140128 — Meditating in Ayutthaya
Left the city for some quite time. Biked around the ancient city of Ayutthaya remembering days past.
Left the city for some quite time. Biked around the ancient city of Ayutthaya remembering days past.
This city has grown on me. And after spending the weekend exploring Nairobi by Night I’m slowly falling in love. It’s true what is said, “it’s always the people that makes a place” and here, here you have them all. I always find it fascinating to discover which individuals who decide to settle (even so only for a little while) in a place. Spent Friday in a gin and tequila induced haze managing complex reflections on the fascination of death and euphoria of euphoria. Saturday establishing new friendships. And Sunday watching Django. So far people are intriguing and so, the space is intriguing and so, this place is intriguing!
I’m in Nairobi! Sitting on the floor in my new livingroom grasping the fact that I’m for the first time in my life “south of Sahara.” The journey here felt much shorter than I was expecting–even though it was snowing i Istanbul and I was rerouted via Amsterdam. I arrived this morning and D. and O. the couple I’m living with had sent a driver to come and pick me up. The driving here is almost even more crazy than in Riyadh, but my new ‘rafiki’ (friend in Swahili) and driver David felt safe. However, I don’t think I will be heading out on the roads driving by myself anytime soon. Today I’ve spent getting acquainted with my neighborhood Kilimani, just north of the city center. This will be my base for now. But my goal is to explore as much as possible. Of course I’ve already gotten lost once, but during the day time most places around here feel and are safe, and people are in general very helpful. Looking for a small supermarket a woman guided me in the right direction, offered me some nuts and told me a little bit about her work with a local NGO. For now things are pretty relaxing. Tonight we are having dinner at an Ethiopian restaurant and I’m going to try and get a hold of a Kenyan number so I can start contacting people to talk to about my project. And I need to figure out what I want to do and where I want to go when I’m here–as I feel and fear that these eight weeks will pass much faster than expected.
Tuonane baadaye–See you later!