It was 6.5 hours to Abu Dhabi
and then 5 hours to Kenya
Yay Nairobi! We landed around 2pm, got our visas and then took a car to Khweza Bed and Breakfast.
It's located in a non touristic area, so wandering around was great. We were the token foreigners. Everyone on the street was so friendly! One of two takeaways-- signs and ads are all in English and everyone speaks English. I was shocked. After speaking with some locals we learned that Swahili and English are both national languages and school children learn them both starting in their earliest years of school. We were told that we could safely wander to the roundabout to the right and to the corner market on the left. So we did. Although we couldn't cover a lot of distance we were able to spend a lot of time out. The locals were SO friendly. We came upon a 79 year old Indian man in a spice shop who had been to America multiple times and shared with us about his experiences in Iowa touring the John Deere tractor plant. We kept wandering and came across three young men selling shoes. We told them we didn't want to buy anything, so they moved on and just started chatting with us.
After we finished wandering in our allotted space, we went back to the B&B where Zede was. He offered to walk us to the market so we could get water which meant we had to go outside of our allotted space. While Nairobi is definitely built up, there are incredibly poor, slum areas, that are muddy and filled with trash. It's definitely a culture shock, especially when there are skyscrapers in the distance. I was glad to be able to drive by those areas on the way home from the airport, and walk through the very outskirts on our way to the market, but we knew we had to head back before dark.
Apparently Nairobi gets dangerous in the evenings, and tourists shouldn't be out and about alone, so, Mark and I opted to taxi to Carnivore, an all you can eat meat restaurant. It was festively decorated for Christmas and there was even a gospel choir singing. We got to try ostrich and crocodile, among some other more common meats, like turkey, chicken and pork, with more sides than any one human could ever eat. At one point during our meal we were invited to get up to dance and sing with the choir, so we joined in during a rendition of hakuna matata. We also tried dawa, a signature vodka drink muddled with honey, sugar, lemon and lime. Mmmm. Our taxi driver, Charles, waited for us during our meal which was so sweet, so we got him a dessert to enjoy with his family.
We got dropped off at our B&B (normally I'd allow a taxi to drop us across the street but there was a median and it was dark and we were on the left side, apparently the unsafe side, according to Zede, so I made him drive us straight to our door) Merry Christmas Eve to all and to all a good night.
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