GETTING SOME THINGS MOVING

I was thinking over breakfast this morning on what plane tickets I have in my possession.  I still have flights back to South America that I haven’t used on my round the world ticket, I have the flights from Addis Ababa to London-one way and I also have the Malaysia Airlines ticket from Singapore to London.  What a hodge podge of flights.  Well I will be using the Addis to London ticket, and when I get a date home to visit Australia I could use that Malaysia flight, but it will be messy and as for the South American flights, even if I did use them, I will still need to pay for a one way ticket back to Africa and that is around the 2000AUD mark and really negates using the last of my round world ticket, just to use it.  I always knew that it would be unlikely I would use the flight components from London back to Santiago-but they are still there-an option if I need. 

I heard back from Frank Knight, well an affiliate of the company.  Very general, attached a current rental list and referred me to their web site and if I have questions to call.  I opened the attachment and there were only 3 apartments for rent, the others were sale properties and blocks of land and when I looked at the prices I almost died.  My budget for a place will fall in between 25,000KSH-42,000KSH which is basically 294AUD-494AUD and that is total for the month.  I know it doesn’t look much, but that is a lot for here and I was, well I will need to find something in that bracket.  I read a very helpful web site this morning saying that there are things that western people don’t think about when it comes to rental places here in Nairobi and one of them is security.  I plan to go into an apartment, but if you are looking at stand-alone houses, you need a 24 hour security guard, a dog and a gardener and these things cost extra money that people don’t allow for.  Well I will not be going into a stand-alone house, firstly I couldn’t afford it and secondly I think I would be terrified.  The 3 properties that were on the list were all 3 bedrooms (which I don’t need) and they were all around the 200,000KSH which is like 2,352AUD for the month.  Yes, well I am sure they are very nice-but I certainly will not be looking at those.  I’m going to have to Google this myself, which I did but looking at places that fall in my price range, they are adequate, they look nice-but where the hell are the suburbs?  I need an insider’s advice and I am going to call the only other person I know in Nairobi-George-on Saturday and ask of he will meet me and steer me in the right direction.  This is something that I just won’t be able to do on my own.  I don’t want to be 100km from the city and I don’t want to be in a ‘bad’ part of the city either.  Yes, I am definitely going to need help on this one and I am not afraid to ask.  I’ll email back Frank and say thanks for the speedy reply, but it is a little out of my price range. 

While I was Google’ing accommodation I found a great website that covers a lot of countries for ‘the expat’.  ExpatArrivals.com their catch phrase is local info for the global expat.  That’s me.  I guess that is what I am at the moment, an unemployed expat, but an expat all the same.  It is quite an extensive web site with the pros and cons of moving to Nairobi (too late for the cons), it covers the cost of living, accommodation and the costs associated including internet and security costs, working, moving to Kenya, essential information and a host of other things.  They have ‘specialists’ that you can talk to online, but you needed to sign up, so I have and I am now waiting for my confirmation email so I can go online and have a chat to someone about locations to be looking to live.  It also mentioned about looking for what they term ‘meet ups’ with other expats-I really like that idea and was wondering if they had something like that here.  I wonder if people go.  It’s something else for me to look into that is for sure.  I wonder if they have squash courts here.  That could be another thing I look into as a way of meeting people.  The web site mentioned that a lot of the jobs are not formally advertised.  Most post openings are communicated through word of mouth, hence it is advisable to join expat forums/groups and to attend the meet ups to get to know other expats in Nairobi.  That said there is a job vacancy web site Kenyacareer.com so I will also make sure I check that out.    

I also heard back from Clodagh about the contact she mentioned and quote ‘he is looking forward to my call’.  I have his name and number but unfortunately he is overseas until next week, but it is a name and a phone number of someone here and I will definitely be calling it upon his return.  That lifted me a little, gives me something to look forward to and as mentioned before even if he doesn’t have a job, just meeting him will hopefully open other doors, if not just for a conversation and meeting new people here. 

I have also today extended my stay at the hotel till Monday, making it a week here.  I was due to check out tomorrow and I am obviously in no way near ready to leave yet.  There were some tentative plans in place to go on a driving trip, but they have fallen down the wayside for now-so I just need to keep on with my own plans.  I’m prepared to pay for 2 weeks in the hotel, after that I would like to think that I would be close to finding a place…. Hopefully.

There is a sign here in the hotel that brings reality back to me.  The source is the UN (United Nations) that released some goals that they want to be met for the country of Kenya by 2015. 

They are called the Millennium Development Goals:

Halve the proportion of people living on less than a dollar a day

Ensure all children complete primary school

Educate boys and girls equally

Reduce the mortality rate among children under 5 by two-thirds

Reduce the maternal mortality rate by three quarters

Halt and begin to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS, malaria and other major diseases

Half the proportion of people without access to safe water and sanitation

Increase aid and improve governance

Things we take for granted are right here, in this message.  Things we take as an everyday given right and there are people in the world, people here in this country that don’t even have clean drinking water.  Yes a reality check for me.  Appreciate everything you have in your lives.  The things you take for granted, someone else is praying for. 

So the search continues.  I have another contact to email about a job, so I will do that tonight and I have a meeting next week hopefully with Clodagh’s contact, I will ring George on Saturday and I have the Expat web site.  So it is not like I am out of options and I just have to remember that even though it all seems hard now, I know that in a month’s time I will be looking back at this time and to think that I was worried.  Well that is my positive spin on everything for now.  I still have options and if I do happen to run out of those, the Australian Consulate will be hearing from me again-mark my words.

Do not give up

The beginning is always the hardest.