The Island City of Mombasa

Somehow, I didn't realize that Mombasa is an island, until I arrived. I simply thought is was on the eastern coast of Kenya, facing the Indian Ocean. But alas no... it is surrounded by water, as well as covered in buzzing tuk-tuks (see right), women in full chador, Swahili cafes tumbling out onto the sidewalks bearing chicken biryani and shwarma, and a web of curving, crumbling, colorful roads and alleys, pleasantly pushing you around the city.

Joyce and Julia both said that Mombasa was much more laid back than Nairobi, and they were right. Beach towns, whether they be Venice Beach, or Catania, or Mombasa - there's something that mellows the urban energy in a beach town.

We woke in Nairobi this morning, and were picked up by the UN trucks, which drove us through the city, to the UN Gigiri Compound. Most of the UN agencies in Kenya are headquartered in this compound. It's a virtual United Nations village: UNICEF, UNDP, WFP, UNHCR, UNIFEM, Emergency Offices for Refugees and Drought, the list goes on and on... Just across the street from the UN Compound is the US Embassy, which was bombed (along with the embassy Dar es Salaam, Tanzania... I know how to pick 'em!) in 1998. The embassy has been rebuilt and ... it ... is ... just ... massive.

Anyway, during our morning security briefing, we were petrified into compliance, as we were told the realities of moving in this area at this point in time. I won't go into details, just in case my mother is reading this blog. We were ordered to put the head of WFP Kenya's Security Force's number into our cell phones, and told to call any hour of the day or night, if needed.

And then we received the program briefing, preparing us for the week's worth of field visits throughout the Mombasa region; visiting HIV/AIDS clinics, school feeding programs, the Mombasa port operations where food and materials are received and distributed for Kenya, Somalia, Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda and Rwanda, and much, much more...

From there, we boarded a plane headed east to Mombasa, which provided an aerial view of thousands of miles of earth charred by the sun, affording nobody anything at all...

Though we've been here only two days, it feels like a week, though in other ways, I also realize that this trip hasn't even started yet. We will be thrown down the rabbit hole into some of the most extreme poverty in the world, in some of the most remote places on earth. And yet, we get to be part of this flickering light in the darkness, bearing peace and health and training and education and self sufficiency. This is the part of my job that I love the most...