Heather abandoned at airport
Follow freelance writer/producer Heather Newgen as she goes to Kenya to volunteer at an orphanage, where things go wrong, fast.
Oh no, it’s India take two!! Here we ago again, but this time in Kenya. For those of you who followed my experience in New Delhi working with street kids you know it was quite traumatic to say the least–so much so that it took me two years to want to take another international volunteering trip.
The volunteer program I signed up with for India, Volunteering Solutions, was corrupt and anything but professional so a lot of other volunteers and I had a hard time because of horrible things that took place with the organization.
I finally had a desire to try it again, but this time I decided to document my journey in Africa helping out in orphanages. I brought along my videographer Carolyn Eastman and what we’ve captured on tape is nothing like what we thought.
I had come to Kenya expecting to show people how amazing this was going to be. I wanted people to see that India was an isolated incident and that there was no way I’d go through anything like that again.
I was wrong. From the moment we landed in Nairobi, I knew there was going to be a problem. I joined a program called Rustic Volunteer and Travel. At first they seemed great and were so excited I was going to be shooting everything from the orphanages to the housing where volunteers would stay. However, the day I booked our flights was when the trouble began.
I stopped hearing from the organization on a regular basis and couldn’t get details I needed, like who was picking us up from the airport, where we would be staying and an address to where the house was located.
I sent emails to the owner and they were either never returned or the information I asked for was never provided. When he would respond he would say he was “busy” and that he would get me the info I requested, but he never did. I was annoyed, but hoped everything would be okay when we arrived.
It wasn’t. When we got to the airport, no one was there for us. Since I didn’t have a contact number for the woman who ran the volunteer house or her address I couldn’t get in touch with her. We didn’t have an international phone yet and even if we did we didn’t know who to call.
I kept walking up and down the long line of drivers who held up signs with the name of the person they were there for hoping I’d see mine. Since this had happened to me in New Delhi, I wasn’t really panicking, but I was pissed off. How dare a volunteer program let people spend almost $4000 on airfare, pay a program fee and then not have anyone there to pick them up.
I was angry but trying not to show how freaked out I was because I didn’t want to worry Carolyn. She hasn’t traveled much outside the US and I felt terrible things were not off to a good start.
If we just had an address like I had asked for we could have taken a cab, but we didn’t so we were stuck at the airport.
After a couple of hours a girl approached us and asked if we were alright. She saw how upset we were and wanted to see if there was anything she could do. She was amazing! She let us use her phone to call the only number we had which was for the Rustic office located in Texas.
We finally got in touch with the owner and he said there was a misunderstanding and that they thought we weren’t arriving until the following day. That’s really upsetting considering I sent my travel itinerary so there’s really no excuse, but after five hours of being stranded at the airport a driver was sent for us and we were on our way to the volunteer house.
We still didn’t know where we were going, however. The owner told the driver where to take us, but I wanted an address before we got into the cab. No one would give it to me and I started getting concerned at this point. The driver spoke broken English and didn’t understand what I wanted and the owner said everything was fine and to go with the person he sent for me. I was nervous, but didn’t know what to do so we got into the car.
Apparently we were staying in a suburb called Karen, about 30 minutes outside of Nairobi, which I didn’t know. In fact, I knew nothing, but not from lack of trying to get details.
As we approached the house we went down a dark and long creepy dirt road. We looked at each other and could tell what the other was thinking–this wasn’t the best idea and I’ve had and hopefully this was the right way to the volunteer house.
It was, thankfully, and we were greeted by a guard dog who wouldn’t let us out of the car. To make the situation even more intense, Beatrice, the program coordinator and whose house we stayed at didn’t know we were coming.
We got to her place around 2AM and we had to wake her up by honking the horn numerous times to let us in. It was an awkward situation but she was very sweet and didn’t seem to mind at all. It was comforting and I thought the worst was over, but I was wrong again. The worst hadn’t started yet…
Text: Heather Newgen
Photo: Carolyn Eastman
Also check out Heather’s voluntourism trips to India and New Orleans.
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- Heather abandoned at airport
