Birdlife

People who don't live in Kenya know about the animals living here, Big Cat Diary and the Elephant Orphanage featuring various such species. However, there's also a very diverse birdlife here with birds of all colours, shapes and sizes. A number of people living here, who perhaps would never have done so in their home countries, get interested in bird watching (and I include myself in that). And sometimes, you don't have to go very far at all! This Silvery-cheeked hornbill seems to turn up in my area of Nairobi around this time of year. Here, he's seen perching in the tree just outside my flat. I wouldn't want to mess with that head of his!

Entebbe Trip

I’m in Entebbe, Uganda at the end of a week’s stay here. I’m here principally to give 2 days of finance training to Project Leaders and Administrative staff. These took place on Tuesday and Wednesday. It was a new undertaking for me, so I was a little apprehensive as to how it would go. The 25 of us were rather crammed into the office’s living room (the office is a converted house), perhaps not the most conducive of learning environments. However, they were great participants and we had good times of discussion and interaction. The course seemed to be appreciated by all there, and I enjoyed my part in it too!
Being in Entebbe has also been a good opportunity for me to visit with some friends / colleagues here who will be leaving Uganda within the next couple of months. I fly back to Nairobi tomorrow. Hoping that it’ll be less stormy (and bumpy) over Lake Victoria than on the way over. However, the views of Mount Kenya, the Aberdares and the Great Rift Valley on the Kenya end of the journey were quite something.

Custom Made

I spent 5 hours driving around on Saturday, getting groceries but also ordering a frame to be custom made for a piece of Congolese cloth that I bought the previous weekend, and going furniture shopping. The framers was downtown, and I spent over an hour trying to get there (it’s only a few miles away), and then get parking. Interesting being downtown as I so rarely go there. Certainly a hive of activity. It always strikes me that it's very odd to be in a city, where you hardly ever go into the centre. And that of course is the part that has more history (or at least as much as a 100 year old city can have!), as it's where things started. Going by the number of people there that day, there must be quite a lot there! I keep meaning to go down on a Sunday afternoon when it's quieter and just have a wander around. Reasons for not going downtown are that I generally don’t need to, with various shopping malls in other parts of town, and it’s also fairly notorious for its security, or rather, lack thereof! As I walked along the broken up pavement amidst the mass of humanity, with vehicles passing by, I wondered how it would have been in the days of the early settlers when the city was just developing.
I then went up Ngong Road to look at some of the furniture being sold (and made) at the side of the road. I needed to replace some bedroom furniture due to some rearrangements in my 2nd bedroom after the arrival of a keyboard (on loan from some friends who’re away now for 18months). The furniture ‘showrooms’ aren’t exactly salubrious, being out in the open (they’re called ‘jua kali’, literally meaning ‘hot sun’ as that’s where they’re made). You rather wonder sometimes what state it’s all in having been exposed to the elements, plus the dust and pollution (it’s the 3-piece upholstered suites that would be decidedly the worse for wear, I’d think). Along that stretch of Ngong, there are umpteen places making and selling essentially the same thing. I wound up ordering a chest of drawers and a bedside table from one place, and will go back at the weekend to pick them up. So, something else custom made (albeit following a very common pattern)!