Tuesday, September 27, 2022

Day 8 - Leaving Nairobi

guess what I'm alive, yeah, guess I'm still alive, yeah I thought you should know it
if you're missing me a lot then I guess that you're in luck 'cause here I am
Guess What - Evergreen

Last post about the trip. Day 8 was when I was leaving Kenya. Flight was in the evening, so I had to fill time. Initially I thought the check out time at the hotel was 10 AM which made me a bit at a lost of what to do, so when I found out it's at 11 AM instead, I was like super relieved. I had time to do things slowly. I checked out like 15 minutes before the time's up. I purposely chose the hotel I stayed in because there were some places that can be visited by walking, but still due to the fact that it seems it might not be all safe, I felt not that excited. It felt daunting. Okay, I don't know if the concern is real or I was just being paranoid, but basically I walked out of the hotel with prayers. Since on the day I arrived I already visited the Nairobi Gallery, there were just only 2 places I was going to that day - The Kenya National Archives and The Kenyatta International Convention Centre (KICC). The well-prepared me had googled directions to get to these places back before I even stepped foot in Kenya. This is like standard operating procedure for me which was cultivated after getting lost and wasting times in the early days of my travel. Well you improve with mistakes. I dare say some people who have travelled with me were like impressed (even my mom), but I could still get lost because I am dumb sometime and stubbornly didn't refer to the screenshot of maps I saved in my phone. So anyways, I had directions. First stop was to the National Archives and I memorized the steps so that I don't have to take out my phone and check for direction. I try not to do that anywhere actually, not just in Nairobi, because I don't want to appear like an obvious tourist. My last day being a Monday, it was way more crowded than on a Sunday. I wasn't wearing a mask because I thought again it would indicate you're a foreigner. I know based on my look alone I couldn't blend, but one need to try. Anyways, the mask would have actually been useful because of the exhaust gas from some vehicles.

The good thing about being in Singapore, I have developed the ability of walking fast and the good thing about being an Indonesian is that I can cross a street like an Indonesian and this would come in helpful. So I arrived safely at the National Archives. Paid for the ticket, but the guy said he would return me the change when I leave. I had to give them my backpack too and I was told I could only take pictures with my phone - okay. The National Archives is not very big and I'm suprised at people writing they could spend more than 1 hour. The exhibition area covers 2 floors and because I had to kill time, I pretty much went through them 2 or 3 times. There were some artifacts here, some paintings, stamps collection (very interesting), but the thing that was super weird for me was the section showing the list of their police commisioners. Weird because as Indonesians, do we care? I think in Indonesia, we just don't care much about political figures or military generals post-independence? The ones before independence are written in the history as heroes and we learn about them, but after that who cares, most of them also may have some stain throughout their career anyway. The most interesting thing about seeing those photos was perhaps seeing when it changed from white people to black people. Another weird thing was that they were playing a radio on speaker throughout. I guess it's perhaps because it's not a museum per se, there are actually rooms where people are doing research, but still I found it strange but before I comment on this much, I guess I need to go back to museums in Jakarta and see how they're being run. One of the topic from that radio show that morning was about why it's still a big deal when men get vasectomy. The radio DJ was a woman and she was asking why it can't be normalized, like do women just need to give birth over and over without any say. I had a smile hearing this, some issues are just global which shows we're just all the same wherever we are. Below is a picture of one of the paintings inside.

