Hello Nairobi: 3-8 December 2008

It's the total madness on the roads that struck me first. Where there are dividing lines between traffic lanes (which are rare) they are treated merely as 'guidelines' as to where the traffic should go. For the rest, it’s a complete free-for-all, with (you guessed it) the minibus taxis (matatus) being the worst offenders. It's common for the vehicle you are driving in (whoever owns it) to have a bump, or at least a scratch, even on both sides – witness to the multitude of near-accidents everyone encounters on a daily basis (acquiring a new scratch or minor ding on the way to work does not count as an accident). 

The redeeming feature of drivers here is that they are mostly GOOD. Everyone seems to drive with the 'third eye' on high alert and seems able to avoid collisions with vehicles coming from any direction – especially, it seems, from the left-rear (they drive on the left side); defensive driving is a must.

The main road from the airport is wide but traffic builds at the seemingly incessant line of 'traffic circles' or 'roundabouts' (as they are called here) on the route. Unlike regular roundabouts where the rule is to yield to your right, and enter accordingly, that rule doesn't seem to apply here. Local officials have decided that it's best to have traffic lights controlling the traffic entering and exiting the circles. No one obeys. But at rush hour there are pointsmen controlling the circular traffic and it is common to sit for five to ten minutes (and I mean a real ten minutes) waiting your turn to enter the circle. In South Africa, road rage would definitely take over and the pointsmen would probably get shot! 

To traverse the fifteen kilometres from Jomo Kenyatta International Airport to my office took over an hour, between 7.30 and 8.30am!

But the traffic is hectic just about any time of night or day. Just like in SA, the congestion stems from a mini-boom that the locals have experienced over the last few years – bringing many more cars onto an already inadequate road system. I am toying with the idea of buying a second-hand Vespa in the New Year, just to get around on during the evenings and weekends. But, I am told, bike is spelled D.E.A.T.H., especially seeing that crash helmets are only somewhat compulsory. In the upmarket suburb where the office is situated, there are few sidewalks and one is often forced to walk in the face of haphazard oncoming traffic. It's common enough to have a near brush with a motorcycle coming the wrong way down a typically congested road. The riders do, at least, give a little toot on the hooter just before they pass – a small (but big enough) warning not to suddenly attempt a crossing.

Apart from the four main TV stations, and the satellite TV option for the rich, radio has a special place in Nairobi. There are radio stations individually dedicated to reggae, rock, Soul/RnB, 'classics', rap and hip-hop, all competing for a share of the radio-consumer pie. It's common to hear a matatu pass you with reggae blaring from its overburdened sound system. 

On Saturday there was a reggae festival at Uhuru Park. I didn't go, but got to watch some of it live on TV. With some surprise, I noticed there were very few dreadlocks in evidence among the audience. Wondering why, I was told that the Mau-Mau used to wear dreads as a sign of their complete rejection of the accepted values of the time and today dreadlocks are still a little extreme for conservative Kenyan society. I was later to learn that the Mungiki 'gang', a group of mainly Kikuyu outlaws and extortionists, wore dreadlocks and just prior to my arrival in Kenya, an order had been issued to shoot Mungiki on site. You didn't want to wear dreads and get mistaken for the wrong guy.

On Friday night I attended a formal (black tie) function at the Kenyatta International Convention Centre. Ironically, here in deepest, darkest Africa, I wore a tux for the first time since my wedding! It was the gala evening for the 'Warrior Awards', given by the Marketing Society of Kenya to companies which have excelled in promoting their products here (the award itself being a stylized – chrome plated! - version of the tall Maasai warrior). The event was long and tiresome (as these events always are) but I was absolutely stunned by the elegance and beauty of the women I saw there and I was entirely unprepared for the lighter, often radiant, skin tones, the far finer features of the women I saw. I was used only to dusty dark skin and broad features.

On Thursday, just hours after alighting my plane from O.R.Tambo, I had a business meeting with 'Rachel Z' – a JAP (Jewish American Princess) – recently settled in Nairobi from a U.N. sortie in Kosovo. Rachel wants help with some social research in the Sudan. She has her own consultancy but does a lot of work for the U.N., being particularly interested in the post-war situation in Darfur. So we're having a second meeting this week and I will be attending a security briefing from the U.N. High Commission on Refugees week after next. I guess it's Darfur here we come soon.

There are no fewer than four cellphone operators here, with an amazing array of offers and tariff structures. One operator offers a flat-fee cost structure, whether you are calling at peak or off-peak times. Another offers a variable structure but with SMSing costing the equivalent of 5c a time. The dominat operator is Safaricom, of parent company Vodac/Vodacom. 

All the cell networks are automatically enabled for international dialling – attesting to the extent to which Kenyan has an 'international' feeling about it – and the international connection doesn't cost you that much more than the local one. Currently waiting for my company phone (a Blackberry that turned out to be the most godawful cellphone I have ever owned), I was presented with pre-paid airtime to the value of 1000 Shillings (about R100) to tide me over in the meantime. Lacking many locals I can phone for a chat, I made about ten calls to SA – amounting to more than twenty minutes of call time - and the airtime has only just run out!

Cigarette smoking is considered something of a social evil (which I guess it is) and is banned even in open public spaces. If you want to smoke, do it in your car or in your own home. Don't expect to do it in the street or in any public space, aside from limited and clearly designated smoking areas. I'll have to watch my Quit Smoking by Hypnosis DVD a few more times methinks. I tried in vain to find the cigarette kiosk at the local supermarket. I had to ask if they sold smokes and was directed to a dusty corner of the store where I found a selection of about five brands (Dunhill, Embassy and the huge local brand, Sportsman) next to an assortment of Chinese padlocks, key tags and nail clippers. Nowhere is there an ad or billboard for cigarettes to be seen. Needless to say, smoking is not big in Kenya!

