Radio silence

Hey guys!

Sorry for being this quiet. Kenya is making me so lazy..

For the past month I have been traveling a lot. First there was the trip to Ethiopia and then we travelled for two and a half weeks with Enni. First we went to the South coast of Kenya, Mombasa and Diani Beach, from where we continued to Tanga, crossing the Tanzanian border. From Tanga we went to Zanzibar through Mikadi Beach in Dar Es Salaam. We spent five days in Zanzibar, first in Stone Town and then at the Northern tip of the island called Nungwi beach. After Zanzibar we went back to Dar es Salaam, then cities called Arusha and Moshi in North Tanzania to see Kilimanjaro. We reached Moshi just in time for my 23^rd birthday and I was so happy to be celebrating my birthday in such an awesome place, sitting on the rooftop of our lodge watching the sunrise revealing the snowy top of Mount Kilimanjaro on my birthday morning.

We travelled only by bus (and a ferry to Zanzibar of course) and during the couple of weeks we sat in buses for over 50 hours. The buses were always really crowded and they had no air conditioning but then again it was clearly the cheapest way to travel. We figured traveling by bus is a good way to see the countries as well but somehow I was so tired all the time that I ended up sleeping most of the bus trips. Oops.

Too many stories to be told about our travels but let me just share the best parts with you.

Ethiopia was one of the most beautiful countries I’ve ever visited and the people there where by far the friendliest, most welcoming people I have ever met. We went to cities called Bahir Dar and Lalibela and I really enjoyed both of those places. What I will definitely remember for the rest of my life was the drive from Bahir Dar to Lalibela. The drive was about 8 hours but the road was going along the top of the mountains and the scenery was just absolutely breath taking and something I have never seen before. I was just looking out from the car window smiling the whole drive. In Lalibela we visited some rock churches, churches that are made entirely by carving rocks. All in all the week in Ethiopia was so wonderful filled with coffee ceremonies and delicious Ethiopian coffee, kind smiles and meetings with warm-hearted local people, smell of incenses, injeera and other Ethiopian foods and amazing scenery. Ethiopia is definitely a country I want to visit again and see more of it. 

South coast of Kenya was really nice as well and I fell in love with Diani Beach especially. The sad fact is that the concerns about terrorism has really ruined the reputation of the Kenyan coast among tourists which means that the beaches were almost completely empty with only beach boys desperately trying to make a living by selling souvenirs or snorkeling trips to the few tourists. In Diani beach I saw the whitest, softest sand and the unbelievably turquoise water that was so warm it could have been bath water. And the climate there was so hot and humid exactly like they sing in the Finnish song called Mombasa. We stayed at a place called South Coast Backpackers and that was one of the most awesome places I have ever stayed in. 5/5 for sure.

Even though I enjoyed Diani, Zanzibar was my favourite place I have so far visited. Stone Town was pretty chaotic and it was raining a lot there and our hotel was in the middle of the town surrounded by so narrow streets that the only way to get there was by foot. Somehow we ended up being lost every time we left from the hotel or tried to get back there. We had dinner in this fish market at the harbor and that night was the only time I was actually a little scared of how we are able to get back since it was so dark and we didn’t know the way to the hotel. Everything turned out well though and we got back to the hotel with a taxi driver who walked us all the way to our hotel’s front door. The next day we went to Nungwi beach, which was pretty touristic but still I really liked it. Anyone getting married anytime soon should really consider that as the honeymoon spot because the place was ridiculously romantic. I saw the most beautiful sunsets there and there where so many fancy -looking hotels along the coast line. Of course we couldn’t afford to stay in the fancy places but we found this super relaxed, cozy guesthouse called Kajibange from the beach with hammocks and reggae music playing all day. That’s another place I definitely want to stay again if I ever get a chance. We spent the days in Zanzibar mostly lying on the beach, swimming, snorkeling, eating out and going to beach parties. I felt really sad to leave that place cause for some reason I really felt like home there.

All in all Tanzania was a lot of fun but what surprised me was that Tanzanian people don’t really speak English. Since our Swahili skills are pretty limited we had some trouble trying to be understood but in the end everything worked out really well. And we got through the whole trip without any accidents or problems so no need to be worried.

