THE WORLD AS MY WITNESS

Has it really been a month already?? What have I been up to? A lot of beaches, sunsets, sand. Sometimes I kind of forget this is my life now… then I feel the sweat everywhere on my body. My back, my neck, my clothes are just damp (I didn’t know my upperlip could sweat) then I’m like oh I’m in Kenya and it’s end of November. I spend most of my weekends on the beach with friends. Or check out local parks like Shimba Hills up in the mountains. Some days you can see elephants near the river banks. Yesterday, during the presidential inauguration- a declared Kenyan holiday, we took to the beach for a barbeque. It was good and sandy (adds flavor). For thanksgiving, my boss was kind enough to invite me to his awesome feast with his expat friends. It was a nice spread as you can tell! Lobster, turkey, oysters, stuffing. I’m incredibly thankful to have met the people I have, and how they welcome me into their lives. And I’m just as thankful to have such a great family back ...

Village huts right outside the main Kilifi office Alright my first full week of work. Everyone is so friendly to each other - saying hi to every one. Nothing too much happened besides more meetings to get to know all the different departments. One day I went to the Nursery - where they grow the seedlings for the Eucalyptus and Melia trees. This was a cool experience because I got to see more modes of transportation in Kenya. So there’s the tuk-tuk and bota bota. But there’s also the matatu ( mah-tah-tu ) which is a small passenger van which locals take cause it’s cheaper. There’s usually a bunch of them, so chances are there’s one that’ll get you where you need to go. There’s a guy who’s a conductor of sorts who sticks his head out the window yelling to get people to hop in the van - so it gets very very crowded. I took this on my way back from the nursery. It was hot, cramped and there were chickens under my seat. On my way to the nursery I took a probox, because my coworker w...

I'm trying to get more pictures of local houses (they're more of huts made with clay dirt and straw) and neighborhoods but I don't want to intrude. It's also a little hard to take pictures on a motorbike. So I guess just more pictures of beaches... Luckily nothing crazy to report here. Life in Kilifi during the election just kept right on going. It didn’t really change much, people still went to the beach, walked around, etc. The only things noticeably different were how the shops were closed, and there was one army truck full of soldiers sitting around bored. The polling centers here were pretty much empty. I think I saw one of the polling workers with his head on his desk? My impression is that the people here are boycotting the vote because their candidate withdrew (see my attempt to explain below). I asked my roommate, whose family is in Nairobi, what it was like in the capitol, and she said it was very tense. No one outside, doors and windows locked. If I unde...

Unrelated thought: I wonder how many ‘first day of work’s I’m going to have until I retire… My roommates and I took a tuk-tuk (a three-wheeled mini motor bus thing, typically good if you’re riding with more than 1 person, if it’s raining or you’re carrying a lot of stuff) to work. Each of them have a tuk-tuk guy and a buta-buta (pronounced boddha-boddha and don't quote me on the spelling; a motorbike, cheaper than tuk-tuk and typically good if you’re riding alone or squeeze another person with you on the motorbike) guy on their phones. If they want to go anywhere, they just call for a ride, and the tuk-tuk/buta-buta will pick them up and take then where ever they want to go. It’s a nice set up since the drivers already know where to go and you build a relationship with them. Like the other day, A called her buta-buta guy to pick her up some water. Like UberEats style. What I see on the way to work on a buta-buta (motorbike) Example of buta-buta next to field of kids pla...

The week before I left, my family had a sunny farewell sendoff barbecue filled with food, laughter and SushiGo! (it’s a card game that you need to play immediately). I couldn’t be more lucky and blessed to have such great family and friends- I am so deeply touched by everyone’s support and prayers. If only the distance wasn’t so big.. but our hearts are bigger. On my way to Kenya, I had a 13 hr flight to Ethiopia. Luckily I had a window seat, and no one sat in the middl. The lady on the aisle seat was reading Paulo Coehlo’s The Alchemist, which is one of my top favorite books (this was also one of the only three books I brought with me). I was silently freaking out because this book is about fate and destiny, and how if you go after what you truly want, the whole universe conspires with you to make that happen. So maybe this was a basic girl thing of me to be like ohmigosh the universe is sending me this sign!! But I did and it helped cut through the goodbye sadn...

**so let me preface this journey/blog that I don't have good Wi-Fi network / no Wi-Fi at all so excuse any brevity or formatting ugliness** **p.s thanks for reading this and coming along with me** So I've read those stories, as I'm sure most of us have, where a person just ups and quits their 9 to 5 job (though who really works just only 9-5? I wanna know) and goes travel somewhere or does something radically different. My usual reaction is wow good for them for breaking their corporate chains... How fearless to give up a steady paycheck!.. They must have had a nice safety net or something..I cold never do that. Yadda yadda yadda. The point is: I've always thought that story was someone else's narrative, never mine..Until one day it did or at least it became part of mine. Since college started, I knew I wanted to get into international development. Case in point a short bio I wrote around May 2012 for the website of the leadership cohort I was in when I was ...

I've always wanted to go to Cuba - before the Kardashians went 😒  Latin American culture always intrigued me and the movie Dirty Dancing: Habana Nights with Diego Luna got my heart pumping. A colleague-turned-friend, KS, from California was awesome enough to come with me for my 25th birthday (and I'm sure he too was excited to see what hispanic culture had to offer😍)! We got an airbnb in Centro Habana (I didn't stay in the other neighborhoods but we were close to El Vedado and overall great location). Luckily we went during the Obama administration so really the only requirements were to get a visa (I did this online through Cuba Travel Services via the airline I got my flight tickets from) for 'Education/People to People' and made a tentative itinerary. I also booked only a one way to Cuba, thinking I'd get a cheaper flight from Cuba to my next destination Puerto Rico with another airline like Jetblue. Unfortunately, you have to book your flight to Cuba and...