Nairobi, take three!

Lenana Palace

Maya and Kelly on mine and Kelly's king sized bed

So we flew back to Nairobi via Zanzibar International Airport, an airport with security so lax my passport didn’t get looked at once, and landed once again in the bustling metropolis of Nairobi. This time I’m here for a little over six weeks for an internship with an organization that we connected with through the program, Maji na Ufanisi. I am really excited to settle down in one place after travel so much over the past three months. It will be nice to get settled in a place and really get to know the city of Nairobi.

First order of business was to get an apartment. Based out of the lovely, but small Milimani Backpacker’s Hostel, we spent a few days calling landlords, meeting with agents, and seeing apartments until finally by some stroke of luck we met the beautiful, glam landlord “Nana” who allowed us to rent one of her apartments for the duration of our internship. The apartment is now affectionately known as “The Lenana Palace” named as such for its opulence that none of us have ever come close to experiencing in Montreal and also in honour of our landlord and because we live off of Lenana road. On top of all this it’s in a very safe and secure neighbourhood a two-minute walk from the office.



Steve trying out a fluffy bathrobe that came with the place!



Master bathroom, out of picture is our shower that has eight nozzles! 



Bri in our kitchen

We’ve now been at Maji for a week and it’s been a great first week at the internship. So far I’ve helped facilitate a workshop at which youth groups from all of the slums of Nairobi are trying to form a network to strengthen their bargaining power against the government. Maji is all about participatory development meaning that it seeks to empower people to find their own solutions to their development problems. It’s role is limited to facilitation and coordination. It was really interesting to see the “participatory development model” in action, to see it work really well at motivating the participants and getting them excited, and then to see it, when everyone was hungry and losing patience, to completely fall apart and morph into the “authoritarian development model”.  Also, this week we’ve helped to organize and then finally attend the groundbreaking ceremony for a sanitation block to be built in Kibera slum. The sanitation block is to be built on a piece of land that is entitled another group that we’re working with called Vision Sisters. The Vision Sisters will use the sanitation block as an income-generating endeavor. Vision Sisters is a women’s group comprised of women, mostly over 70, who live in Kibera and want to open a Women in Crisis Centre to serve women who live in Kibera. The WICC will eventually be attached to the sanitation block. It is exciting that the groundbreaking has finally happened given that Maji and Vision Sisters have been working towards this point for almost five years but I am hesitant to be too excited since there are many impediments that this project will inevitably run into. These include chauvinistic male politicians with too much power and too little respect for the need for the WICC, lack of funding, problems with contractors, etc. We’ll see what happens- the sanitation block should be completed in two months.

Not much else to report right now. Other than working, we’ve been spending an unfortunate amount of time at malls, mostly out of necessity. I look forward to getting outside and seeing the city of Nairobi more. Talk soon!! 

Andrew and Courtney hard at work