GOING SOLO

So I’m settling into my place just fine.

I need to get used to the metal clang of our front and back doors. Not so much during the day, but at night time it sounds like it is your own door and the first few nights I had to just relax knowing it wasn’t my doors opening and closing. GG showed me a way to close the top latch where it can’t be reached from the outside and when I go to bed now I make a habit of checking the doors, so when I do hear the metal I know it’s not mine. The upside of the metal doors and the noise is that there is no way of sneaking in quietly-you will always be heard!

The things in the apartment that needed fixing are slowly getting done and I can cross them off my list. I even got a carpenter to come in to build me some shelves over the sink so I had somewhere to put the ‘bathroom’ stuff as the shower room is not the place as the whole room is a wet room. If you need something here, if it can’t be bought, it can be made and I paid 1500KSH which is like 17.64AUD, which I was happy to pay, which was for the materials and the carpenters time. While he was here he fixed the bedroom drawers and the kitchen cupboards-so I am a happy camper. I am still waiting for the cable man to come to fix my DStv, which is a little annoying as I am currently paying for my subscription and not able to watch the channels, but I will leave it a few days and then follow up again with Charles as it is something to do with the connection rather than my account. In the meantime GG has copied 165 movies onto my external hard drive, so I am not short of TV viewing, but it irks me I am paying for something and not able to use it especially when it is something I don’t know the first thing about to try and fix it myself! My washing machine needed tweaking, as when it spins it shakes like crazy and pulls the hose out from the wall-so we are waiting for the plumber to come back and see what he can do for me there. They are all small things, but like I mention everything is getting fixed in a timely manner-so it is all I can ask. I LOVE having an onsite manager-it is like having a man around the house without all the bullshit!

I have bought some light fittings, one for the lounge room and one for the bedroom. Slowly slowly I am making a home. I am one of those people that want it all decked out, like yesterday-but I am going to hold off till I get my boxes sent from home. I will just buy some small things to just give it a bit more of a homely feel. I am going to get a long mirror this week and pop that on the wall, I think that will look really good and I saw some wood carving heads that I am thinking of getting-and a trip to the Masai Market on Friday, other than that I will wait. That reminds me I have to get onto Michelle and tell her what bags and boxes I want sent. Before I left Australia I packed 20 bags and boxes and for each one I inventoried each one and numbered them from 1 through to 20, so I can tell Shelly to send bags 1,3,4,5 and I will know exactly what is in them and what I will get. Pretty organised huh! If it was up to me I would get them all sent at the same time but the issue is getting them from Nairobi International to home. It is going to be a 50AUD return taxi fare, so whatever I get sent has to be able to fit in a taxi. GG has given me a name of a removalist that he used, so maybe I should look that up as the first round of boxes don’t include my souvenirs and I think I really want them here. In saying that with my 20 boxes I am not sure I will have room for everything I have packed. I guess I have a whole spare room that I am foreseeing will become my dumping ground until I get all my things organised. I would ideally like to pop a single bed in the spare room as I am hoping that all the people that have said are going to visit-will, I will need to have that and with my couch I will be able to sleep 2 people comfortably. Speaking of beds-I got a call from Joseph, the bed guy, that they were going to deliver it this afternoon!!! Yip yay. This bed was made for the size of my mattress-again if they don’t have it, they will make it. I also got matching bedside tables. It is 100% mahogany and when it was delivered, it was put together and moved into place, which I am glad they did as I tried to straighten it a smidgen when they left and it weighs a TON!!!! It looks great I have to say and it is nice to be off the floor.

