So this was my first trip ever to Kenya. Heading straight into to the middle of Nairobi for a week to teach some Yoga and Ayurveda. If you’ve followed my 20 day challenge, you’ll know that I am a super lazy pre-travel-organiser. I always tend to sort myself out when I arrive in a country and find things out from the people I meet. And nothing was different this time. I left the beautiful pristine Alps of Austria on the Wednesday morning and arrived in the hustle and bustle of one of Africa’s most pumping cities on Thursday morning. This is prevalent everywhere you look, road works, construction of houses, factories, business, everything… It’s a city that is so different to what I know, it’s not even close to anything in Cape Town, never mind Europe, the closest feeling of familiarity I got to was it is similar to some Asian countries I’ve visited in the past. Think, open electric wires, crazy driving, insane traffic, side street vendors for absolutely anything you can think of and, so much more. Unfortunately my pictures don’t do what we experienced justice, but you get a feel.
Security is a massive thing here, the amount of security estates, security guards, alarms, gates, locks and more locks you come across can be quite shocking at first. I’ve never had to go through more security controls going into a shopping mall or through the airport as in Kenya. Wow… and to think that guys still manage to get through all of this to cause mayhem and disruption is unimaginable. When I arrived, and the first few days this was all fairly new to me, I noticed how after a few days I got more used to it… I’m sure after a few months, it’d become the norm… How quickly we humans adjust…
And so my Yoga journey in Kenya started. Being the inquisitive person I am I found out pretty quickly that the biggest and most popular form of Yoga in Nairobi is Power Yoga. Hmmm… I wondered how that was possible, (apparently Baron Baptise is a big thing here). So I contemplated the idea of Power Yoga in Nairobi for a while and soon it all made sense. Nairobi is like Power Yoga, strong, masculine, hard, brave, confident. If you don’t possess those qualities in this city, it’s not going to get you far, you’re not going to survive easily. But as in life, everything needs its counterpart, the yin, the yang, the hot, the cold, the internal, the external. So I decided to bring in the feminine, the gentle, the slow, the contemplative when I taught. And wow, was it just what everyone needed. Maybe not what they wanted, but definitely what was needed. While I was in this fascinating city I participated in three main events, namely;
- The Ayurveda Workshops which were held to raise funds for the Yoga for Wellness Tanzania Projects.
- Visiting the Langata Women’s Prison in Nairobi.
- Teaching a restorative session at the Faraja Cancer Care Support Clinic in Nairobi.
More about these adventures tomorrow.
Namaste,
Nina.