We have now been back in Juja for little more than a week. Life has been really slow here, not much been happening. Apparently all we have left at school are two final exams. I gave a presentation in one nutrition conference this week which was pretty exciting but other than that I haven’t been doing much, just hanging out with friends and sitting at the bar in our yard using the wifi. During the weekend we go to our friend’s graduation party and then there’s a concert at Senate where a local artist plays kikuyu (one of the Kenyan tribes) music. Next week my dad is going to be in Kenya from Tuesday to Saturday and we will first spend couple of days in Nairobi and then do a safari in Lake Nakuru. Gonna be a lot of fun! Before we went traveling the thought of going back to Finland made me feel really sad but now I am actually feeling a little home sick. I don’t know what changed during the last few weeks but now I am actually looking forward to be coming back home. Maybe it’s the fact that I miss my friends and family and just some normal stuff like proper internet access, working electricity, finnish food (!!!), drinking tap water, watching Netflix and just simply the fact that things are well organized and goes as planned. It is so funny how often me and Enni talk about the foods we miss from Finland, mainly sandwiches and dip sauce. So mum, I count on you that there will be sandwiches waiting for me when I come home! Still I know that leaving Juja will be super sad so I just want to make the most of these last four weeks here.

Here is a link to some pictures throughout my whole stay here in Kenya as well as from the travels. :) 

https://www.flickr.com/photos/136169517@N03/

Love, Iisa

Greetings from the airport!

So I am waiting for my flight to Ethiopia at the moment and got a good couple of hours of time to kill at Jomo Kenyatta Airport in Nairobi. I am flying to Bahar Dar via Addis Ababa today. I will be in Ethiopia for one week and my mum is there as well! I can't wait to see her again after seven weeks! <3 Our plan is to stay in Bahar Dar for four days since mum is working there on a project and the weekend we will spend in a town called Lalibela. I promise to post pictures of my trip next week. :)

I guess it's been a long time again since I last wrote here.. I have been mostly in Juja although we have done some day trips with Enni. Last week we went to Hell's Gate National park located near Lake Naivasha. We went all the way there using only matatus which means we needed to take four different matatus each way and it took us like five hours to get there and another four hours or something to get back. But it was like ten times cheaper than a taxi and part of the adventure as well hahah. The national park was super awesome! Tomb Raider II was filmed there and also Lion King has got inspiration from the scenery of the park. And an amazing place it was indeed. We rented bicycles and also did a hike. It was pretty amazing to ride a bike at a place where there is zebras, wart hogs and gasells on the road side. Such an adventurous day, I loved it!

We also went to Maasai Market in Nairobi last weekend. There was sooo many things I wanted to buy and I was bargaining like never before. It was so much fun! So in case anyone wants some Africa stuff, let me know and I'll go get it for you and bring it to Finland. 

There has been quite a lot of going out the last few weeks. Many of my friends are graduating this November and they got the results back last weekend. So obviously that called for a party. Also we went out in Nairobi last saturday, it was so much fun! Just a looot of dancing the whole night.

Okay this post was pretty lame. I will write something better next time. :D Now I need to start heading to the gate and I should be in Ethiopia in the afternoon. Have a nice week you all! <3

Haha this last photo, I was walking back home from the campus and all of a sudden like at least 100 cows filled the whole road. :D And I was texting while I was walking so I almost got hit by the cows. :DD #onlyinkenya

HABARI!

Can't believe that we have already been here for five weeks. At the same time it feels like one of the quickest months in my life but it also feels like it was ages ago since I left Finland. Crazy. And in case you are wondering "habari" means news in Swahili and it's used as a greeting. 

Last week was super busy since we were asked to work in an agribusiness conference that was held in Nairobi last week from monday to wednesday. We got a chance to exhibit the products that we developed during the intensive course. It was super fun to see the guys from the intensive course again! Some of us were exhibiting the products and the rest were working as ushers at the conference. I have never seen as much chaos in organizing an event. :D The whole event was behind schedule all the time and there was so much confusion and misunderstanding everywhere. That event could've really used some serious Finnish precision.

I also got to experience the big city traffic in the mornings since the bus drive from Juja to Nairobi lasted almost three hours at worst. And the distance is only about 30 km. I am so glad that the traffic isn't like that in Finland, the bus drives were again putting my patience in test. I will never again complain about the traffic jams in Helsinki.  

I was really annoyed to attend the conference at first since it took four whole days but then it turned out to be a lot of fun and we were doing some serious networking there! And I also got to go to the rooftop of the conference centre and the view from the 29th floor was pretty amazing! So all in all I am happy that I decided to go there. And also decided that sometime in the future I will be a speaker in some conference somewhere...



Last saturday we went to Aberdare National Park with the German interns and some other friends. The weekend included mountain biking, Thomson waterfalls, Equator and a gamedrive at the national park. We were supposed to do a 5-hour hike on sunday but it was raining heavily all night so the hike wasn't possible because of the mud. The rainy season is about to start now, no idea what to expect... We drove to Aberdare with two cars and we had a lot of trouble with the police officers on the way.. Apparently the fact that the driver of the car is white is enough of a reason to stop the car and ask for the passports etc and obviously a payment for driving too fast or something. Luckily there was one kenyan guy in the car with us so he talked us out from paying anything. We also witnessed couple of accidents and some kind of a riot where people were throwing rocks to the road to block it. No idea why.. but it was so strange. Anyways it was a fun weekend!