When I exited, I collected my bag and almost forgot to get my change because a newly arrived visitor was guessing where I was from. His guesses moved south from Japan, South Korea, and ended up in Vietnam. He's funny when he kept on guessing when I said no. Again we need more Indonesians out there. Outside the National Archives, there was a crowd hearing someone speak. I was actually quite intrigued, was the man selling something or was it related to the presidential election, but I couldn't put myself in that situation watching among the crowd so I kept moving. The way to KICC was more complex for my slow brain and though I tried my best to memorize it, at some point I realized I was not following what Google maps was saying. I realized it when somehow I found myself in front of the compound. In this case Google maps wasn't giving the best direction, my dumb luck was actually more straightforward. I saw a few people getting in through a small gate so I crossed the street and followed suit. There's a security check after that small gate and there's an open area from that main gate to the building. What I noticed upon entering the compound was that somehow the noise from the streets outside quieted down and it made you feel calm. In front of the door of the building, there's a security guard who will take your ID (in my case it's my passport) and write your info in a book. Then I went in to get the ticket for the rooftop and was told they don't accept cash - aarrgh!!! The lady told me I could go to one of the counter there where they could do an M-Pesa transfer. I was charged a bit for this, but okay whatever. The lady verified the transfer and wrote some thing in a little piece of paper and told me to give it to the staff upstairs. She then pointed me to the lifts. The lifts were unusual, I never use something like this before. There's a machine by the lifts and you key in your floor and it will tell you which lift to take and I found out later on, inside the lifts there's no button to specify a floor to stop. There were quite a number of people because the I think there's a lot of offices there so I missed like the first two lifts. Then thinking it's not gonna get better, I squeezed in when a lift arrived and I'm still in a COVID mode so I didn't enjoy being in too close proximity with people, even now. This also happened on the way down later *sigh* Anyways, arrived at the 27'th floor (if I'm not mistaken), gave the staff there the piece of paper, and she showed me the stairs I had to take. It's not a very long climb up. I have written much about how I'm not actually that interested anymore to visit high towers / buildings or what have you to see a city, but I thought this was something I needed to do because I really didn't have a good sense of how Nairobi is, even the area where my hotel is, so I did want to see the city from up high even though KICC is not very tall and see what it's like. There's a helipad on a raised platform and there were some locals visiting too that day.

The thing that made my heart smile there was that there was this boy, a toddler who's still woobly when he walked on the helipad. He took notice of me and started to just look at me. I waved at him when his mother wasn't looking, because I do think it's creepy when a stranger just get too friendly with little kids, but he didn't wave back. He didn't stop looking at me though and when his mother realized he was doing that and saw I was looking back, I just waved openly and then the mother came closer to me and encouraged him to come say hi. He finally came and I held my hand to shake his, but my hand is too big for him and so he just wrapped one of my finger with his whole hand. It was so cute :) His name is Nolan (very nice name I thought) and his mother's name is Priscilla. I have their picture and I contemplated about posting it, but I decided not to. They're with his grandmother sitting at the other end of the helipad. Priscilla was nice and friendly and Nolan was just like hypnotized with me. He just looked, no smile, in fact there could be a tiny bit of concern in his face. I let him hold my finger for as long as he wanted and eventually I felt he was loosening up his grip. Then he let go and that was it. It may not be much, but I loved that experience. After that, I tried to orientate myself with the streets below, making sure I know which way back. After I figured it out, I said good bye to them all. Collected my passport, then proceeded to go to the cafe which I had been frequenting all my time in Nairobi, sitting at the same place all the time, and had zucchini soup for lunch. Arriving at this cafe, I think there's quite a relief, thankful to God for His protection that I walked around Nairobi a bit and was safe. Everything was good. For pictures from Nairobi, you can go here.

After the meal, I went back to the hotel to get my luggage and I was picked up by J2 to take me to the airport. A recap, J2 is the younger brother of J1 who I liased with to book my safari. They had another younger brother whose name starts with A. When I said that A is not in the bible, J2 said yeah I don't know why my father named him A, but we have cousin J (who was driving the car) here :D So J2 took me to the car and he told me that his cousin was settling something at one of the shop nearby so we needed to wait a bit. At one point, I realized he was making sure that the car was locked and I saw there were some guys around. Then he said, even he was scared. He said they were Nigerians and their eyes were a bit weird like they're on drugs. I asked if he could differentiate them just by looking. He said yes and also he heard them speak. I know it's like ignorance on my part thinking all black people look the same, but honestly because I'm not exposed much in this part of the world, I don't have the ability yet to differentiate their finer details so what J2 said next was comforting. He said it's the same for them, Asian people look the same. If I see K like a little brother, I see J2 as a kid. In fact I do call people his age as kids, which if they find out they may think it's insulting, but really even for me, looking back when I was a university student, I really didn't know shit. In fact I often think if back then I was as independent and mentally older as I am now, then things might turn out differently. However, it's just part of life being young and clueless that everyone has to go through. Your struggles and failures are what suppose to form you. As the song from Nina Zilli, Schiacciacuore, which was in my Kenya playlist says, è l'anima che piange, ormai sono grande (my translation: it's the soul that cries, by now it is big). Anyways, talked quite a bit with J2 on the way to the airport. He's been helping his brother in the business, he likes the work and wants it to grow, quite a guy with a mission I would say. In his stream of consciousness, he just suddenly blurted out that he thought getting married at 40 is the right age and that was quite funny. In addition to that he also talked about how girls were just focused on the romantic gestures and he didn't see a point in it. I get what he's saying. I think it's just he has a different vision and mission and girls his age tend not to get it because they just want to have fun and there's nothing wrong with that. When you're young, you should have fun. Maybe later when he reaches his goal and is ready to settle down, he'll find a more mature girl who would understand his outlook in life.

