The Orange Hat

The power of the network, Things you shouldn’t do in Nairobi, How to convince your mother to not send you abroad

I came here to have my mind blow out of my head, dragged around on a 9 iron by a forty year old homeless woman in the trash ridden – burnt rubber encrusted streets of Nairobi, then flung black into my skull with the hopes that I still want to continue life as an American college student, fulfilling all my hopes and dreams which I had envisioned before arriving in the cradle of humanity.

Except for the last part that might have happened.

I’m sitting in front of my computer for the first time in 5 days, listening with one ear to Appuntamento by Ornella Vanoni, the other ear rings with the susufuss of my failing auditory system. I try to keep one eye close so I can focus.

Saturday I went with Patty all over Ngong road – and Kibera, which is safer than you might think – only to go back into Nairobi that night to meet with some friends at their hotel about a five minuets walk from campus. Busses stop running around nine, so the only reasonable way into town is a Matatu. I was planning on climbing in the morning, so I brought my backpack with a few layers, and my passport (we were foreigners going into a national park) that I carry around my neck under my shirt. I had my signed orange hat along with my camera, and a few other odds and ends.

It was dark when I left the house, walked a few deserted streets to the matatu stop, which was occupied by a man and his wife. The matatus were all going the opposite direction, but shouted that they were coming back (in Kiswahili), and the man politely translated for me. With reserved laughs (which I instigated) I admitted that I was a mzungu (white person), and introduced myself. I learned that He was Huntington and his wife’s name was Mary. He was a Lou who had been working under a Kikuyu, and had like many of his countrymen been fired due to his tribal affiliation. He was staying at a local church, but would be force to leave by the 1st. There are currently over 250,000 internally displaced persons in Kenya not including refugees from nearby Sudan, Chad, Somalia, and Uganda.

We exchanged numbers, and I agreed to visit him within the next few days. He kept asking if I knew of any work, or a place that he could stay. I kept asking what I could do to help him, short of giving money. The program I was involved in was focused on enabling young people to start their own businesses. What was the country, I, or anybody doing to help what I saw as a skill-less worker in his middle ages with a family? If I was in his position, I would have run- or traveled – to … somewhere. To something exciting- the sea, mountains, some passion I had. But Huntington has a family, he has a nine-month-old baby, I don’t think you can live as haphazardly as I do when you’re responsible for someone else.

How can I help him…?

As the night went on, there was alcohol, drama, and clubbing, non of which I enjoyed very thoroughly, so I made one the biggest mistakes in my life: I walked home alone.



Aga Kahn hospital is in Westlands, it had a wonderfully clean ICU, full of clean beds, florescent lights, worried faces, and IV bags hanging over the begs. I got down and personal with their “dustbins” which I found out weren’t filled with dust after all, and slowly came to realize that I had no clue how I arrived at my present location.

One CT scan, a few X-rays, an audio graph, plenty of amoxicillin, an ambulance ride, and every nurse I had getting angry at my for not eating- I left the hospital with 70% hearing loss in my right ear, a sense of balance equivalent to a drunkard, a skull fracture, a few lost pounds, a yearning for American food, and five days of looking at a pink panther painted on the wall. I also got to watch the highlights of Aljazeera (which is enlightening) the OC [wait, he’s who’s father?], Scrubs, and lots of business news.

If you’re just now catching up to what happened. He’s how I perceived it: I walked out of a club and ended up in a hospital – ergo a) I discovered how to teleport or b) lost account of many hours in a town with the nickname “Ni-robbery.”

Here’s where some amazing shit happens, don’t ask what happened in more detail, because I don’t know – I am very blurry on all this, and most is probably pieced together from what other people told me.

I walked through a roundabout into Nairobi central park (along the road still) which is known to be one of the most dangerous places to walk at night other than the slums (I did not know this at the time), I was probably strangled- they put a 2X4 to my neck and I probably struggled so, they hit me to get it over with quicker. When I went down they took my backpack-wallet-cell phone-orange hat-camera-passport (I have a scar around my neck from where I was carrying it). I still have my sun glasses (I don’t know why). I did not lose my laptop; it was not on me, or my Nikon camera. I also still had my shoes.

Somehow I was picked up by two AIESEC’ers who’s names I still don’t know (not from the LC I’m with), and I told them how to get back to my host family, who then took me [along with the @’ers] to Aga Kahn hospital in the Westlands of Nairobi (a suburb). Nerea was pregnant and went into labor the next day, and I think one of the other sisters was in a hospital too, so I probably added to the hecktickness of Pesika’s life. I told someone my fathers phone number and I remember talking to him while I was still in the ICU (I think it was the ICU), they had to admit me, but I don’t remember when or how that worked out. My room was in the children’s ward, and I was moved by wheelchair everywhere I went. I saw an ENT doctor at some earlier hour of the night, who put a tuning fork to my head. I was dripping clear fluid from my nose sometime Monday (I was admitted Sunday morning), and told to sit, eat, and sleep upright.

Several people from Nairobi LC came and visited me, even though school started this week, thank you all.

I was discharged Thursday at about 3pm, where Halima, Winnie, and Sylvia drove me home. I got to see Nerea’s baby Lando, a fourth sister; who just happens to be a nurse and has been posting on my blog ☺, and was able to sleep in my own bed.

I’m not going to do that again, it wasn’t fun, and I know I’m lucky I could have been; shot, stabbed, rapped, or any other number of happy things. I’m looking into seeing other specialist about my ear, as I can’t rightly walk as it is.


I’m on bed rest for at least another week, I’m not depressed, I don’t want to go home, and the thing I’m lest happiest about is that I lost a week of work and experiences to a bed. For those of you there were/are concerned I guess your feelings were better founded than my own, but I think/hope I learned my lesson.






Things I crave right now:
Taco Bell
Real cheese (laccatelli)
Carrot Cake

People I thought about:
KP: are you still coming to Africa?
Maddie: was India like this?
Ryan: I WANT TACO BELL-they’re not big on a variety of beers here
Cole: yeah… but I don’t want to admit it
Preston: this is one messed up dream, and I love it
Brian: so there I was, unconscious- without a passport, wallet, or cell phone on the side of a road in Nairobi
T: People here (everywhere) need you and your animal skills, take that year off
Erin: fuck’em
Joe: how do I make my blog more readable? (columns?) Oh and I need a web site asap
Bunny: The girls here think you’re cute
@’ers everywhere: fate be it, I’ll see you someday.