Gonna be awesome! We’ve got so many great travel
tips so it’s good that we are here until Christmas! We already went to Giraffe
Centre in Nairobi and it was super nice. The giraffes were so kind and cute, I
could have stayed there for hours!
Okay well that was at least something that’s going on here. I haven’t
found proper internet access ANYWHERE yet so that’s why there’s no photos. But
I’ll figure it out, I don’t want to be here for four months without
skype. All in all everything’s good here and I’ll try to write here
often AND post photos. So remember to read this and I am hoping for comments
from you guys as well. J
Lots of love from Africa,
Iisa
PS. I wrote this couple of days ago but because of the internet I
couldn't post it! Now we finally got the student IDs and registered for
courses! In the end it turned out we don't even need the registration number we
tried to get for two weeks. Classic. I am not feeling sick anymore and we
even booked a safari to Masai Mara this weekend! I'm suuuper excited! Also,
still no proper internet access but I decided to try my luck in the middle of
the night when I happened to wake up. Works better this time, less users I
guess.. Now back to sleep!
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