My opinion.

The first things I notice about being home: everything is shiny, and I'm surrounded by 90 degree angles. The next things hit me slowly. My closet looks like it has enough clothes to last me a lifetime. I overhear conversation topics that seem pathetically highbrow. I feel like I'm in a rich, uncaring, excessive community. I hate it but somehow feel grateful to have the opportunity to be a part of it.

Nairobi was not what I expected. The poor were richer than I expected, and the rich were poorer. Most tasks were executed with imprecision, and most people seemed to feel that fortune had abandoned them not through a lack of effort on their part, but rather through God's will. Hard times were a test of survival, not a speed bump on the road to success.

I realized that my parents should not be taken for granted. Somehow, it's their obligation to take care of me, a responsibility they took on when they decided to conceive. In a world where so few are willing to reach out to others, it's ok to accept my parents' help, listen to their advice, let them listen to my troubles.

Resources are widely wasted. Utilities like water and electricity are used up as much as possible until the city-provisioned ration is exhausted. Recycling is non-existent; even on a personal scale, precious little is saved for re-use, creating massive pollution in the streets (garbage cans are also non-existent). There are abundant opportunities for composting, water conservation, home gardening, and other more economically focused forms of investment. None are taken.

How can we fix it? Where would one start? My friend, a fellow Afriphile, deems the problem "unfixable." All we can do, it seems, is help where its broken, like patching up a hose full of holes, one hole at a time, experimenting with different methods of adhesion, hoping that one day the hose might work properly. Is it really too late to teach a country how to build a hose that won't break...?