Six sunrises...
Five 3+ hr bus rides...
Three hitched rides...
Seven flat tires (one technically a blowout)...
Two dynamite explosions obliterating the road infront of us...

...later, and I completed the trip of a lifetime and made it to Nairobi.

After two amazing months in Ethiopia, a friend (Jackie) and I started our journey from Addis Ababa to Nairobi. She was moving to Nairobi for a volunteer opportunity, and I was along for the journey and to help install a drip irrigation kit at a Peace Corp friend's school. The trip was long and grueling but completely worth it. The days in the sun in the back of a lorry or with my rucksack wedged between myself and the next seat on a cramped bus came with meeting new habesha/Kenyan friends, learning some awesome games, beautiful sites, and a new appreciation for the African desert and Western toilets.

While in Kenya I learned the streets of Nairobi, visited Daniel (Peace Corp Volunteer friend) in Maktau and installed the drip kit I hauled down from Ethiopia with the assistance of one of the other teachers and a student who happened to be passing by. He introduced me to some of the people in his village, went on a short hike, and learned about sisal farming and other potential opportunities in the area. Back in Nairobi, I met the rest of the Peace Corp Volunteers at their training sessions and briefly helped out at Plastic Recyclers SACCO, a cooperative of community-based waste recycling organizations in Eastlands (Nairobi) created in 2006 by Practical Action. They have a nice plastic injection machine shop that was donated by the French government, however they have been having problems with machine maintanence and marketing their products.

>> Our Planning/Mission Completed Map

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