Nairobi

Hey there folks,

This concludes two days in Nairobi. The journey here was 32 hours in total, with a 9 hour time change. Nothing terribly eventful happened other than as sweet set of cankles after sitting for so long, a Texan that informed me that "ya know sumpin' is gonna happin'" when you hear the landing gear, and an Italian who told me I sounded like a Texan (!).

I was picked up at the airport by a man named Francis who appears to be occasionally employed by one of my safari operators. He was instrumental in helping me get a sim card for my iPad. No way I would have figured that out on my own from all the little kiosks at the airport. On Saturday, Francis took me on a half day "city tour" to all the usual tourist places. It wound up being a bit more expensive than booking through the hotel, but he took me wherever I wanted to go.

Sights included:

• An elephant orphanage, where they demonstrated feeding the elephants and told the orphaning story of each baby (a lot of falling down wells).

• A giraffe park where people could feed and kiss the giraffes. I did neither, as they appeared to have nice horsey lips, but all the slobber of a cow with a 12 inch tongue. Given the amount of shrieking I heard, people did not notice this until it was too late. Also saw two black rhino's at the park. I could have pulled up a chair and watched them all day. Very primordial looking animals and only about 5 feet away.
• A crocodile park in which a young man was nice enough to show me around while poking crocs with a stick. I didn't realize that crocs actually hissed and growled! I did not poke the crocs. I did not ride the camel. There were ostriches and a tethered goat. The goat is bait for a leopard that previously killed an ostrich.
  

I like big butts…

Would you want to kiss that mouth?

 

All in all, the parks were not terribly interesting, although I think seeing any of those animals (except for the goat) not behind a fence will get my attention pretty quick.

After about 5 minutes of driving, I realized that the parks would just be a pretense to drive around Nairobi. This was by far the most exciting part of the day. Some thoughts:

1. I would suggest that if a person needs to drive around that city they need to get right with Jesus (or deity of choice) beforehand. There are no shoulders. There are no speed limits. There was only one traffic light that I saw and it caused more problems than it solved. There are huge traffic circles in which the number of lanes corresponds to the the relative aggressiveness of the drivers (of which mine was one of the most aggressive). Emergency vehicles drive down the middle of the two lane roads. Cars drive on the left hand side of the road…often.
2. Pedestrians and drivers like to play chicken. The pedestrian will saunter across the road and the driver will come at them at full speed. No brakes are applied, the pedestrian does not run. Instead, at the last instant, the driver will swerve around the pedestrian within inches of hitting them. Nobody will be startled (except me) or angry.
3. The city itself is under a haze of smoke and red dust. I was going to ask Francis what caused the smoke, then saw burning trash heaps.
4. The number of people on the streets is astounding. This was in any area of the city from the city centre where my hotel is, to "where the rich people live" behind barbed wire fence, to the parks on the outskirts of the city. No sidewalks other than downtown, just dirt paths. People selling everything on the side of the road. If there was a traffic jam (or rather when there were traffic jams) there were people selling everything while walking in amongst the cars (kites, water, bananas, newspapers, phone cards etc.). To give you an idea of the congestion, Calgary has approximately 1,300 people per square kilometer. Nairobi has 4,500 and they are all making a living in any way they can.
5. In terms of smells, (other) tourists are the most gamey things around.
6. I think I have seen everything on the back of a motorcycle. And, if you are in a motorcycle accident, you will probably still be crying on the side of the road two hours later.

So, it has been a bit of a culture shock. I would have liked to take pictures of the traffic and people, but I drew a considerable amount of attention just sitting in the back of the van (giving everyone my crazy-eyes, I'm sure). I was never sure when we would be stalled in traffic for 15 minutes or how the picture taking would be received. I didn't venture out walking on Sunday. Just not in the right frame of mind to face that kind of attention in person and alone. I'm in Nairobi again at the end of September so it will be interesting to see how I feel about it then.

 

Other than that, my hotel is lovely, good food, good service. On Monday I am off to safari in Maji Moto, or "hot water". Sorry for the ultra long post. Hopefully, there will be less text, less grumbling and more pictures in the future.