Menacing Mozzies!

What can be worse than the high pitched whine of a mosquito around your ear at night? I seem to have had a (very) minor infestation of them since I got back from the UK a couple of weeks ago, certainly more than I remember having previously. And that despite not having windows open at this time of year. Then again, doors and windows aren’t exactly sealed here, and mosquitoes really are very small. Some of them however don’t find the cracks - each morning, I’m greeted by a swarm of them when I open my front door!

It amazes me that they only seem to have a knack of making their presence known at that point at which I turn off my bedside light, and then apparently make a beeline for my ear. Or so It seems. On turning the light on, of course they vanish, though at times the whine continues with no mozzie visible (at least not to eyes no longer aided by contact lenses or glasses).

Both of my chemical lines of defence, a can of Doom and Vapemats, don’t appear to be as potent as they once were. Not to mozzies at least – I do however sometimes wonder what the effect of long term exposure is on my own health! The only thing that works these days is my bug zapper, a battery-operated racquet which, on making contact with a mosquito (or any insect), produces a satisfying spark and crackle, and the demise (and cremation) of the ‘unfortunate’ target. I do seem to have had more success recently in zapping them, getting at least one or two a day. Not sure if that is due to sluggishness on the part of the mozzies, or if I’m stealthier in my stalking them.

Thankfully, most mosquitoes here aren’t the anopheles kind which carry malaria. They’re just the kind that can cause sleepless nights, and itchy (sometimes nasty) bites.

The legs of a visitor (who'll remain nameless) after a night in my apartment!

The Great Mystery of Nairobi

I grew up knowing that red is red, meaning stop, and green is green, meaning go. However, in Nairobi, red could mean stop and it could mean go. And the converse applies equally well – green could mean go, but it could equally mean stop. Such is the mystery of approaching a traffic light here.

When I first came to Nairobi in February ’03, I’m not sure that there were traffic lights, or if there were, they were few and far between. I remember seeing a public service announcement on local television around 2004 advising pedestrians what to do following the installation of pedestrian crossing in central Nairobi. That must have been the start of the growth of the phenomenon of traffic lights. It was never clear what to do when you approached a red light. Any sign of stopping at them might lead to the cars behind you either driving around you, or alternatively hooting impatiently. I did hear of people occasionally being fined (or threatened with fines) by policemen at roundabouts with traffic lights.

In August 2013, things reached new heights when many of the roundabouts and junctions in the central part of Nairobi were adorned with new traffic lights with countdown mechanisms telling you how many more seconds you had to wait until the light turned green or red. And with cameras at all the junctions to catch those who weren’t abiding by the traffic lights. This led to some observance of whether the light was red or green. However, for some reason, it was still seen as necessary to have policemen at these particular roundabouts, who nine times out of ten themselves seemed to take no heed of the lights. I dreaded approaching a red light. All of my instincts told me to stop, yet the general flow was to go. What a dilemma! I’d choose routes to avoid the lights, rather than face the unknown meaning of a red light. And be thankful whenever a light was green.

When I headed out of town this afternoon, I approached a green light at a roundabout. Yet traffic was flowing around it from the entry points that must surely have been red. When it turned red, that was when the cars in front of me started creeping out onto the roundabout. It really is a mystery. I hope one day to understand what to do. Or maybe I've missed something altogether, and the lights and the numbers counting down, and the cameras flashing, are in fact merely a rather expensive decorative feature?