In between Matatu rides and inhaling tonnes of diesel fumes, dust, and tire-fire smoke, I get together with a fellow Vancouverite and a bunch of hearty Kenyans to fight the good fight against the heaps of waste that litter Nairobi. We have fun doing it too.

photos by R. Chursinoff

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Today will be my first full day in Africa and with it will come a meeting with UN staffers. But much more importantly than this meeting will be the task given to me before leaving Vancouver. My work partner Nathaniel and I will be delivering pen-pal letters written by Vancouver students to their counterparts in the impoverished Kibera district schools.
I’ve read over some of these letters and found them to be charming, touching and revealing of kids whose attentions are constantly battling for other rapidly incoming attentions. The world moves fast these days and apparently so do our youth’s sentences.
Garrett writes to Jambo:
Hi! I got your letter and saw that you like soccer I like it too! What position do you play? I have a pet fish. Do you like soup? I like the Jonas Brothers do you know who they are? What colour are your shoes? So on and so forth.

Kids are amazing. Kenyan kids are out of this world cute. They are adorable, polite and eerily silent and expressionless around Nathaniel and I. Nathaniel asked me to bring a stuffed Lion for 18 month old Stacy. This is what she looked like upon receiving the golden-fleeced toy:

Go ahead, I dare you to try and be cuter than Stacy.

My plane descended into Africa just as the sun’s first rays hit the jagged peak of Mt. Kenya, then trickled down over the green hills, down onto the plain, finally glinting off the buildings of downtown Nairobi. The moment I stepped out of the plane and into the walkway connecting to the terminal, that unmistakable scent hit me– equatorial countries, countries with less money than the one I come from, countries that seem to be perpetually burning things in back yards, along the sides of roads, in stoves situated in shacks that millions call home.

My own home for the next three months is a compact room in an apartment above a daycare in the middle-class suburb of Buru Buru. It’s less smokey here than would be near Nairobi’s core. It’s clean too, and relatively quiet. I stress relatively, as the peace on my first night was broken at 4 am by a dog barking at what was likely just the rustle of leaves. But of course that dog got the dog in the next yard going, which got the dog in the next, next yard going. So on and so forth until the one rooster down the street was roused, and whose crowing, for some reason, set off a car alarm. This burst of suburban African noise subsided and I drifted back to sleep until a few hours later when a shrieking child with separation anxiety was brought to the daycare.
I have earplugs. I will be using them.

I’m off to Africa on January 25th for three months. For two of those months I will be working with an off-shoot of the Environmental Youth Alliance, called Up With Hope. We will be managing recycling facilities, and aiding the residents in collecting and making money from the abundant plastics that litter the impoverished communities of Nairobi, Kenya.

Following the end of my term with Up With Hope, I will take a peek around East Africa, and keep you updated in the process.
Kilimanjaro, giraffes, pot-holed highways, gorillas, Indian Ocean, malaria, here I come!