Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Arrival and first couple of days in Kenya

I arrived in Mombasa, Kenya on Saturday morning, July 17. This was after leaving Accra, Ghana (after a month-long internship with Global Giving) on July 16 at 9pm. Unfortunately, with the time difference, this basically meant was that it was a red eye without any sleep, so I arrived with the proverbial red eyes. But my fellow intern and roommate, Melinda was there to pick me up and we were off to my new accommodations for the next 3 weeks.

When we arrived, it was an awesome 3 bedroom apartment, fully equipped with a kitchen and 2 full bathrooms (with hot water even!). I know doesn’t sound like the lap of luxury, but after sleeping in a new place almost every night for a month, including one night on the side of the road on a sheet over gravel during the worst bus ride from Burkina Faso to Mali during my previous internship, this felt like the Ritz Carlton.

I had time to drop my bag, change my clothes and we were off to Old Town Mombasa, which included some really neat native souvenir shops and the beach at Fort Jesus (a fort built on the coast in the shape of Jesus by the Portuguese). The pictures don’t do it justice, this was one of the most breath-taking ocean views I had ever seen!

Unfortunately, I was quickly losing steam, so we headed back to the apartment in a tuktuk (basically a motorcycle cab). We decided to watch a movie and after about 10 minutes, I had fallen asleep and was starting to scare my new roommate with my sudden jerks awake, so I put myself to bed After 16 hours of blissful, uninterrupted sleep, I awoke the next morning at 10am., and spent the whole day relaxing, catching up on emails, reading, and getting ready for the next day - my first day at Yehu Microfinance. I was so excited!

No comments:

Post a Comment