Traveling expands worldview

This summer while traveling in London, England, the city credited with the origination of the coffee shop, my sister insisted on visiting a Starbucks. My initial reaction was that she might as well travel to India or Thailand and insist on eating nothing but hamburgers and fries. Continuing to live in American culture while traveling in a foreign country is absurd.

Upon further thought, I recognized that my sister is not singular in her attraction to the familiar while traveling. My most cherished meal this summer was a steak burrito eaten at a bread shop in Nairobi, Kenya. After a month of eating goat and lentils, I was ready for American food.

Overseas travel can be stressful and confusing. Sometimes a taste of home is quite welcome, even if the taste comes from a restaurant you rarely visit while in the States.

This summer, I spent the month of June in Kenya, followed by a quick trip to London. Traveling to Kenya was my first out of country experience. Flying to Nairobi took two and half days with a 14 hour layover in the London Heathrow airport.

By the time my classmates and I arrived in Nairobi, I was sick from airplane food and had slept less than six hours that weekend. From the airport, we still had a four-hour drive before arriving at base camp in the southwest corner of the country.

That drive was my introduction to developing countries. The airport was crawling with armed guards whose semiautomatic weapons swung from loosely curled fingers. Their uniforms were unraveling sweaters, mismatched pants and berets worn at a jaunty angle. The security at Knoxville’s McGhee-Tyson Airport might as well carry water guns compared to these guards.

While at the airport, we exchanged currency. The U.S. dollar was worth 75 Kenya shilling, a testament to the poverty in the country.

Directly outside of Nairobi, the land is fertile and covered for miles in tall green grass. In my westernized agriculture mind, I envisioned the bales of hay and the beef cattle that could be raised on those fields. But in Kenya, families along the roadway cut the waist high grass with hand sickles, leaving most of the fields untouched.

At about the 100 kilometer mark on the Mombassa Highway, the trucks turned off onto a dirt road, first stopping at a curio or gift shop.

The American students encountered two firsts at the curio shop. The first was Kenyan haggling. No prices are fixed. In fact, items aren’t even marked. The vendor just reads the naiveté on your face and marks up the price 300 percent. During that first shopping excursion, one of the girls in our group bought a pair of earrings for 1,500 Kenya shilling that a shrewd Kenyan could buy for 400.

The second novelty was third world toilets. I only mean toilet in the most figurative sense. The bathroom had a hole cut in the floor — no where to sit, nothing to hold on to, just a hole.

At base camp, the amenities were much nicer. They understood our western notions and had toilets installed in the outdoor bathhouses. At night, while using the toilet, you could watch bats fly five feet above you chasing mosquitoes.

Our first two days at camp were a series of lectures on “how to survive in Kenya.” During this time, the nurse gave us important information such as, “If you go swimming in Kenya, you can be paralyzed by amoebas in the water,” and “If you don’t wear shoes in the shower, you will get hookworm.” All of which are good things to know at the beginning of a trip.

We were also told about the wildlife in the area. Because my parents have made several trips to Kenya, I was already familiar through photo albums with many of the African animals. However, pictures of African animals and encounters with these animals are two very different things.

Hippos, which seem so friendly in movies like Disney’s “Fantasia,” actually kill more people a year than any other African animal.

Every day while I was in Kenya, I meticulously tucked the mosquito net under my mattress, creating a snake-free bubble around my bed. When I had to dig something out of my backpack that was stored on the floor under my bed, I took a stick and poked the bag to make sure nothing moved inside of it. I lay awake at night planning how I would react if I ever woke up to find a snake in my sleeping bag. Truly, it’s a wonder the nurse didn’t have to give me Prozac so I could walk around camp at night that first week.

Obviously, my caution paid off because I returned from Kenya without so much as a mosquito bite. The trip stretched me in every way. Separated by the Atlantic Ocean from everything familiar, I experienced a culture that completely overhauled my worldview, and left me eagerly anticipating my next trip, snakes and all.

— Katie Benton is a senior in animal science. She can be reached at kbenton1@utk.edu.