First impressions of Kenya, Africa.
Warm, but not hot, even though I am near to and just below the equator. Nairobi is the Capitol city of Kenya with a population of four million people.
The area was an uninhabited swamp until a supply depot of the Uganda Railway was built in 1899. It soon became the railway's headquarters. The city was named after a water hole known in Maasai as Ewaso Nyirobi, meaning "cool waters".
Nairobi was completely rebuilt in the early 1900s after an outbreak of the plague and to contain the disease the town was burned to the ground.
The location of the Nairobi railway camp was chosen for two reasons. It was a central location between Mombasa and Kampala and it was near a network of rivers that could supply the camp with water. An elevation of nearly seven thousand feet made it cool enough for residential purposes and difficult for the Malaria mosquito to survive.
When I landed in Nairobi it was mid-afternoon. Eighteen plus hours after leaving New York and seven hours ahead of my normal time on the eastern time zone of America. The first leg of the trip took me to Dubai. I had a two hour layover and then another flight of five hours to Nairobi.
It is an agglutination of people and pollution. The poor coexist along with pockets of wealth. There is construction everywhere. The roads are congested with cars, bicycles, motor scooters and people who seem to walk everywhere.
I had yesterday to acclimate to the time change before I join CMMB, the Catholic Medical Mission Board today and their tour of their health care facilities. More on that tomorrow.
English and Swahili are spoken in most places, but my ear is having difficulty discerning the English words from the altered British accent. All in all it is a poor country even though it has one of the best economies in Africa. There are however so many in need of basic health care and education. That is CMMB's mission with its partners in Kenya.
2 comments:
Happy to hear that you arrived safely and are aclimating to the time change. I can only imagine traveling that many hours and finding yourself in such a different world than we have.
I have always admired the African people and their strength under so many disadvantages. One can hardly believe in this day and age that people still live in such conditions. I have always wished that all the money that all the countries spend fighting could be used to help all the countries that need uplifting; that they may all have a good life, i.e., nutricious foode, good living conditions, medicine and education as we have and where peace and harmony can reign. I wish that for all countries as well.
I watch shows that show tribes that still exist and sometimes wonder if they have a better understanding life than we do. Our ways have reached into theirs and have torn some of them apart. However, watching them makes me very grateful that I live where I do, but I still learn a lot from them and their socities.
Enjoy your visit my prayers are with you and the work that the CMMB does.
LAS
Thank you for bringing some of your adventure to our small, safe desktop screen. No Mosquitos here in the Hudson Valley, just robocalls! Keith
Post a Comment