The unit doesn’t come with an oven or cooktop that is something that you need to supply yourself. I had bought an electric top BBQ which will be perfect for here as I am not a cook, so I don’t need the oven and all the bells and whistles-but it is Brisbane-Australia. They do sell them here, but it would be silly to buy one here to then get one set in the next few weeks. So all my cooking/dinner has been microwavable to date. I have had soups, 2 minute noodles, hot dogs, fish fingers and my nightly meal has consisted of a baked potato that hasn’t worn thin yet but I have to say I am missing my meat meals and I really need to get onto Shelly to get those bags sent. I am also missing my sandwich maker which that’s right is also in Brisbane and again they have them here, but makes no sense to buy another one. MUST. GET. BAGS. SENT.

I did have another win this week and I finally worked out the tap in the shower. All the taps I have in the house are singles. There is not hot water tap in the kitchen, only one tap for the bathroom sink and there is only a hot water tap for the shower, there is no cold. There is a switch that needs to be turned on to get the hot water, so if you didn’t put this on then that is how you will get a cold shower. I am not a cold shower person so I have always flipped the switch. My very first shower was awesome, super-hot and if anything a little too hot and my next 2 showers were luke warm at best and not sure if I wasn’t giving enough time to heat up and that was the issue, so to see if that was the problem I flipped the hot water switch before I went to bed, if that wasn’t enough time then I may have to have a word with Charles. The water temperature was and shower-able, but not pleasant. Well today I worked out the trick. If you turn the tap enough to get a good flow it is boiling hot, the more you turn the tap to get more flow, the cooler it gets-you should have seen my naked smile from ear to ear when I had a hot shower in my favour once again. Thank goodness.

I started the week on a positive note and I contacted a friend of a friend so to speak. An ex-co-worker, Clodagh gave me the name and number of a very good friend here in Nairobi and as she puts it someone I can trust of I need to ask anything, which is really nice to know that I do have someone I can count on, even if I don’t know them yet. I contacted Joshua last week to just touch base and today we made an appointment for Wednesday to meet up at his office on the other side of town. I checked with Charles how much a taxi would cost to get there and he made a call to a taxi buddy and said it was 500KSH to the village and then 1000KSH from the village to my destination. That works out to be 17 each way-but at this point I am happy to pay as I think the experience and the opportunity will be worth more than the monetary value. Charles said to just let him know when I need the driver and he can set it up for me-which is really nice and I also now know how much it will cost me to get to the shops and I think 5.88AUD each way isn’t too bad at all. When the carpenter finished my cabinets, he mentioned to me that he has a car and would also be happy to drive me around, so I asked his prices and he said 200KSH to the village and 500KSH to the other side of town-so a BIG difference and he seems nice enough as I have dealt with him a few times. So I got his number and when he has finished up on the units here I may give him a go.

GG came over this week to give me my curtains that he got his friend to make and he also bought 3 of his friends as he was taking them into work in town on the way. I got 4 sets of curtains and I am happy with 2 of the 4. They are very ‘African’ made, which I should of expected, I think I still may have my western standard glasses on and I need to start taking them off in regards to a few things. I can buy curtains and I will do so for the lounge room and for my bedroom, but the kitchen and spare room curtains look great. What I will say, is it was great to meet some of GG’s friends. I am looking at having a house warming party and it is a few more people that I will be able to invite! Over a cold drink I tried to find the photos of GG dressed in a mini skirt to show his friends, just to embarrass him a little, from our dress up party in Malawi-but I wasn’t able to find them on my hard drive. I know they are there somewhere but they just weren’t to hand. It is awesome, I can plug in my hard drive to my TV and I can look at all my trip photos on a 43# TV screen. My pictures look amazing, if I say so myself, and I will have to make time to view them and finally relive the places and things I have seen over the last 22 months. I have the time now and I should be using it wisely as I am sure when things pick up I will get busy again.