In the local shopping mall – not the new Westgate mall, but in the Sarit Centre – I paid a lot for two samoosas and an espresso (single). Good coffee is everywhere, what with Kenya hitherto being one of the world's major exporters of Arabica coffee. At Sarit there is also quite a lot of Indian food around. There are a lot of Indians around. I assume that most of them are Hindi or similar because the incidence of typical Islamic burkas is quite rare – although I was quite amused to see a Muslim lady, with head and face covered by thick black cloth, shopping for sexy underwear at one of the boutiques in the mall!

Many of the shops, and even the banks, stay open from 8.30am to 8.30pm and there are a number of branches in the Nakumatt chain of supermarkets that stay open 24/7! The area where I am staying (Westlands) is undergoing quite a lot of development and a brand new mall (Westgate) has opened just down the hill from me. The Nakumatt that comprises the principal tenant at the mall is literally a one-stop-shop and sells absolutely everything for the home. Just about the only thing it does not sell is motor cars (but the 24/7 Nakumatt Mega does!).

And speaking of Swahili – or should I say, speaking Swahili – I learnt more of that language in 48 hours than I learnt of Zulu in 48 years! It is a gentle and somewhat poetic language. When someone hears you are not from Kenya you are immediately told "Karibu (Welcome) in Kenya", to which you reply "Asante (Thanks)", or better still "Asante sana (thank you very much)". And, of course, everything is pretty much "Hakuna mutata", chilled and at ease, here in the land of the safari.

The natural environment of Nairobi is quite like the dense foliage found in the sub-tropical areas of Kwazulu/Natal. Dark, loamy soil and jungle-like areas of banana palms and mango trees are sometimes seen in the space between streets. And because everything grows so profusely, a few lots of vacant land in Westland are dedicated to selling seedlings and saplings of every size and description. The whole of the steep hill that separates my apartment block from the Westgate Mall comprises an informal 'garden centre'. The plants need little watering because of the moisture that accompanies the cool evenings.

Despite the position of Nairobi on the equator, the days are temperate because of its altitude. The evenings can be notably cool. Once the sun goes down, a definite chill sets in. The summers are not much different from the winters. And we're so close to the Equator here, I'm not sure which season it actually is! The seasons are defined more by 'rainy seasons' - the short rains and the long rains.

On Saturday, I took a walk around Westlands and found my way to the local craft 'market' where traditional African goods are sold from within disused shipping containers. The one mistake I made was to be polite and accommodating and found myself consistently having to refuse the invitation to bargain over (mainly) the price of hand made jewellery or Kenyan kikois. But in the process I did get to see some absolutely beautiful kikois. Being something of the 'national dress', kikois are worn as wraps or scarves, and this form of adornment imbues many of the women with a certain flair and sense of local urban street-style. Of course, there are kikois and then there are Maasai shukas. The Masai shuka (blanket, actually) is most often red, sometimes brown or purple, with some form of tartan or striped pattern on it. Stunning.

It's now Sunday evening and I have just returned from a trip to Lake Naivasha with Jane (the boss), her mom and her son. She has just bought a five acre plot of land that extends from the dust road down to the water's edge. The lake is host to a few thousand flamingos and a few hundred hippos. She plans, with a few friends, to build five log cabins on the land. The locale is exquisite. Her plot is adjacent to a private game reserve which, in turn, is adjacent to a piece of land called Elsamere.

Elsamere once belonged to a married couple called George and Joy Adamson (remember them?). For those who don’t know, the couple used to keep a lioness called Elsa and once upon a time they made a film called Born Free, Kenya's filmic claim to fame. We had lunch in what was their last home in Kenya, on the shores of the lake. On the front lawn stands George's old Land Rover, looking the same as most Land Rovers you see on the road here still. Old George is long dead and gone but his Landie looks as fresh and new as when he bought it. It looks good but doesn't go so well because its wheels are cemented into the ground!

On the way to Lake Naivasha, just before heading off the escarpment on which Nairobi stands, we came around a bend in the road and there, suddenly, lay the whole of the Great Rift Valley before us. What a sight! It was a clear day and it seemed like we could see all the way to Somalia and Ethiopia in the north! And Jane pointed out the road I need to take when I do the inevitable trip to the Maasai Mara.

A lot of Nairobi's electricity comes from geothermal sources near Naivasha - where the earth's crust is thinner than anywhere else on the globe – and, I am told, one can literally boil an egg in the water that comes out of the hot springs. It's the hot springs that feed the lake because Lake Naivasha is not connected to the Great Lakes (Victoria, Albert, Edward) of the Rift Valley. All around the lake are white, plastic greenhouses that grow no less than 80% of the flowers sold in Europe! The flowers that are cut today are sold the next day in Amsterdam! But the flower business is a bit of a problem because it uses more water than the hot springs can feed into the lake. So the surface area of the lake has been steadily diminishing.

The lake has also become increasingly saline over the years, which has led to a problem with water hyacinth. But one man's problem is another man's opportunity: the hyacinth is a favourite of fresh water crayfish (would you believe!) and our lunch featured a good crayfish cocktail, but the taste lacked the 'bite' that the sea provides.

Over the way from Lake Naivasha is an extinct volcano and scattered around the shores of the lake (and all over the Adamsons' garden) are big black, shiny volcanic rocks, thrown there eons ago, when the volcano was still a hot thing. At the extremes of the Adamsons' front lawn are signs saying 'Wild Animals at Night'. Jane's son, Scott, says the signs are actually meant for Nairobi's drinking holes…… I'll tell you the truth of that next time.

Peace and Love.

Brian