We landed in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia at 8am East Africa Time, which is 1am EST.
Needless to say, we were tired, but excited, it was everyone's first time being in Africa, except for Lina and Dr. Acharya. We met up with Ignacio at the airport in Addis Ababa, and then sat together waiting for our transfer flight.
We said goodbye to Spencer and Dr. Acharya as they headed for their flight to Kampala. We boarded our 2 hour transfer flight, and before we knew it, we had finally arrived in Nairobi!
After withdrawing some of the local currency, the Kenyan Shilling, we met our driver, Eugene Wafula, who drove us to our hotel in the Central Business District of Nairobi. Eugene is very nice, he talked to us a lot about Kenya, the city of Nairobi, local food and culture, and travel suggestions.
The city of Nairobi is incredibly bustling, so many people on the streets and cars and motorcycles filling up the roads. Though it felt rather empty on Sunday. This is apparently because on Sundays, people are not out as much due to religious reasons.
After arriving at our hotel, we went to a local mall - Westgate Mall - to purchase sim cards and phones from Safaricom, the cell provider of east Africa, and new phones, so we could have Kenyan phone numbers to make local calls and have data. We noticed at almost any entry to a building in the city, they have hand sanitizer dispensers and security checkpoints that scan us.
After getting our cards, we got dinner at a local restaurant, Kilimanjaro, to ensure we had authentic Kenyan food. We got “ugali”, which is the go to carb side of Kenya (the rice/pasta equivalent, made from corn maize), yellow lentils, matoke, a meal with cooked bananas in a sauce, and a sizzling meat dish. The food was all very good! We also got a drink called "pawpaw" which we had no idea what it was, and the waiter said he did not know hot to describe the taste, so we all ordered it. But then we searched and realized it was just papaya, but I actually had never had papaya before, so I was still excited to try it, and I liked it!
After that, we walked back to our hotel and went to bed, excited for the next three weeks to come!