Getting To Know You

Today was a pretty chill day of running errands and getting to know Nairobi a little bit.  Michele and I went to the new US Embassy to look into getting more pages for our passports.  I’m ashamed to admit that I knew almost nothing about the bombings of the US Embassies in Nairobi and Tanzania on August 7^th, 1998, arranged by the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and Osama Bin Ladin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998_United_States_embassy_bombings). 

In Nairobi alone, approximately 212 people were killed, almost all local citizens that were living, working, or just passing by the day of the blast.  Approximately 4,000 people were injured, including many eye injuries: an initial blast and gunfire caused many people to go to their windows to investigate. The subsequent truck-bomb blast blew out windows for a 1 km radius. 

What destruction the human race is capable of.

We next went to the medical council to register as doctors in Kenya. Getting and maintaining a medical license in Kenya costs about $240 per year, which is surprisingly more than it costs to maintain a medical license in California. The outing was also a chance to get to know the famous traffic of Nairobi.  With the combination of sufficient wealth, a lot of people, and “flexible” driving practices, Kenya’s capital has traffic to rival Mumbai, and makes sitting stationary on the 101 in NorCal pretty bearable in comparison. Thankfully, the area in western Kenya where we'll be working is going to be a lot less congested. 

Lunch at the Pizza Inn at the local gas station was mostly remarkable for the following interaction with a woman with a Middle Eastern accident:

-Woman walks past our table into the building.

-Same woman walks back to our table and points at me, and says, “I thought… no I shouldn’t tell him…but now I feel like I must.  You. You look like Chuck Norris. A young Chuck Norris”.

Thanks, ma’am. Much appreciated.

And I’m thankful for Luke, our Aussie-American friend working with us who then introduced me to this link: http://www.chucknorrisfacts.com/chuck-norris-top-50-facts

Have a good day.

Sincerely, 

Chuck.