Today I was supposed to wake up and go to work at 730. I didn't. I stayed in bed and listened to music. When I woke up and heard the thunderous rain beating against the corugated tin roofs I got on my cell phone and started texting that today was a no go for me today. I think I'm allowed. It's saturday and I don't know the last time I spent the day just collecting my thoughts by myself. During nights I have enough energy to cook something, drink tea and watch Al Jazeera (if it wasn't here I would explode). I've inhaled enough black smoke and carried around enough plastic for one week.
The last two weeks or so I have been "marketing" the centres. This is not your usual business meeting where you can call ahead and schedule appoinments for a meet and greet. It's no use calling companies to ask if they buy our stuff because they need samples of our plastic and that's if they understand what you are talking about, therefor I have been walking around Nairobi's massive industrial area with a bag of this shredded plastic asking any company that seems to deal with plastic products if they buy it. Most of the time dealing with apathetic secretaries who just give a blank stare. It's definetely been the shittiest part of this job so far. Walking down long dusty roads besides huge semi trucks blowing smoke and dust in your face for hours under the hot sun only to find the place your looking for is back the other way where you started (almost makes me wish I could drive). Thankfully my efforts were fruitful and yesterday we sold over a ton of shredded plastic to some plastic processing company. I rode on top of the pick up truck (check the video below this) piled with plastic facing forward riding it like it was a horse drawn carriage getting the wind in the face driving all around Nairobi, and that is my reward for the hard work.
So I added two writers on this blog. One is Up With Hope volunteer Rob Chursinoff ( in the video) and the other is Patrick Ominde A.K.A the man behind it all, and now my roomate after two years of working together. He hasn't written anything yet but I will force him to do something.
I don't take a lot of photos but I thought this was a nice one, look at the nice passion fruit hanging.
Patrick serving me up some Nyama Choma
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