It's the Brrr season!

Sitting in traffic jams sometimes has an unexpected benefit. I’ve wanted to take these photos so I could write this blog for a couple of months now, but haven’t been able to stop to do so. Sitting on Mombasa Road in a huge line of traffic yesterday afforded me the opportunity! These billboards have made me smile ever since they popped up around Nairobi in October! The weather here is far from being “Brrr” (the thermometer in my car was reading 32C when I got home from work this evening!), so it seems that the way to attain temperatures found in other parts of the world during the festive season is to drink ice cold Coke! I can’t say that Coca-cola is a drink I associate with Christmas at all! However, it seems that Santa’s connection with Coca-Cola goes back to the 1920s, and stayed strong for decades! At that time, a campaign was started to connect Coca-Cola and winter, using Santa Claus as an icon of winter, in order to persuade people that Coca-Cola isn’t just a warm-weather drink. It may be something that’s been revived all over the world, I don’t know, but the connection is certainly alive and well here! One of the billboards in Nairobi shows Santa on a motorbike. My parents were telling me that Santa turned up on a Harley Davidson at the switching-on of the Christmas lights in my home town. It’s obviously the ‘in’ mode of transport for him this year! http://www.thecoca-colacompany.com/heritage/cokelore_santa.html

Never a dull moment!

Life is certainly full of surprises here. You never know quite what’s around the next corner. I left the office today, much as I do every other day. First encounter on the way home was a herd of cattle, wandering along the road. Not so unusual perhaps if I was somewhere rural, but our office is within 4 miles of the City centre (Capital City at that!). Round the next corner, I discovered that half the road had disappeared! Instead, there was a trench, at least 4 feet deep, and 10 feet across. Bizarrely, there was no sign of the earth / tarmac that had been removed! What was left was a narrow strip of pot-holed tarmac, just wide enough for 2 vehicles, though if one was a truck (as happened), it took a while to negotiate – with lots of onlookers giving ‘helpful’ advice! The purpose for the work is unclear. One friend suggested, tongue in cheek, that maybe, they’re building a flyover there or a super-highway. Who knows?!

Problems with Primates

Well, in my (nearly) 6 years in Kenya, I’ve had 2 monkeys in my car on 2 separate occasions, stealing sweets and crisps; I’ve had a picnic lunch swiped by 2 baboons; I’ve had to keep my windows closed over the hottest time of the year because of a Sykes monkey in the neighbourhood; and I’ve had a male baboon in my car (via the sunroof), and then take off with my cool bag. At one self-catering place on the coast, we were hounded by monkeys, one of which came in down the stairs, via the balcony, and was discovered on the dining table ready to tuck into my toast and marmite (of all the cheek!). This last weekend, however, was the first time that I’ve been robbed inside my dwelling place by a primate. I was enjoying a long relaxing weekend at the coast, following the completion of our accounting year end. Whilst in my hotel room checking out what was on TV, having just come back up from the pool / beach area, I heard a noise behind me and discovered a monkey there! What’s more, he’d already swiped a recently-opened packet of peanut brittle from the counter just beside me. On my shrieks of discovery, he ran out through the French windows, and then proceeded to tear into the packet before my very eyes. There was a ‘friend’ with him, perched on a nearby chair, but ‘friend’ was to get none of it. And all I could do was stand and watch (with the French windows now closed) while he made his way through this unexpected treat. We’re told not to feed the monkeys at such places, but 9 times out of 10, they seem to be well able to feed themselves!!!

Kenya's Hopes for the US Elections

“US Poll: Why the world backs Obama” was the headline in today’s Daily Nation, one of Kenya’s major newspapers. According to the report, Barack Obama is the world’s choice for the next President of the United States. That’s certainly been the feeling here in Kenya the entire election campaign, though very little has been mentioned about his policies, or where he stands on today’s current issues. He is Kenyan (or at least his father was), and therefore the country, it seems, is with him. A number of matatus have had his picture emblazoned across their rear window; I’ve overheard a father in a supermarket teaching his toddler to say, “Obama”; I’ve seen people wearing “Support Obama” T-shirts…. You’d think the election was here! Within African culture, people look after their own. It would appear that such expectations extend to those brought up in the US and Indonesia by an American mother and grandparents. There have been forecasts in the media over the last year of Kenya’s fortunes being on the rise should Obama be elected. In Sunday’s Nation, a number of people being interviewed anticipated tourism increasing due to people flocking to Kenya to trace Obama’s roots (not that he ever lived here!). His Kenyan branch of his family is clearly behind him: “Senator Barrack Obama’s relatives have congregated at Nyangoma Kogelo village and will remain together until after Tuesday’s US presidential elections. They have set aside a bull to slaughter in celebration should the Illinois senator, whose father was Kenyan, win.” Whichever way the election goes, I can’t help thinking that many Kenyans are going to be disappointed. I guess though that it’s taken the focus off last year’s controversial elections here for a while.

Oranges and Lemons

Oranges are orange, lemons are yellow, limes are green….. right? Well, they were all the timne that I was living in the UK. Here in Kenya however, things are a bit different. Oranges can be green as well as orange; lemons are more often green than yellow unless they’re imported; and limes can be both green and yellow! You’d think that after nearly 6 years living here I’d know the difference, but there are times that I still have to ask, or make mistakes as in the other week when I cut a small green fruit to extract lemon juice for a couscous salad, only to discover that it was orange on the inside – it was in fact a tangerine! (To illustrate this dilemma visually, the picture above is of (from left to right) an orange, a lime, a lemon, a lime.)

