East African Travels

Jambo!

I hope you all are doin well! Its been another month without an email, and this month has definitely been the most interesting yet. I’m getting close to ending my time abroad, and its crazy to think I’ll be back home in just a few weeks. I’m actually already on a long route back to the US, and am writing from the Bangkok airport on my way to spend 2 weeks in Cambodia and Thailand visiting some friends. A bit random of a detour (I only decided 5 days ago to come here), but should be great. I’ve already noticed that there are way more Asians than in Africa, the food is much better, and the toilets have seats (in the airport at least). For more incredibly insightful comments, read on.

The last time I wrote I had just finished a Safari in Kenya, and after a short time I returned to Uganda and headed straight for the Nile. I had such a good time when I rafted the Nile a few weeks earlier with my mzungu friends, Pat and Nick, that I decided to head back for some kayaking lessons. I’ve got to say that the lodge where I stayed on the banks of the river is one of my favorite places on the planet. Its super laid back, and full of interesting travelers, and every night is a pretty crazy party complete with blaring 90s pop songs that make you sing at the top of your lungs. By day, the lodge overlooks the mighty Nile, and is covered trees with lots of curious monkeys. I took 3 days of kayaking lessons, and by the end I could hold my own on the river, was able to reliably roll my kayak (ok fine, I can do it about 85% of the time), and made it down a class 3 rapid. I really enjoyed getting out on the river, and may have found myself a new hobby for back in the states. Just what I need…another hobby.

After a while back at work, I finished up in Mbale and packed my bags to meet my travel buddies Pat and Nick in Tanzania to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro. We met in a sleepy town called Moshi right at the base, but the mountain was covered in clouds when I arrived. Early the next morning I got my first glimpse of Kili, and was floored. I could not believe that we would be walking to the summit. Kili is the largest free standing mountain in the world, essentially meaning that no mountain in the world looks bigger from the base. It is 19,400 ft. tall, and shoots up over 15,000 feet over the Tanzanian savannah. To put that in perspective, Mt. Everest raises 9,000 feet from the base camp to the peak (granted, those 9,000 feet are infinitely more difficult to climb than the 15,000 of Kili). The trek lasted 6 days and we hiked over 60 miles. Just like Mt. Elgon in Uganda, the hike started in the deep jungle, where we were often surrounded by curious monkeys, and passed through 5 distinct climates on the way to the peak. The day we summited the mountain was incredibly long. We woke up with the sun and began the day’s 8 hour hike by 9am. We arrived at the camp where we’d start the final ascent by 5pm, had dinner and rested for a bit until 10pm. Of our group of 5 climbing the mountain, 2 had already dropped out from altitude sickness and didn’t even attempt the summit. Just before midnight we started the final 7 hour climb up 4,000 vertical feet. You have to approach at night because towards the top you hike on glaciers that are too soft to hike on during the day. We lost Pat along the way to altitude sickness, so only Nick and I remained. Then, at about 4am with about 1,500 vertical feet left to climb, our guide got severe altitude sickness, and without a guide Nick and I almost turned back. At this point I was exhausted. We had been truding up the mountain for 4 hours in the dark along slippery gravel where you’d take a step, and the mountain would mockingly send you half a step back. The moon had set, so we couldn’t see the top, and had no idea if we were even close. Just before sunrise, we hiked past a big boulder, and were suddenly at the top of Kili’s crater rim to watch one of the most incredible sunrises I have ever seen, literally miles above the clouds. We had about an hour left to hike, but with the peak in sight, it was no problem, and we finally made it to Uhuru peak (Meaning ‘Freedom peak’ in Swahili) just past 7am. I was definitely running on adrenaline, and once I finally made it to the top it ran dry. The altitude quickly hit me, and the lack of oxygen suddenly made me feel dizzy and drunk (both very common symptoms of altitude), and I couldn’t get off the mountain quick enough. We finally made it back to camp at about 10am, and I realized that we had been hiking for 18 of the past 25 hours. It was definitely one of the most difficult experiences of my life, but also one of the best.

