Wednesday the 18th, around 16 hours I board the Piccadilly line in the direction of terminal 4 & 1,2,3. When the doors closed and I sat down I fully realized; I was on the road again, the road to Kenya.
As this is not a Jane Austen novel, I will spare you the emotional mumbo jumbo I went thru realizing what I forgot, left behind and the excitement of heading towards the unknown. But man, I love this Picadilly ride, it slowly peels of normal life and transforming you into travel mode. By the time we hit Acton town I knew it is real, that I am leaving and I could not wait to sit in THAT plane.
Unfortunately travelling to Africa is not the adventure what it used to be; comfortable planes fly on the dot, visas are issued within 20 minutes and although airport pick-ups are an hour late, this is not due to exotic problems, but just because they forgot to forward the correct details to the cabs drivers blackberry. Anno 2011 it is only efficiency what you encounter.
My personal quest to learn more about the world, and about infectious diseases and vaccination in particular will get a new chapter over the next three months. This time the chapter will be about rotavirus. Rotavirus causes diarrhoea, and diarrhoea is not the nicest thing to have when you are malnourished, don’t have access to clean drinking water and/or decent health care. Fortunately there are two vaccines available; my project will be about if it is worth to introduce one of them, and if we should prefer one over the other. It won’t be rocket-science, but very interesting for sure. For this project I will be working at the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) which is based in a small coastal town called Kilifi, but will also be in close contact with the ministry of health in the capital Nairobi.
Kenya so far has been similar compared to my experiences in the Gambia – but also India and Bangladesh. Life on the street looks, smells and feels identical. Yes, land is more cultivated compared to the Gambia (but still not much signs of machines) and the population is less dense compared to Bangladesh, but for most it is similar.
But it is always surprising to see the level of penetration of western culture. Non-stop you hear western music, see European football and see advertisements you all know form home. Maybe I am more aware of it compared to the other developing countries I have visited, this because I am staying in a hostel with a news paper and 24 hr television, but Kenya seems to be a more open country, slowly developing into a true democracy / western culture. Politics and corruption are openly discussed in papers and on television and there is quite a focus on development and entrepreneurship. Maybe it is the increased level of education what starts to show in businesses and public life. But so far it has been positive.
There is a Dutch phrase saying “to fall with your nose into the butter”, which means that you were lucky, caused more by circumstances than by own effort. This is how I felt when two students from Oxford asked me if I would join them on an organized day trip to some touristic spots in the neighbourhood. Yesterday we went from 9am to almost 8pm, by car, around the main archaeological artefacts, snorkelling the coral reefs and visiting the mangrove forest, all this in only two days after my arrival. It truly gave my stay here a head start. But there might be much more to come, as there seems to be an awful lot to do, and not hard to organize.
So I am well, have some sunburn and should start doing some work.
Cheerio
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