- The Arrival -

"September 5, 1998 - Nairobi, Kenya - After a week in London and a 4200-mile flight, I find myself in the famous (and infamous) city of Nairobi, Kenya.  It is the end of the second day here and John Brislin, David Pumpelly (Pumps), and I lie in our room at the Nairobi Hilton recuperating from our earlier feast at the Carnivore restaurant.  The Carnivore is famous for serving a selection of game meats of East Africa - so far I have tried zebra, giraffe, eland, hartebeast, and ostrich (my favorite).  The meal is started with soup, salad, and bread as typical of many restaurants; however, when these are cleared the true style of the Carnivore comes out.  Game meats that had been roasting over a central open flame pit are brought out on swords.  Servers move from table to table pressing their wears - you may pass on a certain meat, but they don't take it well.  The procession of servers come to your table constantly for two hours - this is about how long one can last before turning a white flag in the center of the table on its side, signaling your submission.  There was a birthday this evening and the staff displayed their festive side - singing both the traditional English "Happy Birthday" as well as a Swahili birthday song involving a lot of drums, mild dancing, and some "Hacuna Matata"s ("that's life") - after such a showing I think the English version leaves a lot to be desired.  Between the food at the Carnivore and the fantastic brunch at the Hilton, we have been truly spoiled in our dining - though based on our tours of the city we might not fair so well in the city at large.

We toured the city each day, but only the second day did we find something truly interesting - a Catholic Basilica.  Only John Brisling is Catholic, but we all agreed it would be an intriguing visit.  The building itself is fairly simple - a stone base with one large room and one smaller wing, both rectangular.  Each wall was taken up by large stained glass windows divided up into tapering ovals. Each oval had a single color glass (red, blue, or yellow).  A general design was made of color changes - no particular image seemed apparent.  On three sides of the larger room (the fourth side being the alter) smaller chambers were decorated, each being dedicated to a particular saint.  Plaques were posted indicating when each chamber was established (none were older than 1980 and the basilica itself was established only in 1963).  As we were about to depart, a congregation began filing in, though "flooding" might be a better term with all the people coming - we had to wait to the side, as they blocked the only exit.  While we waited we started a conversation with a Kenyan by the name of James David, who apparently assists in scheduling the religious events.  We spoke about the tension in Kenya between the Muslims and the Christians - he obviously very negative of the Muslims.  Then we leaned toward politics and al of the corruption going on.  Kenya currently has 5 political parties - one strong one that owns the government and 4 struggling for a more democratic structure.  Each time one of these other parties gains strength and identifies with a strong leader, the lead party "buys the leader out" and weakens the movement - this had just happened only 2 weeks ago.  James was very negative about the government and pushed us to send in our CIA to assist the parties and end the corruption - you could imagine our position, as we have little pull with the CIA.  Next James went on to talk about his love of the US educational system - this with an agenda - he wants his son to attend school in the US.  He asked us if we could sponsor his son and perhaps lend monetary aid (American look like very large dollar signs in Nairobi).  We gave him our addresses so that he could contact us and we told him that we had to go, as night was falling and a tourist at night is a prime target in "Nai-robbery".  James offered to walk us to the hotel, which we graciously accepted.  Again James had an agenda, this time to tell us of his sick daughter who after 2 days in the hospital accumulated a bill of 24,000 Kenyan shillings (about $2000 US).  When we reached the hotel he asked us if we would be able to help his situation, we told him we would leave an envelope at the hotel desk when we left early the next morning.  Since we could not completely trust his story, but wanted to help him after he had been so good to us, we left him $120 US - 4 months wages for most people.  In further communications we will see how we might help him further."

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