Here Today, Gone Tomorrow.....

Rather than a corner shop such as you’d find in towns in the UK, here there are dukas at the side of the road. These are generally fairly rustic-looking stalls selling a variety of relatively staple items from mobile phone scratchcards to fruit and vegetables, milk, meat, sodas (Fanta, Sprite, Coke, …) and bread. There’ve been a group of them about 100m along the road from my front gate. I can’t say that I was ever a regular shopper there, but occasionally I’d have the need to get some items, and various colleagues frequented them rather more often. It’s been a bit of a centre of life in the neighbourhood too, with people hanging around there for a good part of the day and evenings (as well as the dukas selling items, there was actually a pool table in one, a hair salon in another, and, I think, a tailor). So, I was rather surprised when I came back on Sunday from a weekend away to discover that they’d all gone! Apparently, people from the City Council and the police (some fairly inebriated) arrived at 2:30am Friday night in trucks, and proceeded to tear them down, taking some of the stock, burning things, and generally destroying whatever livelihoods the people working there had. I was told that it resembled a war zone on Saturday morning, with burning embers, electric wires hanging loose, and the owners salvaging whatever they could. Yes, they were probably there without permits, but they had been for at least 12 years, so surely that gave them some rights? It looks very empty down there now – and very dark at night, the electric bulbs which used to hang in each one, all gone. It makes you realise afresh how fragile life is here.

Impressions of Yaounde

I was in Yaounde, Cameroon for a week at the end of September for work meetings. Another opportunity to experience a new African country, and again, a Francophone one. Impressions gained from the trip were generally that life there is a whole lot more chaotic than here (I hadn’t thought that possible!). The plane there was the first introduction. I was travelling with our Francophone Regional Directors, who are well practised in dealing with these trans-Continental flights. First thing was to find out which side of the departure lounge we were going to exit by in order to board the plane. The reason? People seem to travel with an inordinate amount of hand luggage and these smaller planes don’t have quite as much space the overhead compartments as you get on the big jumbos. It was actually a bit like a glorified matatu or bus really. Once the doors were open, it was a scrum to get onto the plane (we were the first, having positioned ourselves by the door), and indeed, there wasn’t enough luggage space for all the paraphernalia that people had with them. I was warned too that our checked-in luggage might get bumped if there was too much (the plane went to Yaounde and then Douala, and sometimes, just luggage for one of these destinations gets through!). Thankfully, it all made it (I hadn’t thought to pack a spare set of clothes or toiletries in my hand luggage – I’ll know for next time!). Most of the time in Yaounde was spent at our organisation’s Centre there, so I didn’t experience much of local life. On the last day however, our meetings finished at lunchtime, and a Kenyan colleague and I were taken to a market in town by a lady who’s been working in Congo Brazaville for a number of years, and who’d spent some time previously in Cameroon, following an evacuation from Congo due to war. The taxi system is such that you just hail a cab at the side of the road, and see whether it’s going in the direction you want to go. Then you pile in, with whoever is there already. These are regular saloon cars, but it seems that 4 in the back, and 2 in the front passenger seat is the norm! The cars are all yellow, and just about all look pretty beaten up. I’d thought that driving in Nairobi was hazardous, but this seemed even more so. The market was a rabbit warren of a place. It was under cover, with narrow passageways between the stalls. The section we were in was mainly clothes and cloth. Bright African textiles – great against black skin, but not always so flattering to those of paler complexion! I was thankful in the market for my lack of French as it meant that I had no idea what people were saying (In Kenya, you’re constantly assailed by stallholders wanting you to look at their wares – “Looking is free”; “Promote me”; “I give you a good price”), though I was aware that my lack of response may have been taken as rudeness rather than cluelessness.
Leaving the country that night proved an ‘interesting’ experience. I flew back with Wairimu, who has even less French than me (whilst in Francophone Africa I’ve discovered that when I’ve been trying to dredge up my school French of 30 years ago, Swahili words have come to mind – encouraging for the Swahili, though not so great for communication purposes!). Our taxi driver had no English, but he was great chaperoning us through the various sections of Yaounde airport, pre check-in. Having stood in a queue for a short while, we were shepherded off to the back of the hall, where some guys were set up to wrap people’s cases. Ours were mostly wrapped, and then seemingly something wasn’t right, as they got unwrapped again, and our taxi driver took us off to another section where another group of people were wrapping cases in plastic. (On asking later, I was told that this was for the bags’ security – it would appear that theft there is common (actually, Wairimu had lost something from her locked case on the way).) We then went back to the queue, but were then told that we had to go elsewhere. A rather officious lady in uniform, then asked us about souvenirs. Despite the trip to the market, I had nothing, but she insisted on opening my case, which meant of course, that all the plastic had to come off, so she could rifle through my things. We finally made it through, got checked in, paid our departure tax (it can’t be that many countries these days where you pay to leave as well as to enter!), and got through Immigration, with ‘Sortie’ stamped in our passports. (On arriving back in Nairobi, I had to email through a scanned copy of the departure stamp as proof of actually having left – something to do with the application for the visa for entering still being in the pending pile….!)
I rounded off my time there by proving that I was a good student – guess who was first onto the plane?!