Cross-Cultural Living

Somehow today seems to have been full of cross-cultural incidents.
The day began at 3:15am in order to get to the airport and be checked in by 4:30am for the flight from Accra to Tamale. (It had never occurred to the Finance manager arranging the flight that not everyone is a morning person!) Thankfully for me, the time difference with Kenya was in my favour, and with this in mind, I’d purposefully kept to Kenyan time since my arrival 2 days ago. The taxi came to pick me up at 3:50am, and we were at the airport by 4! (Surprisingly not nearly so much traffic at that unearthly hour!!) There was one passenger in front of me, but other than a few members of airport staff sleeping on chairs, the domestic departures terminal was deserted! Passengers started to trickle in, as did the people at the check-in desks. However, far from having checked people in by 4:30am, it wasn’t until 4:40am that they opened for business! Hmm, I could have had another 40 minutes of sleep!
My ticket had been changed a number of times, and was still dated July 1st. There was much looking through notes and schedules until it was announced that I needed to speak to someone else. “You changed it to Friday”, she said. It had been changed due to sickness of the person I was meant to travel with, him delaying his flight for a couple of days, but I’d asked for it to be changed back as I wanted to get on with the work I’d come here to do. Evidently, that wasn’t reflected in their system. Thankfully, there were spare seats, and it was all sorted out. While I was back at the check-in desk, the one lady came over to speak to the other. Though they were speaking in the local language, I caught enough words in English to figure out that the ticket date had in fact been changed, but to the 29th July rather than 29th June! It struck me as odd that this was explained to the exclusion of the affected passenger! Possibly something to do with saving face....
I arrived in Tamale, and there was no one to pick me up! Well, that’s not the first time that that’s happened, but it is a little unnerving when you have no clue where you’re meant to be going. The driver did arrive in due course. Somehow he hadn’t believed it when he’d been told that the flight was going to be earlier than usual today.
Next cross cultural moment was in the office and asking where the toilets were located. “Do you want to pee or poop?” the young Ghanaian man I’m working with here asked, completely unabashed. It turns out that there are different toilets depending on the nature of the call. When he talked of urinals, I was rather expecting a cubicle with a hole in the wall in a corner as I’d experienced when travelling in Ghana previously, so was quite relieved to find regular toilets there.
Lunchtime : I’m staying at the guesthouse on the same compound as the offices. I was told that my lunch was ready, and on my way up to the guesthouse, was ushered into the dining room by someone at the door where a number of people were eating. It seemed quite natural that this was where I’d eat too. However, once at the counter, the lady serving looked very panicked and started saying something that I couldn’t understand. Others told me to sit down, so I did and started chatting with a few. There followed more discussion in the local language, evidently about me. A while later, I was pulled out of there and taken up to the guesthouse, where there was a plate of food set at a table, which I proceeded to eat in complete isolation!
The work day ended with my colleague packing my laptop away for me, and then looking somewhat put out when I turned down his offer of carrying it for me, having already got my backpack on my back. They never do that in Nairobi!!
So, that’s just day 1 in Tamale, Ghana!

Weekend Getaways

Getting away from traffic is probably one of the big motivating factors for me in periodically getting out of Nairobi for a weekend. That, and the stunning and varied countryside that lies beyond the city borders. In the last few weeks, I had a couple of such weekend escapes.
The first of these was to a cottage that I’ve stayed at many times now (4 already this year!). I took Jim and Rebecca with me. They’re over from the US for a few months, helping us out in the Finance department while a couple of staff are away. After 2 months, it was high time that they got out of the city! Away from all the traffic noise, the sounds heard from Hadada are the various bird calls made by numerous different species in this birdwatchers’ paradise, the occasional crowing of a rooster, and the grunting of hippos in the nearby flamingo-fringed lake. Set against a spectacular backdrop of hills and volcano craters in this part of the Rift Valley, with zebra, giraffe, eland, gazelle, hartebeest and warthogs roaming around freely, it is a perfect place to relax, go for walks and generally enjoy God’s creation.

Jim & Rebecca enjoying the view at Crater Lake

[For those who know Hadada, the elderly couple whose guest cottage it is, have both died in the last year. Hadada still remains available, at least while it goes through probate. It will be a sad day when it’s no longer there.]

