First weekend in Kenya!

It was little past 8am when I walked out the airplane on Saturday with a big smile on my face and ironically the first thing I saw was a big sign saying: “Smile, you r in Kenya!” Hehe, funny I know. I had seen Kenya only in movies, but it wasn’t so much different I had expected. One thing was sure I had never ever seen so many black people( and I mean black not brown like my friends in the States) looking at me at the same time. Lost like a headless chicken I tried to find my name from some of the signs so many people were holding, but I felt so small and uncomfortable so I went to the information desk. The lady there was really nice and couple minutes later I was already in a car with Peterson, a guy from the base, on my way to YWAM Athi River.


Looking out from the window I couldn’t stop smiling. I really was in KENYA!!!!! All the nature, landscape and people were exactly like I had seen from Google. The sun was shining and the tiredness I had felt an hour ago was suddenly gone, there was so much to see.

When I got to the base there was couple of people there to greet me. Jerome, our base leader, said “karibu”, which in Swahili means “welcome” and led me to my room. There were four of us in the same room the first 5 days: Laura, from the States, Dynell from Canada and Hellen from Kenya, but Johanna, another American came on Thursday night so Laura had to move to the other room with her and Natasha(Canada). The other room next to ours is shared by Angela(USA), Anna(Germany) and Mary(Kenya). In our DTS there are 14 students: 9 girls and 5 guys and of course our wonderful stuff, who are the coolest ever. There’s so many of them and they are all so funny and friendly and…ahhh the best!!! The coolest thing that happened on Saturday was that I saw giraffes the first time in my life and there were five of them. It was amazing. They chilled close to our base and the stuff who knew they are going to be there just took us there without saying a thing and I almost flipped out. A GIRAFF, seriously!!!! Not so cool that I found out the same day were the conditions of washing ourselves and the restroom. Well with the restroom I am actually kind of used to already if not to mention that I avoid going there after 7pm because that’s the time where all the black widows(poisones spiders) are lively around it. But it’s still hard to wake up every day at 6:30am, take your bucket, fill with cold water and go and wash yourself. I guess I am slowly getting used to with it too. Oh at 5:30pm there’s actually possibility to get warm water too, but most of us are too busy at that time to go and wash ourselves. I shall definitely try that out one day though. On Saturday night we went out to a little city close to our base called Machakos. It was the first time I heard the word mzungu that I was expecting to hear already at the airport. People were different, some friendly, some little bit too friendly and I guess some of us kind of scared, but so were we. One was sure everybody was staring at the 2 blondes from Europe and the 6 white girls from the west generally, so we kept close to the 2 Freds from our base who were with us. It was actually pretty nice experience for the first day, we even got a ride in a matatu( cheap little bus). And Kenya it surely was, I already had sunburn the first night.

On Sunday couple of people from our base took us to Nairobi to a local church. It was really small and I’d say African. The worship reminded me little bit African American churches, but the dance was definitely different ( go Charles!). After the service which lasted for almost 3 hours, we went out to a Kenyan restaurant for a lunch. I had my first chapati and it was delicious. I was so surprised that I got a whole meal and a drink with only 250Ksh which is little more than 3USD. And I heard that restaurant was considered as one of the expensive ones. Woow, unbelievable!

Back at the base we just chilled and got to know each other more. We couldn’t have been more excited to find out what other amazing stuff God had for us for the upcoming 20 weeks. Our school started at the next morning, so most of us were in bed by 8:30pm. Even me, who hadn’t gone to bed before 10pm since I was 10, was dead tired and knocked out before 9pm.

Oh here’s my address just in case somebody misses me at Christmas lol.

Kadi Levo, Youth With A Mission, P.O. Box 59443-00200, Nairobi, Kenya



“Great things are what you will accomplish when you put God first and make him owner of all you care about.” (“The Dream Giver”)