There was one strange part about getting to the airport. Before reaching, at some highway we had to get out of the car and go through a small building where we need to pass an aiport metal detector but only the passengers. So cousin J continued driving pass the building and me and J2 get off and he said to make it faster, just bring your phone. That was so weird. I don't know what that's about. Then we continued on driving to the actual airport and they dropped me off. It's the standard checking in and passing immigration at the airport. I had issue getting my fingerprints scanned, arrrghh my usual problem. I think the staff also gave up and he let me off. Nothing much to say about the airport. It's not very big and it doesn't have many shops. On the flight out, the sky outside the window was beautiful with the different colours.

I arrived in Doha for my transit close to midnight and it was like Holy God, why is it so crowded with people?!? Many people were landing at the same time. I didn't enjoy the crowd and the queue for the security check, so much so that after I got out of it and was looking to buy water, I couldn't help but get gelato too. It was 3 scoops, I don't know why 3 scoops was the minimal amount. It was so so :( I was quite tired, but lucky for me the flight to Singapore was on time, thank God! It was a concern for me because when I transitted in Doha on my way to Nairobi, I saw that the flight to Singapore was delayed for 2 hours. So I was worried and really thank God, it's on time. I was so tired that I dozed off quite a lot during the flight, really a sign that I am getting older and have less energy. Arriving in Singapore, one big thing annoyed me. Since COVID time, we have to fill in the SG arrival card before arriving and one of the question would be were you in some countries in Africa or South America which I answered truthfully. Due to this and the requirement to present a yellow fever vaccination proof, I kinda knew I couldn't pass the automated gate, but I tried anyway. That failed, so I queued at the manual counter. The system is so freaking weird that the staff's computer just don't allow me to pass but didn't tell the staff what's wrong. So the staff had to call another staff who took me to the other manual counter with more checks at the side. At this point, I should have just opened my mouth and said I think I just need to show you my yellow fever vaccination card, but I didn't and I ended up waiting for 1 hour plus while all the different staffs sorted out other problematic people. I was darn annoyed and the irony of it all. I was vaccinated for yellow fever because of the trip to Peru pre-COVID and at that time when arriving in Singapore, no one asked and checked for it. So it's almost a waste getting vaccinated, but now they checked because you are asked about it in the SG arrival card which exists because of COVID. Side note: because I was already vaccinated for yellow fever, that's also one reason of going to Kenya - to so called get some mileage / value for money out of that vaccination. I kinda cooled down a bit when the staff who processed me said sorry for the inconvenience.

So that was the trip. All and all, gratitude. It's always where I end a journey, gratitude to God. I'm not the bravest person there is and I really could make it through it all only because I was holding to God for dear life. He's taken care of me throughout and the people He let me meet and talk to in this journey have been interesting and kind. How fast was it for me to return to being depressed in real life? Pretty much less than 2 days after I landed back in Singapore. I don't want to talk about it. Let me end with something that I haven't done in previous travel posts. So there's quite a number of songs in the playlist, but I could only choose a few to start the post because sometime there are not many posts to write and sometimes it's hard to find lyrics that somehow fit outside the song's context. So now, I'm going to list some of the songs in the playlist that I really love but didn't choose to start my travel posts:

• Island by Bow Anderson - I just love the line, I am an island, baby :D
• Run by Eamon - very catchy song, I love the line, you better run girl, and this one, we don't got a phony cover up, what you see is how we do, so God bless if you treat me right but if you don't, I'm scared for you.
• Strange by Celeste - kinda a sad song lyrically and melodically; the lyric is deep and it was sung so beautifully.
• Wicked Streets by J. Bernardt - I love the song composition.
• New York by Jake Isaac - it should be in a New York playlist but I don't know when I get to go there again and it's so lovely, so I put it in this playlist.
• Ragu Semesta by Isyana Sarasvati - The only song in Indonesian in the playlist. I think I only really like it after hearing it the second time. I love everything about it - the lyric, the melody, and the composition. She sings it beautifully too. Sometime when I listen to it closely, I find new parts to love.

:) eKa @ 8:50:00 PM •