Saturday 30 september

One of the few people I had met before in Kenya is Eirik. He actually is living close to Mombassa, but comes to Nairobi sometimes. During an interesting, but excellent diner at an Ethiopian restaurant together with one of his Kenyan friends, he invited us to visit some other interesting places on Saturday.

We were picked up at ‘the junction’ a mall at the other site of Nairobi. First we visited a Robert Andersens nursery growing Jatropha plantlets, very interesting job vise for me, but Merijn found it rather boring after the first 15 minutes. Grownups talking in a language he does not understand about something as little thrilling as plants

After this we drove past some horse polo fields and trainings centre into Kibera, quite a large contrast. This is one of the largest slum of Nairobi. The roads are rarely paved with something else than the plastic bags that lay around everywhere. The houses are made of metal roof plates. As far as I could see everybody was properly dressed and fed. We went to a facility for afterschool activity for children up to 16, which is situated on the grounds of a church. This was spacious enough for football and other activities. In which Merijn was instantly invited. Eirik had some used books for their library, when the boxes were of loaded they were carried indoors helped by everybody. There were some small rooms with benches were children could get help with their homework or do other things. While Merijn was playing football Eirik and I visited an Artworkshop where a small group of different artists were expressing themselves on canvas with paint and other media as waist material of metal. Some things were beautiful or suggestive others just very interesting. Unfortunately time was running out very quickly.

We were off to the opening of the new school year of the Nederlandse and Swedish school. There were organized games and loads of cakes to be eaten.

Here a slideshow :o)