Mission to Kenya: No prostitutes allowed

The stern warning in the courtyard of the Jaki Guest Hotel in Malaba, Kenya. (T-G Photo by John I. Carney) [Order this photo]

In case you don't speak Swahili, the sign also carries the English translation:

"PROSTITUTES ARE NOT ALLOWED IN THIS GUEST HOUSE!"

A young boy at the church in the Kibera slums enjoys a meal of beans and ugali. Ugali is similar to grits but cooked to a solid, dough-like consistency. (T-G Photo by John I. Carney) [Click to enlarge] [Order this photo]

The Jaki Guest Hotel, by American standards, would be considered ... not good. The rooms are cramped. When the LEAMIS International Ministries mission team, accompanied by 10 teammates from the Kibera slums outside Nairobi, arrived at the hotel, several of the rooms were either lacking toilet seats or had toilets that overflowed.

Malaba is a major border crossing between Kenya and Uganda, and when we first pulled into town the tractor-trailer trucks were backed up for miles from the checkpoint, so the whole town smells like diesel, a fact which may have contributed to various allergies and sniffles experienced by me and other members of the team.

Not long after checking in, I made the only Twitter post of my Kenya stay: "... at the Jaki Guest Hotel in Malaba, Kenya. I've stayed in worse places, but none I can recall at the moment."

But by Kenyan standards, especially in a remote town like Malaba, the Jaki Guest Hotel is like the Hilton. Some of those we'd brought with us from the Kibera slums outside Nairobi no doubt considered it the lap of luxury.

Christian values

And the owner of the hotel, James Muthiora, is a devout Christian. Many tiny little towns and villages seen on my cross-country drives through Africa boast some tiny storefront labeled as a "hotel" or "guest house," but in many cases prostitution is their main business. Muthiora stayed at a clean and secure YMCA while in South Korea and got the idea to return to his Kenyan homeland and start a legitimate hotel for travelers.

Muthiora was delighted to have our mission team as guests in his facility, and he made the official hotel van and an SUV available to us during our four-night stay. Even with both vehicles, it took two trips to get our team and all of the workshop supplies to and from the work site each day.

As with most of the other places we stayed in Kenya, the beds at the Jaki Guest Hotel came equipped with mosquito nets. Malaria is a definite concern in Kenya, and I took an anti-malarial medicine during the trip, and for a week after. It cost me $90 for 15 tablets.

Food frustrations

We ate our breakfast and supper at the hotel each day. One of my most frustrating shortcomings as a short-term missionary relates to the food. I frequently get a gag reflex when trying foods from Third World settings like Kenya. This problem is all in my head; it happens even at times when my teammates are going on and on about how good a particular dish tastes. It's something I need to get beyond, but if anything it seems to be getting worse over time.

So I loaded up on rice -- but even the Kenyan rice tasted funny compared to what I would make at home, loaded with butter and salt.

Of course, food is an extremely subjective thing. I didn't like what I considered the scrawny, tough, undersized chicken served in Kenya, but a newspaper article about potential Kenyan expatriates which ran in the Nairobi newspaper during my stay quoted one complaining about "tasteless" American chicken.

I bought a jar of Kenyan-made peanut butter from the gas station next door to the hotel and would sometimes eat it with a spoon in my hotel room. I also survived on the generosity of my teammates, who had been much more forward-thinking in bringing things like cheese and crackers and beef jerky. As a veteran, I should have known better myself, but that was something that fell through the cracks as I made a million other trip preparations.

Breakfast was less of a problem. The fresh fruit was fantastic, and there were usually eggs and cereal.

British influence

Kenya is a former British colony, and familiar British brand names, like Cadbury, are quite strong there. Do you remember when Shredded Wheat came in large biscuits which you would break up with your spoon in the bowl? Well, Weetabix is a dry cereal in a compressed cake, about the same general size and shape as a bar of soap. We ate it as a hot cereal. Plop one or two bars into your bowl, and then pour hot milk over them and stir until you get the consistency of oatmeal.

There were thermoses of hot water, hot milk and a mixture of the two on the table. Kenyans drink their tea in the British fashion -- steeped in hot milk and water, and heavily sweetened. I didn't mind it, but I would usually opt for the Cadbury Drinking Chocolate, a delicious hot cocoa mix. (I purchased a can in Nairobi to bring back with me to the States.) Maybe it's just my imagination, but I think some of the Cadbury products in Kenya taste much better than the U.S. versions and I suspect that what the Kenyans are getting is closer to the British original.

Unexpected surprise

After three days working in the Kibera slums, a travel day, and three days working in Malaba, we took a cross-country public bus to Nakuru for a day of debrief at Lake Nakuru National Park. There's a steep admission fee to the park, and we would arrive in Nakuru too late in the day to take a safari drive, so our Kenyan travel agency had booked us for one night in a hotel in the city. We would move the next day to our safari lodge within the boundaries of the park.

I knew that our safari lodge would be comfortable and set up somewhat like a western-style hotel. But I didn't know anything about the hotel in the city and I was bracing for something like the Jaki Guest House. I and my teammates were shocked when we walked into the Merica Hotel in Nakuru; it was a six-story downtown hotel with an atrium, glass elevators, a gift shop, Internet access and what have you. After our stay in Malaba, we didn't quite know what to think. Humorist Dave Barry once joked that the mark of a fine hotel was the presence of "mystery floors" identified by letters (LL, G, UC, etc.) on the elevator buttons. By that standard, and most others, the Merica was a fine hotel. It was certainly a pleasant respite after our time in Malaba.

WEDNESDAY: The worst place on Earth