One day last week while I was in Nairobi we had lunch with a Kenyan colleague who asked “When people from the U.S. talk about Africa, why do they only talk about the animals? When you go home, talk about the people.” I struggle with this, the same way I always (not just in Nairobi) struggle with photographing people. I am not comfortable with treating people like a tourist attraction, and even with their consent I can never seem to capture in a photograph what I see when I look at people.

I’ve been thinking about this for over a week and wondering why this post is so hard for me to construct. It finally dawned on me today that maybe the reason we don’t talk about the people is that to do so, we have to talk about race, and we really do not want to talk about race. I really do not want to talk about race.

Genetically I am a mix of European regions – the UK, eastern Europe, the Mediterranean. If I’m feeling uncomfortable with being identified as American, as long as I keep my mouth shut I can pass pretty much anywhere in Europe. Even in Africa the first thing people usually ask me is “European?” not “American?” I was amused by a multi-lingual person at a counter in the Brussels airport asking me loudly and slowly “DO YOU SPEAK ENGLISH?” One thing I always am, and it’s really noticeable in Africa, is white.

On our first trip to Nairobi we American travelers were four white and one black, all from the east coast, all ranging in age from 35 to 55, all fairly equal as to social and economic privilege in both our current lives and our growing up lives. The first shop we walked into in Nairobi, one of the employees asked if this was our first trip to Africa. We all said yes, and he turned to our one black colleague and said “Welcome back!”

So part of talking about what’s different in Nairobi necessarily involves talking about not how Nairobi is different, but how when I am in Nairobi, I am different. And I am not used to that. And I am not comfortable with how not used to that I am.

I also worry that when I talk about the people I met in Nairobi, I will fall into some weird cheerful-native trope if I generalize.

So, yeah. It’s easier to talk about the animals.

It is also true that in the entirety of my schooling I took exactly one African history class. The “familiar” things to me about Kenya are not from school or even the news, but from an embarrassing array of entertainment sources. I am sure I am not alone in this – if you have ever seen The Lion King I dare you to hear “asante sana” (“thank you”) and not follow it in your mind with “squash banana,” even if out loud you are more appropriately saying “karibu” (“you’re welcome”). I know about Karen Blixen because of Out of Africa. More than one person I have told about seeing the Karen Blixen house seems to genuinely have her confused with Meryl Streep, and her lover with Robert Redford.

I laughed the first time I heard someone respond to “How are you?” with “Hakuna matata” because, of course – the Lion King. But shortly after my first trip to Nairobi last fall, I saw an episode of the splendid snark-rom-com You’re the Worst in which one of the characters says “hakuna matata. ” His girlfriend asks him if he’s quoting the Lion King at her, and he has no idea what she is talking about but explains that it is a Swahili phrase and it means – and she interrupts him and says “Yeah, I know, it means ‘no worries’.” He says “It’s a bit more nuanced than that” and explains it really means “There is not a currently a problem.”

I find this to be a perfect description of the feeling I get when being greeted by a Kenyan – “Jambo! Welcome! There is not currently a problem!” Unlike “hello,” I don’t think it’s possible to say “jambo!” without an exclamation point. It is a very welcoming greeting. The only thing more welcoming is when you say it to someone who is not expecting a swahili greeting – the smiles you get in return feel like the sun coming out after a week of rain, which in turn means you can’t say “jambo!” without smiling.

One of the most noticeable things in the office was the laughter. In both our New York office and our Nairobi office, the organization provides lunch and everyone gathers in one room to eat. Admittedly the New York office is bigger, but still, people tend to gather in pairs or very small groups and huddle. In the Nairobi office the whole room is often involved in the same conversation. When you are not in the room you really notice the laughter coming from the lunch room, and when you are in the room, you are caught up in it along with everyone else.

My general impression of the Kenyans I have met in passing – drivers, hotel staff, people working in shops – is that they are friendly in a sweet and genuine way. I could guess that this is because they are in a service industry, but that has emphatically not been my experience of people in service in the U.S.

I don’t know. Trying to describe what Nairobi is like for me is like trying to describe a flavor, or a sound, or a feeling. This jumble of photos does a pretty good job of matching the jumble of images in my mind. 

The city skyline can be seen immediately beyond the safari area in the Nairobi National Park. Baboons cross the highway between the park on one side and the university on the other, and they beg for (or steal) food like squirrels do here, or pigeons. Driving into downtown you will pass roadside commerce of all kinds, on roads that have been dug up almost beyond recognition, with people walking on what would be sidewalk regardless. The flowers and foliage are lush in the rainy season and amazingly beautiful. You never know when you will see Masai driving their cattle along the road or across a gas station parking lot, moving to the next grazing area. Tour drivers always point out the enormous Kibera slum, the second largest in all of Africa. It looks like a jumble of corrugated tin, plywood, cardboard. Each shelter made of things leaning against other things, held up by the next group of leaning things that backs right up against it. It almost looks as if you moved any one piece the whole thing would crash to the ground, and at the same time it is so packed together it seems that nothing can move, making me wonder how people actually get around in the space, let alone live. Also very near to downtown is a forest with walking paths, caves, waterfalls, more wildlife. This is in the wealthy area, where the beautifully landscaped yards are surrounded by high walls topped with coils of what I always think of as prison wire, though there is probably another name for it. The plants used in that landscaping are sold in spectacular – well, garden centers, I suppose, though they look like fantastic gardens themselves, a little farther out of town. They have plants and huge brightly glazed and painted ceramic pots and piles of mulch in beautifully laid out sections, and they either go on for the equivalent of city blocks or they are one right after the other; I’m not sure which. In the daytime there is someone there and in the night time they are empty of people as far as I have seen, but they are just as open in any case. The traffic is legendary, with hardly any functioning traffic lights, and roundabouts everywhere. Everyone seems to know the exact dimensions of their car down to the millimeter, as they need to in order to squeeze into spaces that don’t seem they can possibly fit a car. In many, many places you see guards armed with impressively large rifles, but they seem to be part of the landscape for residents. There are security checkpoints for vehicles and pedestrians going into malls, a security checkpoint about a mile out from the airport, and vehicle checks or at least gates with guards going into most office buildings and hotels. The guards, armed or not, also often greet you with a cheerful “Jambo!”