I got the guys to drop me off at the Village Market on their way into town; this was going to be my first outing on my own. I know I’m not far from home-but it is the small things that make you feel like you are taking big steps. With a hug for GG and Esther as she came to sit in the front seat I went to walk past the security guys that check the cars before they enter the car park and one of the guys asked where his hug was-well who am I to deny a hug when given the opportunity, so I hugged a random stranger as GG turned around and beeped on his way out and I walked into the shopping centre feeling like a million bucks. I am a hugger from way back! It was nice to come to the centre on my own and not have the pressure of someone with you, as I hate holding people up when they are doing me a favour. I had time today to have a good look around and see exactly what was in ‘my’ shopping centre. As said before, it is a ‘western’ shopping centre. There are more white people walking around here, not to say there aren’t African people as well, but mostly whities. In my walk around what is mainly an outdoor centre focussed around a large eatery that has about 7 places serving Chinese, Indian, a café, German, local cuisine to name a few. I found a dentist, which I hope I won’t need to use, a hairdresser that I got a price of 5000KSH for a cut (58AUD) which I think for a haircut is not bad, but in Africa it is expensive. But I do know that there will be few places that will cut a ‘whities’ hair as when I was here last time and asked around a lot of them only know how to work with African hair and won’t touch a westerner. I wonder if part of it is because if they make a mistake they will get into trouble? Not from me. I’ve had my fair share of bad haircuts on my Odyssey and one thing I have learned is that it will always grow back! There are a few computer shops, phone shops, a big sports store, some up market souvenir shops, photo shop and some specialty stores as well. I did see a travel agency-there is a Carlson Wagonlit store and it got me thinking maybe I should hand in my resume there and try and pick a day or 2 a week there if they need someone? Just a thought and it is so close to home-I think I just will drop it in and see if they call, what have I got to lose? I decided to eat at the eatery and have a proper meal that wasn’t cooked in a microwave. I may make this a weekly thing ‘a shout myself a meal’ treat-yeah, until I get my cook top from Australia.

I used the internet for the first time in a week and I am surprised I have lasted this long. It wasn’t the cheapest at 350KSH for an hour, which is like 4.11AUD)I must admit I have had a small outlet and that is with my second sim card that I purchased with safari.com as it gives me better coverage in the apartment. With my current sim card with Airtel I have to sit my phone on the kitchen window or bedroom table to get reception and as I have given that number out to everyone now, I’m sticking with it and using the Safari sim to get onto the internet before I go to bed each night. The other good thing with safari.com (Airtel do it too) is that you can pay bills using your mobile phone. So like where we do internet banking and BPay back in Australia, they have a similar set up here in Kenya but on the mobile phone as the people have more access via that method than via computers. I can pay my DStv cable bill this way, so I needed to load money onto my account, which is linked via my mobile number. If you have a Kenyan bank account you can transfer money that way, otherwise you can go to an authorised dealer, give them your money, show some ID, sign a register and the money is now on your phone. When you set up your sim card, you add a pin number to the account, so if your phone is lost or stolen people can’t go crazy spending your money. It’s a great idea and you can also send people money via this account from your mobile to their mobile phone account and then they go to an authorised dealer to get the money out. Ingenious I say for a developing country. I think I will be able to pay my internet bill this way and also my rent, but I need to check and get their biller codes if this is the case. It will save me having to walk around with thousands of schillings and a lot safer as well.

I took my time waking around ‘my’ supermarket/store as my last stop for the afternoon and crossing things I needed off my premade list. The manager guy who signed me up to their reward programme came over and said hi, which was sweet and explaining to me I had quite a few membership points that I could use for this shop if I wanted to. I’ll save them for when I have a low budget week and then made my way to the taxi rank with the hope that they weren’t going to rip me off. You MUST make sure that you agree on a price before getting into any taxis, this has been installed in me since arriving. So I asked the dreaded question, ready to come back with my counter offer when he told me 500KSH, which is the going rate, so I went right-well that great and we packed up my shopping bags for the 10 minute drive home. What a successful trip and week so far. My bed arrived, my curtains are up, I staked out the shopping centre, I shopped, I added money to my mobile account, I bought mobile credit and I made it home safe. Things are really progressing and I am feeling ON TOP OF THE WORLD.