Along with my parents providing inspiration to get me out and adventuring – the place where they chose to raise me also played a huge part in making me into the adventure junkie I am. Spending a minute and a bit watching the video above that I shot while back home for a week in June should give you an idea why. I was raised with a big back yard. Admittedly not all of it is really ours, but as a kid it was ours to roam around on, and that left me with the lust for climbing mountains and seeing what’s beyond the next row of trees. Cheers mum and dad., and thanks New Mexico.

I’m back in my homeland of New Mexico at the moment and enjoying it like a proper resort holiday. I’ve been on plenty of hikes, chilling in a hot tub, and yesterday had a chance to do a little rock climbing. I managed to scramble up each of the routes we roped, and had some fun bouldering around, but the highlight of the day was seeing my friend Ryan’s silly grin as he marked the routes for the rest of us to follow. Certainly a reminder of just how joyful the great outdoors can be.

My friend Brian came for a visit to London, and we took a Saturday jaunt out to see the Royal Ascot. The horse races of My Fair Lady fame were just as ridiculous as I imagined: a sea of glamorous hats and the sound of corks popping all around. We had a lovely picnic and greatly enjoyed the races, but he real story of the day is how how everyone started the day being fancy and glamorous and ended the day as one giant shit show. I didn’t manage to catch any of the falling girls on film, but women who weren’t used to walking drunk in heels were stumbling all over the place. People passed out on the grass, and the whole place was covered in rubbish. What’a day.

I’m not subtle in my love for Kayak. So I’ll be forward about my unabashed affection for the new Kayak Explore tool.

I previously claimed that Kayak Buzz was for people dreaming of heading out on an adventure. But Explore takes that power of dreaming to the tenth degree. You just pick where you’re leaving from and how much you can spend. If you want, you can narrow by when you’re looking to go, but it isn’t compulsory. It’s amazing. I might just buy a couple of flights for next spring because of it.

I’ve lived in a couple of cities (DC and London) which can feel a bit like Disney Land come spring time, so I found this group of maps really interesting. They show where tourists and locals take pictures in cities all over the world. Eric Fisher describes his methodology:

Blue points on the map are pictures taken by locals (people who have taken pictures in this city dated over a range of a month or more).

Red points are pictures taken by tourists (people who seem to be a local of a different city and who took pictures in this city for less than a month).

Yellow points are pictures where it can’t be determined whether or not the photographer was a tourist (because they haven’t taken pictures anywhere for over a month). They are probably tourists but might just not post many pictures at all.

Pretty nifty set of images that are really telling about where tourists visit and what they’re missing. Next time I’m headed out somewhere I may just have to check them out to get an idea of where the locals love to point their lenses.

Check out the full set here.

A while back when Iceland’s economy completely collapsed, I was saying that I couldn’t wait to go. Well apparently I could wait because it’s been a year and half at this point and my Iceland LP is starting to get a bit out of date.

Iceland, however, has not forgotten that it would like me fit visit. The video above does a good job of highlighting the natural beauty that makes me want to hope on a plane and check it out, even if it’s just a week or so.

The harsh poverty in Nairobi’s slums shocked me, but the more I talked with people in the slums, the more hope I was given. In Kibera, I visited two community efforts supported by the non-governmental organisation Slums Information Development and Resource Centers (SIDAREC). Both left me with a large smile despite the challenges I knew they still faced.

Zulu FC Community
This group of 28 men started off as a group of friends on a football team (a very good one apparently as they play in one of the lower professional leagues). There we’re a close group, and when some of the team started to get into trouble with drugs and crime, the group came together as a community to stop the slow downward slide. They cleared off an abandoned lot that had accumulated the trash of the adjacent market for years, dug two shallow wells, and opened up a car wash. Guys one the team chipped in 100 shillings for each day that they work at the car wash to pay for supplies and then take home all the money they make from washing cars that day. In the pictures on the right you see two of the guys washing down a coaster bus.

After the car wash became well established, they spread into another trash lot and turned it into a recycling centre (picture below with the goat). They charge people a nominal fee for trash bags and help clean up the neighbourhood. They then separate out the compostable waste and recyclables. They cash in on the fertiliser and bulk recyclables, but I think the most interesting bit is what they do with paper. In the picture above you see from left to right Frederick, Ndiso, and Rashid with their charcoal briquette maker. Mixing the paper with woodchips and charcoal powder they make little cooking bricks, which they sell.

The whole group of guys was exceptionally upbeat and made me believe that they were going to do whatever it took to make their community a better place. Also, they were notably diverse, a couple were descended from the original Nubian inhabitants of Kibera, while others came from a variety of Kenyan tribes. I hope if I ever am back in Nairobi that I have a chance to pay them another visit as they we’re certainly the highlight of this trip.

Monsimoni Community Centre
The other spot I visited was a community centre with a computer lab. Houses in Kibera can be as small as 10 feet by 10 feet, so a large open community centre is a valuable resource, especially for youth who might otherwise be getting themselves into trouble. The most remarkable bit was the computer lab – fitted out with 5 machines in a fairly unsecured building. The computers are plenty safe though as the centre is protected by the entire community, and particularly 22 young people who helped build the place and are now receiving valuable computer training for their efforts.