I want to take all that and draw conclusions, and summarize, but I find I can’t. It all adds up to…Nairobi. I supposed I don’t have to explain it. I’m just glad I got to experience it, even a little, even around the edges.

The Accidental Tourist is my favorite Anne Tyler book. If you haven’t read it, it’s about a man who falls into writing travel books by way of writing a letter to the editor about going to an event in a nearby city and all the ways it was not like being at home. He becomes the guy who tells travelers how to travel without feeling like they are traveling. How to find the most familiar feeling hotels, restaurants, meals. It’s about comfort in some ways, but it’s also about being stuck. I can relate to both aspects of this.

When I left for my most recent work trip to Nairobi, Kenya, The Accidental Tourist is what kept coming up in my mind. Not because I want to travel without traveling – I actually really like the things that are different, and I think that is in fact the point of travel. Most of my travel is for work and I generally could be anywhere, as most of what I see is the inside of an office and the inside of a hotel. In the US, most of my work travel has been to suburbs of cities and frankly they all look pretty much the same. It’s an Accidental Tourist’s dream. And it’s boring.

I like the part about seeing new places and trying new things and meeting new people. I like the part about having where I go look and feel nothing like where I am from. My issue is more that I do not want to travel. The part where you put large distances between home and yourself, that’s what I don’t want to do. Unlike the accidental tourist who wants to go away without feeling away, I want to BE away without having to GO away.

About twenty five years ago I had a friend (I use the term loosely). I was young and stupid, and when I worried about whether I should say something to him because of what he would think, he would say “what’s the worst thing I could say?” and I would say whatever I thought that would be, and then he would say “Come on, just tell me” and I would tell him, and then he would say the thing that I had said was the worst thing he could say. And then he would say, “See, that wasn’t so bad, was it?”

So last week when I was 5,500 miles away from home and 5 hours from my plane for home taking off to start 22 hours of travel and I started vomiting, getting dizzy, and my throat closed up and my arms started to tingle and go numb, I was right back there feeling like someone thought it would be funny to demonstrate the reality of what I had said would be the worst thing that could happen. A side note, but a relevant one: on the first day in the office on this trip, a mere 4 days earlier, we got word that the wife of a colleague in Nairobi had been taken to the hospital where she had died. She had not previously been ill. They have two young children. They are in their early 30’s. Sometimes worrying about the worst thing that can happen is catastrophizing. Sometimes it is just a possibility.

I wound up delaying my flight 24 hours and now I am home. There’s no suspense in this story, but I have to write this part out in order to get to the part where I can write about the interesting things about the travel, because there were and are many of those. More posts to come on those topics.

Once I took a management style test of some kind. You end up with a graph of your results with 4 points on it. Most of the graphs tend to trend upwards or downwards, as most people have aptitude in areas that are tied to each other and therefore adjacent on the graph. Mine was a near perfect parabola, where I was near the very top in the two extremes and nearly nonexistent in the middle. The facilitator put mine up on the board and then looked at me and said “Wow – you must be talking to yourself ALL THE TIME. Risk! Don’t risk! Risk! Don’t risk!”

This is exactly what happens in my head when I have the opportunity to travel for work. I want to go, but I don’t want to go. I try to make sure I take advantage of the things I would never get a chance to do or see otherwise, and I really enjoy doing them. I walk the streets (where I’m told by local people that it’s safe – I’m adventurous but I try not to be stupid), I talk to the people (including total strangers), I try to pick up some of the local language (while I’m there if not before),  I eat the food (I might want to rethink that a bit), and I try to see sights that are unique to the area. And I enjoy all of it, I really do.

But I am also doing it to distract myself from how far away from home I am. And despite the fact that I know I am going to do these amazing things, you can see my heel marks from digging them in all the way to the airport every time I have to leave home. I enjoy taking photos and I post them on facebook and my friends say “Oh, you’re so lucky, I wish I were there, I want your job” and I think “PLEASE, one of you please take my damn job!” I wish I enjoyed it more. I wish there was only the part of me that enjoyed it. I wish I did not spend any time wishing I was home.

But now I am home, and while in this particular instance at this particular moment I’d be hard pressed to say I’m glad I went, I am glad I got to see and do the things I did. More Reluctant Traveler travelogue to come.