Oldien Bay

The second weekend getaway was a new find – a nicely furnished house, just the other side of the Ngong Hills, about an hour of traffic-free driving away (not that it was traffic free on Friday afternoon!). The Ngong Hills form a dividing line in the landscape between the green more arable land towards Nairobi, and the dry, scrub land dotted with Masai manyattas going down (literally – about 6,000 feet down from the top of the hills!) to Lake Magadi. Whilst already down a ways, the house was perched on the hillside with a stunning view. There was the very occasional sound of a vehicle coming up the road, but otherwise, the peace was just punctuated by birdsong, baboons barking, cow and goat bells as Masai herded their livestock down below us, and on Sunday, the sound of singing from an open air church service off in the distance. Another great place to chill out with friends, away from the hustle and bustle of city life.

Jill seeing what she can see

The view from the bathroom!

A Picture of Relaxation!

The Pluses and Minuses of Nairobi

I’m often asked whether I like living in Nairobi. Like anywhere, it has its pluses and its minuses. As African cities go (and I’ve seen quite a number now), it is a good place to be. Ready availability of imported good as well as local produce, a plentiful choice of nice eating-out places, a very pleasant climate (varying between a good English summer and a bad English summer!), and various forms of entertainment, help to make life here not so very dissimilar to that experienced at home. (Someone said to me recently, “Nairobi is very close to Africa!”)
Two things however stand out as the not so pleasant features of life here:-
1. Security. Everyone in Nairobi it seems, knows someone who’s been carjacked, mugged, burgled, …. The crime rate is way higher than I’ve known elsewhere. Then again, the disparity of wealth is higher too. And whilst one doesn’t justify the other, it does perhaps explain it. Such concerns of security can be factors in stopping some from venturing out of their walled, razor-wired, guarded compounds, in the evenings.
2. Traffic. An increasing problem, and one that has caused me to cancel plans for an evening out with friends a few times now. As Nairobi’s middle class increases, so does the number of vehicles on the roads. The road infrastructure however doesn’t seem to develop at the same rate, the plans for a ringroad around the city seemingly remaining just that – plans. In order to go out pretty much anywhere, at least an hour has to be factored in. (A recent grocery shopping trip after work, which should have been a 5 minute drive, took over 1½ hours! The worst of it was that I couldn’t abandon the plan, turn around and go home, as impatient (a.k.a. selfish / thoughtless) drivers, trying to get ahead, had succeeded in completely blocking the road.)
My new strategy of beating the traffic on a weekday when I go out to Karen for flute lessons and home group, is to leave the office early, and continue working once I’m there. Except for a couple of occasions, I’ve saved myself about 45 minutes of sitting in traffic, by doing so. Such strategies may well become a regular part of life before too long.

Two lanes of traffic?!

The Relentless Loss of Friends

This afternoon, I was at the farewell party of a couple of friends, Stew and Jo, who are amongst the dwindling number of SILers (and close friends) who were in Kenya when I first arrived 8+ years ago. Whilst Kenya doesn’t have much climatically-speaking by way of seasons (hot dry season, short rains, cold dry season and long rains), May and June are definitely the months of goodbyes. For some, the leaving is just for a year’s home assignment, so whilst missed for that time, at least they’ll be back. For others, like the Johnsons, it can be the end of their time (in their case, 17 years) in Kenya.
Working in an international organization with missionaries from the US, Canada, New Zealand, Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, France, Australia, ….., as well as the UK, the added challenge of such goodbyes is that there is no guarantee of meeting up with some of these people again, as there would be if someone left your town for another in the UK.
This was an aspect of expat / missionary life that I wasn’t really prepared for, having said all my goodbyes (or so I thought) when I left the UK. Earlier on this year, when life was feeling very transient, I wrote down the names of SIL expat colleagues who’d left Nairobi in the 8 years that I’d been here – I got to 90 in no time at all! Some of those I didn’t know that well, but even so, that’s a lot of goodbyes, especially when you add others who’ve left, who I’ve known through church and orchestra.
My recent trip to Tanzania brought this home to me afresh. I really enjoyed the social interaction (and the playing) with the other members of the quintet, and it struck me how ironic and sad it was that I got to know Daris and Tom within a couple of months of them leaving Arusha, just 160 miles away, to go back to Austin, 8,860 miles away!!
However, whilst at times unsettling, having your life touched by the lives of so many (and touching theirs too) adds to the overall tapestry, each relationship depositing something separate and unique. And there are lots of people and places around the world to visit!