For 800 hours of service building the centre or working on other community projects, they young students receive a complete training course in basic computer usage including MS Office. The picture below is a couple of guys learning how to use Word. For every block of 800 hours they receive another training block, from advanced office to hardware repair. It’s a great win-win that uses minimal donor resources to mobilise the community and build a better future for those who are willing and able to do the most for building the area.

I was inspired by both projects. It was a level of community building and empowerment that I don’t see in my comfortable neighbourhood in London. To me it was a lesson that people may be materially impoverished, but true poverty is lacking hope – and the first step to fighting back against that is coming together and making something happen. It makes me want to get to know my own neighbours, something I’ve started doing since I came home.

I had a quick ten day visit to Kenya, and didn’t leave Nairobi that whole time. While that leaves me itching to go back, I am very lucky to have been able to explore the city, from the nicest neighbourhoods and poshest restaurants, to the heart of a couple of the slums. The first slum I went into was Mukuru kwa Njenga, and I just spent a short while in a closed construction area at the edge of the slum. The next day started with a short trip to the Majengo slum, which seemed as rough a place I had ever seen. That is until I spend the remainder of the day in Kibera, the giant slum of legend.

It’s impossible to convey the sense of the place through screen you see this on because the poverty surrounds and suffocates you so completely. Here is a major city within a city – a community built on the dream of escaping rural poverty, and walled in by type of wealth that will always be out of reach for most. The paths through the town are winding and uneven, paved in plastic bags and other waste, often with a stagnant little creek of waste running right through the middle. The building materials vary a little, but looked to mainly be raw wood, corrugated iron, and mud. And yet, if you look on the map below you’ll see the golf course and nice houses that form the border of Kibera, ringed in high-security fences to keep out their neighbours.

It may be naive of me, but I couldn’t overcome the feeling that this sort of urban poverty wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the neighbouring opulence. For several generations, people have poured into the slums and scramble for work. Their kids receive a better education and proceed to compete with hundreds of thousands of others for jobs. Kenya’s economy may grow at a staggering 6% per anum, but with population growing at close to 3% per year and an estimated urbanisation rate of 3.7% it seems like a losing battle – there will be ever more people competing in a jobs market that just can’t grow fast enough.

But that’s just the surface. As I met and chatted with some of the folks in the community the dark exterior gave way to some reasons for hope. More on that in part two…

There are a couple more pictures after the jump.

Looking out the window of the community center over the set of tin roofs

Looking down in the river of waste that flows through the shacks with TV aerials.

The first three things to know about Pakistan according to the Google news feed are as follows: 1) The country could possibly be striking an oil deal with Iran; 2) there’s more death in the fight over SWAT and; 3) the leaders refuse to enter into a peace dialogue with India.  None of these things are very positive to say the least.  And they certainly do not coincide with my (admittedly surprising) first impressions of this country.

In fact, as first impressions go, this one made me laugh.  As I exited the airport last Friday, I was confronted with the usual unorganized throngs of people looking for loved ones, clients, or those rare unattended few in search of a cab, creating quite the cacophony of shouts of both searching and finding.  As I scanned the crowd somewhat impatiently for my driver, I noticed a few men lingering at the fringe leering at me with unreadable yet unsettling expressions.  I self conciosuly started wishing I had put my scarf, currently draped across my shoulders, over my hair.  I reached the end of the long queue and finally spotted my contact from my organization, smiled and waved (maybe with a little too much enthusiasm), and we headed up the long sidewalk to the parking lot.  Once we reached the front gates, there it was – enormous, colorful, and packed with people - McDonalds.  Humongous, complete with a children’s playplace, picnic tables filled with happy families, and Ronald McDonald himself. sitting on his usual park bench.  Well, they don’t mention this on the evening news.  As I gaped at the joyful families, the morning prayers begin blaring from the nearby mosque , soon joined by similar calls around the city, creating an eerily beautiful concert of sorts.  As I absorbed the scene, with its unexpected juxtaposition of buildings and cultures, I couldn’t help but think that the more I travel, the less I know what to expect.  And that, my friends, is a wonderful thing.

Dear Explorers,

I wanted to reintroduce myself to the Q4A community.  After a long hiatus – ironically due to an excess in traveling (and perhaps a lack of discipline…ahem) – I am coming back as a monthly contributor to Q4A.  I work for an international public health organization that takes me from one adventure to the next.  In the past year alone, I’ve been lucky enough to visit 10 different countries and participate in some fascinating quests.  For example, I’ve hiked in the Jurassic era jungles of Papa New Guinea, escaped a brush with “land pirates” (as I like to call them) in Southern Sudan, dared the rapids of Victoria Falls, and frolicked with lemurs in Madagascar.  Along the way, I’ve picked up quite a treasure chest of stories, as well as a fair amount of lessons learned, which I look forward to sharing with you all.  

In addition to recounting tales, I look forward to bringing you along with me on my future adventures.  In fact, as I write to you, I am awaiting my plane that will ultimately take me to the vibrant and chaotic city of Karachi, Pakistan.  So, without further ado, let the quest for adventure (re)begin.

Cheers,

Sarah