We took a day to rest, and left early the next morning to head to Zanzibar, an island paradise on the Indian Ocean. Buses don’t really have a schedule in Africa, you just go to the bus park and wait for a bus going in your direction to fill up, which can sometimes mean waiting for hours in the hot African sun. Somehow, we lucked out and got on a big comfortable bus, and only had to wait 10 minutes for it to leave. The road was also surprisingly smooth, compared to the potholed disasters that are the roads in Uganda and Kenya. Things were going well, and about to get better. When we arrived in Dar Es Salaam, we had missed the last ferry to Zanzibar. We ended up bartering to get a chartered flight to Zanzibar in a 4 seater plane for only a few bucks more than the ferry. The plane was so small that Pat had to sit in the co-pilots seat, and he actually had a full set of controls in front of him. Definitely a great way to see the island for the first time. We arrived in Stone Town, Zanzibar’s capital, and I’m still not sure if its actually a real place. Zanzibar was a major trading route in the Indian Ocean, so even thought its only about 50 miles off the coast of Tanzania, it feels way more like the middle east than Africa. This crazy clash of cultures, combined with an incredibly old town built on sidewalk-width streets makes for an unbelievable experience. My favorite thing to do there was just to get lost in the town. We’d get to a tiny intersection, and just pick the coolest looking street to go down, or where there was a group of people or something interesting. It felt like a ride at Disney world, maybe Pirates of the Caribbean, where we were slowly passing by and the flickering candle and person I saw in the window very well could have been some crazy animatronics. By about 10pm on the day we arrived we had stumbled upon a plaza by the ocean with a lively market. At the market, we heard about a crazy full moon party in the north, and what were we to do but find a car and drive the 1.5 hrs to the party. We finally got there just before midnight, and hung out on the beach, dancing and swimming in the moonlight, until sunrise, when I realized that only 48 hours earlier I had been standing on the top of Kilimanjaro, and I was completely exhausted. We finally made It back to our hotel in Stone town by about 9am. That day we were heading to the laid back beaches on the eastern part of the island, and our car had to go off the main road because it was flooded due to heavy rains. Well, the side roads weren’t any better, but this didn’t stop our driver from plowing directly into 3 ft of water, sinking the tiny sedan. Water began rushing in through the doors, and we quickly climbed out of the windows and tried to rescue our bags from the trunk, but they were already soaked. We helped push the car out of the water, and then found a new car on the main road and continued the journey to the east. This was definitely the most gorgeous and tranquil beach I’ve ever been to. With the exception of a handful of toursists, cute local kids, and women who would wade into the water in full dresses and Muslim head coverings to farm seaweed, we were the only people around. After Kili and the crazy travel to get there, the R&R was much needed. We also went sailing on a traditional Dhow, hunted octopus, and got in some scuba diving, but for the most part, we did a whole lot of nothing – exactly what you should do on a beach like that.

I just left Nairobi, Kenya, where I was working with a very young MFI (11 clients!) called EPS. I worked with the director of EPS in Uganda, and he is an absolutely brilliant man. He’s interested in growing EPS, and developing innovative financial products that will help poverty alleviation – something I definitely want to be a part of. and I’m looking to become involved in EPS long term. I’ll likely help them to develop efficient and scalable procedures, and help with fundraising in the states (Yes, that means that I’ll be asking you all for money to help grow EPS). EPS has already developed a place in the community by developing a way to combine environmental and financial programs in a very innovative way, and received an award and a grant from the World Bank for this program about 2 years ago. That project is currently winding up, and EPS is looking to expand more broadly into microfinance. They currently focus on serving the poor in the slums in Nairobi, but have aspirations to eventually expand into rural Kenya. I spent some time in the slums here, and its terrible to see the conditions people are living in. People are living on top of each other in tiny shacks, there is trash everywhere, and sanitization is a huge problem. There is very little clean water, which is very expensive, and toilets are incredibly expensive as well. So, many people resort to using flying toilets, which means they go to the bathroom into a plastic bag, and just throw it up into the air. Seriously. It smells terrible all over the slums. I saw many poor people living rurally, and many of them have next to nothing, but they usually have land and can grow a small amount of food and usually have access to relatively clean water. In the slums, its an entire different story, and a seemingly insurmountable problem, and its great to be a part of something that could make a positive difference.

I’m going to spend the next 2 weeks helping to develop EPS, but I looked into plane flights home, and it turns out that it was just as cheap to fly through Thailand as it was to fly directly back to the US, so I’ll be spending those 2 weeks working on the beaches on Thailand and Cambodia. I’m here visiting a few NU grads who are living in the capital of Cambodia, Nick Lazos, Andrew Cashin, and Jenn Carter – should be a blast! Looking forward to seeing some temples, scuba diving, doing lots of relaxing on the beach, and ummm…I mean, working very hard on EPS. Haha. Once I get back I’ll have one week in SF to wrap things up with Kiva, and then I’ll be back in Chicago by June 1.

See you all soon!

Shelby