Some of those who've left, or are about to
(Apologies for the watermark!)

Medium-Sized Fish in Small Bowl!

There’s no doubt about it – Nairobi is a small bowl musically speaking. Opportunities come up here that never would for an amateur musician (a.k.a small / medium-sized fish!) like myself in the UK. Four years ago, I, and other members of Nairobi Orchestra, got to play with Cape Town Opera when they put on a condensed version of Porgy and Bess in Kenya. And that same year, I played a flute concerto – something I’d never dreamt of doing! In April, I was asked by a couple of professional musicians from Austin, Texas, who are working at Makumira University in Arusha, Tanzania for a year, to join them and 2 other professionals from the U.S. in some wind quintet concerts. Their usual flautist had been unable to join them – and there I was, just 6 hours up the road in Nairobi! A terrific opportunity, yet decidedly daunting at the same time! Even more so when I started to receive the music, which comprised predominantly of East African compositions containing a number of fairly complex rhythms taking me somewhat out of my comfort zone!

Mt Meru from the university campus

It was my first time in Tanzania. It was interesting to see the similarities and contrasts to Kenya. Or maybe I’m really just comparing it with Nairobi. On the Makumira University campus, it’s beautifully green, pollution-free, and away from the hustle and bustle of traffic and hordes of people that we know in Nairobi. Monkeys leap fearlessly from tree to tree, and casqued hornbills roost in the treetops. Dominating the background (when it’s clear) is Mt Meru – and from the 4th floor of the music building, you can see Mt Kilimanjaro. There’s not nearly so much available here as there is in Nairobi, and power cuts were certainly pretty frequent over the week. Tanzanians, at least those I met, are very friendly, and reminded me of Ugandans (or up-country Kenyans) in that respect. Very courteous, and speak ‘safi’ (literally clean) Swahili, rather than the ‘less correct’ Swahili spoken in Kenya. (They say that Swahili was born in Tanzania, got sick in Kenya, died in Uganda, and was buried in Congo!!) Around the campus are the sounds of music of various forms – both Western and African. The music programme there seems excellent, and the teaching staff very supportive of the students, having evidently invested significantly and personally into the programme and the students themselves.

Tree-lined path at Makumira University campus

The music that we were playing in the 2 main concerts was the culmination of a project that Daris has been doing over the last year, encouraging the writing of music in an East African style for Western instruments, so that they could be introduced in a Western context. Some of our pieces were written by students here, whilst others were from students from Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda. Interspersed were a couple of more traditional wind quintet pieces – partly reward to the listeners’ ears, and partly as a bit of respite for our brains!!

Wild Basin Winds and Friends



The Medium-Sized Fish!

Wild Basin Winds and Friends consisted of myself on flute, Liz on oboe, Gary on clarinet, Daris on bassoon, and Tom on French horn. For quite a number of pieces, we were joined by Randy on piano, plus various djembe players. We also had a small choir (and a cowbell!) on one particular piece telling of a man of respect coming to talk to a group of young people about life. 

We had rehearsals together each evening, and it was fun! It was such a privilege to play with such talented musicians, and be a part of this beautiful sound that each instrument was contributing to. For the people of Arusha, it was a rare opportunity to go to a concert performed by professionals. And for this amateur, the whole experience was just a real treat.



Musicians and one of the composers, Kaghondi

As well as the main concerts, we presented a slightly different programme in 2 schools, including brief introductions to the various instruments. Both were received very well by the children, the first being the most notable in that the children there had probably never seen these instruments before.
 

With the singers and Dr. Tamusuza from Makerere University, Kampala

 I’m not sure that I’ll ever get an opportunity to play with a group of this calibre again, but living in a small bowl like Nairobi, you just never know! 

The Icing on the Cake - Mt Kilimanjaro as viewed from the shuttle bus on the journey home