Now the life in Juja is going pretty smoothly. I have classes only
thursdays and fridays but the courses are surprisingly hard. It is really hard to take notes in for example food microbiology class since the teacher is using a lot of words that I have never even heard of and with a thick african accent. And we also have a lot of assignments.. I was just saying to Enni today that the classes are making our life here too complicated! I also bought a gym membership and it's always fun to go there since a lot of people come to talk to me there. I'm the only white girl there as well so people stare at me a lot, but I don't mind. They are also trying to get me attend a dancing class but I don't think I am ready for that yet. :D I've got a lot of new friends here so the days are always pretty busy, too bad there isn't much to do in Juja. But anyways, I am really enjoying my time here and just hoping it wouldn't go so quickly! I haven't even been feeling home sick at all so maybe I'll just stay here... 

Love, Iisa

SAFARITIME!

Last weekend we were finally able to go to Masai Mara National Reserve that is located about 250 km away from Nairobi next to Tanzanian border. The same national reserve is called Serengeti on the Tanzanian side of the border. We booked the safari from a tour agency called Basecamp Explorer and I have to say that I was surprised how well everything went! This might have been the first thing here that has actually gone as planned.

A driver picked us up from Juja Saturday morning and we drove to Masai Mara with a mini bus. The 250km drive took 6,5 hours and the last 100 km was really bumpy dust road. The road was in the middle of nowhere and there where only some small villages along the road. There were a lot of shepherds with their cattle, sheep, donkeys and goats, children playing on the roadside and people wearing colourful robes and clothes. I wish I could’ve filmed the whole drive there, there was just so much to see.

The biggest surprise was when arrived to the camp. I was waiting for a campsite with average  safaritents but in fact it was a really fancy lodge that had huge safari tents with electricity, big beds, hot showers and normal toilets. We stayed in Obama tent where Obama himself had stayed. So yes, that was a pretty great safari tent. Never did I believe that I would stay in a tent like that. If you can even call it a tent.

We stayed there from Saturday to Monday and the days we spent on game drives at the reserve. Our driver was called Joseph and he clearly knew a lot about the animals, too bad he had such a strong African accent that it was really hard to understand him. Anyways we saw soo many animals and I think I haven’t seen that many even in a zoo. We saw the big five; elephant, lion, buffalo, rhino and leopard in two days, which was apparently pretty rare. So I guess we were pretty lucky! We also saw a lot of zebras, wildebeest (the bastards that killed Mufasa), hyenas, jackals, giraffes, baboons, monkeys, crocodiles, hippos, so many different birds, Timons and Pumbas. The whole place made me think about lion king.   I didn’t have a proper camera with me so most of the photos are pretty shitty, but they’re better than nothing for sure!

We also visited a Masai village which was a really weird place. There where Masai men and women dancing, singing and welcoming us and showing us the village. Obviously the reason why they do that is to get tourists pay a lot of money for the visit. It was nice to see the village and the culture but no need to go there again.  

All in all it was one of the most awesome trips that I’ve done so far! It was pretty expensive so now the rest of the trips have to be done with a smaller budget. But I think it was worth it! 

Issikka approves!

And while I am posting something here’s some random things that’s been happening here:

·      I was supposed to have my first lectures last Thursday 7 am. Nobody showed up, not the teacher nor the students. So I went to the pool in stead. And got sunburnt. 

·      I found a Cyber Café in Juja that’s supposed to have skype access. It costs about 40 cents per hour.

·      We went to the notorious Westgate mall in Nairobi and had super delicious burgers. Now we are at a Java house in another mall in Nairobi, the first place where the internet is actually working.

·      I booked flights to Ethiopia 19-26.10!! J

Love, Iisa

KENYA EDITION.

This blog is back and this time I decided to write it in english so that all my foreign friends can read it as well. How thoughtful, right?!

So, I have been in Kenya for two weeks now. We came here the 1^st of September with another Finnish student, Enni, who is also studying at the University of Eastern Finland. Since we arrived everything has been pretty hectic. We have had a lot of trouble with the accommodation and course registration.Here I can practice my patience, that's for sure haha. So almost two weeks in and we still haven’t got our student ID numbers and because of that we can’t register for courses. We are also currently living in a hotel since the student hostel that we were booked in was well… not good. 

