Youth Voices: My first week in Kenya

The first week of my internship is finished. It's been more than a week since I left home. When I left, I wasn't nervous or scared; I just wanted to get everything over with. I hate the travel part of everything. The flights to Kenya were long and so dull. I remember sitting next to two men on my first flight. The guy in the aisle seat was chewing a piece of gum so obnoxiously loud. The man beside me kept elbowing me and dropping crumbs on me. I was so annoyed, but I knew I would be in a strange city with even more strange people in a short while.

Finding my terminal was hard once I made it to New Jersey because the airport was huge. The people I sat next to on my way to Brussels were friendly, but nobody talked with each other. The plane was packed; every seat on the plane had someone in it. People were told that their roll-away bags would have to be checked luggage. The person behind me kept kicking my seat, so I only slept for an hour on the 7-hour flight.

Trying to navigate the Brussels airport was worse than the New Jersey one. It might've been a smaller airport, but there were no lines, so it was so chaotic. But it was there I had met up with Pari.

We finally made it to Kenya after a long flight. Then we had to get through customs, which took about an hour and a half to two hours...[CONTINUE READING]