No Country For Old Men

When I first read that Kenya's median age was 19 and life expectancy was 58 (vs 37 and 78 for the US, respectively), I didn't really believe it or fully appreciate it. As I was walking around today in both the slums and business district of Nairobi, it occurred to me that I hadn't seen a single "old" person since I got here.

If I needed a reminder why, it came on our way to dinner tonight. For a good five minutes, we were tailing a bus by about 10 feet. It wasn't the driving skills that provided the reminder (or else Italy would clock in at ages considerably less than their respective 43 and 80), it was the fact the bus was spewing a thick cloud of exhaust and partially-burned diesel fuel, making it hard to see even within the car, which had all of its windows open (they were locked and we'd already gone through an extensive exercise of getting each open to just the right height).

I made a comment from beneath the undershirt I'd pulled over my nose and mouth to the effect of, "Wow, that's a lot of smoke!" To which our Kenyan driver responded, "Oh yes, it's very bad." Yet we continued our low-speed pursuit until the bus turned a few minutes later.

There are so many health challenges and things trying to kill people here that ingesting carcinogens doesn't even register on the radar (literally... see the chart below). Cancer is so far down the list of causes of death that people rarely live long enough for it to ever be of concern.

On that uplifting note, I need to finish preparing for the safari we're going on tomorrow! I should have lots of good photos and videos of Simba and family.