Day Fifthteen Continued

I woke up sad and exhausted from the day/night before and decided to go for a long walk in my neighborhood. At some point the empty feeling inside transitioned to tears and hunger and I called a friend to meet for lunch. I took what I thought was short cut and ended up walking kilometres alongside Nairobi's city highway. There is actually a decent path next to the median of the highway and on the path I passed Kenyans dressed in Sunday clothes, teenagers, bums, and dead rats. Everyone who passed me was just as surprised as I was to be walking alongside a highway Sunday afternoon.

Later that night I joined my roommates in going out for a US Embassy staffer's last day and felt remarkably better. Our first stop was a bar with live music where my roommate's Kenyan Indian friends met us. In waltzed in 3 ladies in tight black dresses. One of them looked familiar and knew my name. My roommate quickly cleared my confusion - the woman who knew me was actually the man who I met earlier that day at my house. She commented on my looks and I returned her compliment, her dress was just a few inches past her butt. The cross-dresser new friend recommended we go to a few Indian bars that are off the grid. The buildings where the first Indian dance club was located looked like the inside of the Indian restaurants on the corner of 1st avenue and 6th street in Manhattan. Multi-colored lights were strung across the buildings and blinked sporadically and behind the dark windows a bollywood beat shrilled. Inside the windowless bar was a stage where Asian girls dressed in tight red revealing red pleather outfits paraded around sucking lollypops. My suspicions were confirmed - these girls were from Nepal and were under 18. I have never been this close to sex trafficking in my life. Surrounding us were middle aged Indian men waving Kenyan shillings in the air at the girls. I announced the reality to the people with me and we left before finishing our drinks. Walking past the girl wiggling her body in front of a fan I paused to offer her help but I had no idea whom I could refer her to.... In the corner were thugs staring at us.

The next place was similar but instead of Nepali women the dancers were Indian and they had choreographed numbers and sang with an Indian man. I felt less guilty to be there but watching men take a wad of 100 shilling bills and throw them in the air around the women dancing and then the Kenyan waiters clean the floor of bills is disturbing to put it mildly. It's like driving by a car accident and not being able to turn away. We ended the night with delicious chicken pies from Oil Libya where the American from the Embassy is unable to buy gas.