Let me tell you a bit more about the hostel, now that we don’t have to live there anymore. So the deal is that internationals are always staying in the guesthouses that are located in campus due to safety and privacy. Something went wrong and all the guesthouses were full booked when we arrived so we had no choice but to stay in the hostels. The hostels are in campus as well and mostly the first year students live there. The rooms have two bunk beds and couple of chairs and tables. They are not nice I tell you that. Toilets and showers are shared with the whole floor of students and they were the worst part of the hostel. Toilets are just a hole on the floor and really dirty and showers have ice cold water unless you are very lucky. (Yesterday I had the first proper hot shower at the hotel since I left Finland two weeks ago and it never felt better.) We got a bit used to the hostels already but apparently the biggest problem of us living there was that it was not safe. That’s why we couldn’t (thank god) stay there for longer. After a lot of work and negotiation and a lot of help from our teacher we were able to move out from the hostel to our own apartment! A hotel nearby has couple of apartments that are affordable and quite nice and only 5 minute walk away from campus. We were meant to move there this week but we had to come to the hotel saturday morning since we are both suffering from food poisoning or something like that and the hostel just wasn’t an ideal place to be sick. And yep, it took us less then two weeks to get the first food poisoning. But anyways, just got the keys to the place and I am so glad we are staying here! Although it's a bit ridiculous that we are practically living in a hotel for four months... But it's nothing fancy, I swear!

Okay, that’s enough about the accommodation for now. So the reason that we are here is a program called Global Foodnet. It’s between University of Eastern Finland, La Molina University in Peru and this one, Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT).  We attended an intensive course last week with students and teachers from Finland, Peru and Kenya. Most of them were from Kenya of course. The aim of the course was to develop a new food product using amaranth or quinoa in groups. I really liked my group and we developed a tomato sauce where we used amaranth flour as a starch. And it was a great success! We are probably even taking it further and trying to develop it more which is going to be interesting. I really liked working with Kenyans! Hopefully this week we can attend classes as well. I am taking two courses so I’ll have lectures only on Thursdays and Fridays. That means heaps of time to travel!!

The university is located in a small town/village called Juja, which is about 40km outside Nairobi. The campus is pretty modern, clean and really peaceful compared to the surroundings. When you step outside the university gates there’s dust roads, roadside markets, food stalls, animals, lots of people, crazy traffic and a bit of chaos. It’s quite the opposite compared to Finland and like nothing I’ve ever seen before but I really like it! There’s definitely not many white people here so we just have to get used to people staring at us A LOT, strangers saying hi and asking how are you, being called mzungus (mzungu is Swahili language for white person), asked for money and getting every child’s attention. The attention can be a bit stressful at some points but mostly it doesn’t bother me. Of course we draw attention because we just look so different than the rest in this small town. I will probably wonder why no one is staring at me when I come back to Finland hah. People that I’ve met here are really friendly, helpful and warm hearted. One thing that I’ve also noticed is that people are looking to each other’s eyes for example when passing by which I like a lot. 

To get to Nairobi there are buses and small buses like vans that are called matatus. They are really cheap and the ride to Nairobi costs less than 1 euro. Especially in the buses there’s always really loud hiphop and reggae music during the whole bus trip. And the way they work is that they always leave only when they are full which in my opinion is really smart. Who needs timetables, right? We have only gone to Nairobi couple of times so I can write more about that when I know the city a bit better!

I am really excited of all the travels that we are going to do here. Our plan was to go to a 4-day safari in Masai Mara National Reserve yesterday but these stomach problems and a safari just ain’t a good combination... But that’s definitely a must see here! Other places that we plan on going are Mombasa and the South coast, Lake Nakuru, Tanzania and several lakes and national parks located near this area. I plan on going to Ethiopia as well since my mum is going to be there in October. Gonna be awesome! We’ve got so many great travel tips so it’s good that we are here until Christmas! We already went to Giraffe Centre in Nairobi and it was super nice. The giraffes were so kind and cute, I could have stayed there for hours!

Okay well that was at least something that’s going on here. I haven’t found proper internet access ANYWHERE yet so that’s why there’s no photos. But I’ll figure it out, I don’t want to be here for four months without skype.  All in all everything’s good here and I’ll try to write here often AND post photos. So remember to read this and I am hoping for comments from you guys as well. J

Lots of love from Africa,

Iisa

PS. I wrote this couple of days ago but because of the internet I couldn't post it! Now we finally got the student IDs and registered for courses! In the end it turned out we don't even need the registration number we tried  to get for two weeks. Classic. I am not feeling sick anymore and we even booked a safari to Masai Mara this weekend! I'm suuuper excited! Also, still no proper internet access but I decided to try my luck in the middle of the night when I happened to wake up. Works better this time, less users I guess.. Now back to sleep!