NAIROBI 5 MONTHS ON

It is hard to believe that I have now been in Kenya for 5 months! 

I only have 12 weeks until I head out on the road again for a 10 week trip, home for a week back in Nairobi and then I am on a plane to Australia for 4 weeks.  Yes time has moved so fast, and I have a funny feeling the second half of the year is going to fly just as fast as the first.  Don’t they say time flies while you are having fun and I would have to agree.

I continue to meet and make new friends, which is a BIG thing for me and will hopefully always be a constant here, which I think with the kind of community that resides here in Nairobi, with the expat residents coming and going it is a given at any time with most people here on a contract of some sort for all sorts of time frames.  Considering I am a little restricted at the moment in things that I can get to or organise re: not having a car and spending a fortune on taxis I think I am doing okay.  Knowing that this will change next year when I buy my car in January, it is a bitter pill (the spending and not being able to attend everything) to swallow for the last 12 weeks of my time here.  Speaking of new friends I never really thought about making contacts through The Nest but indeed I have, and I met a fellow volunteer at The Nest.  After meeting Elsabe for the first time a few weeks ago, I have seen her every time I have been down at the shops (which is weird to start with) and in the last 2 weeks I have been invited to attend a SAWA meeting at the end of June, an invite to her husband’s surprise party on Saturday, coffee and cakes next week, a coffee morning on Thursday and an invite to check on their dogs while they are away in South Africa next week and the best part of all of it (besides a new friendship) is that Elsabe lives on ‘my’ side of town, actually just down the road from me in the ‘mzungu’ estate next to Village Market.  Yes I have been very lucky in the meeting of several key friends here and I am thankful every day that I have them in my African life. 

I’ve just about got my apartment all set as ‘home’.  In my last shipment from Australia I had around a dozen paintings that I had collected on my World Odyssey.  So I decided to get them all framed and I know where I am going to hang them all.  I used a local carpenter (Peter) across the road from my apartment building when I first needed shelving and a mirror and he did a great job, so I went back there this week and took my pictures with me and asked him to price them all out for me.  I went back in the afternoon and he had them all measured and costed for me on a piece of paper and the individual cost for each of the 12 paintings.  He really is very thorough and I asked if he has given me a fair price and he said he had and when I looked at the breakup of each picture they roughly worked out to be approximately 25AUD per picture and this included a custom made frame and also with a glass cover.  I didn’t think that was too bad at all and I look forward to getting them next week.  I asked if Peter would be kind enough to hang them properly for me and he said that it wouldn’t be a problem (obviously for a tip) so at least I won’t have to worry about them falling off the wall if I was to try and do it myself, especially when there is glass involved.  I can’t wait for them to be up on my walls, just a few more travel reminders sprinkled through my apartment.

This week I also finished my feature wall that I have been working on the last few weeks.  I initially saw a picture of a travel agency on the web that had countries in cut out letters spelt on their wall and I thought what a nifty idea.  So while I was in London I was on the hunt for an alphabet stencil, which were around, but for the size that I wanted.  So I bought 100 sheets of coloured card home with me and I picked a font off my computer that I liked, saved the alphabet to my USB stick, went to the internet café and got them to print off the 26 letters and then I cut them out and used them as my template.  Pretty smart huh.  I was choosing cities rather than countries and I first thought that I would only get around 15 cities out of the paper I bought, but when I finally finished (and after purchasing more card) I ended up hand cutting 467 letters compromising of my favourite 76 countries that I have visited on this amazing planet of ours.  I had a lot of fun doing it and piecing it together on the wall was a little of a challenge, like a jigsaw puzzle, as I had to make sure that the curly letters weren’t overlapping other curly letters and that full countries would fit on each line exactly.  Oh yes it was a process, but it all worked out and I LOVE my city feature wall-I think it really looks impressive, it means a lot to me and also quite rewarding that I had done it all myself.         

The other home improvement I had to get was a dish for my cable TV.  The apartment building came with a dish that we could all hook out DStv accounts to but when I set up my account what they failed to tell you was that on a ‘share’ dish you may not get all the channels that you pay for, it’s an issue with the share dish.  I also find there is a lot more distortion on a share dish than having your own, so I contacted my provider for them to send out an installer, which I made an appointment for him to come out at 9am on Monday morning and he was here on time, which was a total shock and he had 2 workman in tow to help him install the dish.  It only took them 45 minutes and they really did a great job as they had to run the cable from the actual TV to the dish that was mounted outside inn my small courtyard.  They took into account having the cord running where people could see it and hid it really well as it had to run from the lounge room through the hall and into the kitchen.  I felt like a kid at Christmas when he showed me that all my channels were now working and after paying him the 6000KSH (4500 for the dish and 1500 for the installation) I decided to not tip as he was getting the money directly, but after he left I think I should have given a little extra and felt bad all afternoon that I hadn’t tipped, as it is a culture thing here and I do believe in tipping in good work done and don’t know why I didn’t, now that I think about it.  Sorry Mr DStv installer man…   

I had Katie and Jo come over to ‘my side’ of town last week for dinner and a sleep over.  I am not sure why it didn’t hit me sooner to invite them to my place and for once not have to pay for a 50AUD taxi fare to them.  Thinking about it now, we should alternate the weeks.  It’s not like there isn’t anywhere for us to eat my side of town and I think that is a great and fair way to try and keep my taxi bill down for the next 12 weeks.  Anyway there is nothing like guests to get you place in ship shape condition and I was looking forward to showing off my place to friends as I am pretty proud what I have done to it to make it home, especially the city feature wall and they loved my place.  I am actually pretty proud of all my travel pieces I have on show and I am still glad I paid money to have them shipped from Australia.  Katie loved my bookshelves that I had made by Peter, that she left me some deposit money and asked me to see him again and order 2 more for her place.  I really do like them and we were going to go over together the next morning, but as we only got to bed at 5.30am after drinking nearly 3L of wine, Katie said she will pass and if I could go over in the next few days.  So I went and saw my mate Peter again and showed him pictures of what he had done for me in February with ‘girl’ measurements, which I forgot to do one of them, so I told him it would just be best of he came over to my place and measured up the ‘boy’ way to make sure what I had was right.  While he was here I also got him to measure up the spare space in the second bedroom and I am going to get another set of drawers made to fit in there, I also got him to measure up some baskets for the drawers that GG and I had bought in April, and while he was there he waxed the drawers for me so that they slid in and out better and one drawer that particularly gets stuck he said he will fix when he comes back next week with the pictures, and to think I didn’t even buy these drawers from him and he is happy to help me-he really is a nice guy.  So it is also really nice that I can give him some work from Katie and we have also added a mirror to her order, so he had a nice piece of business walk through his shed doors this week.    

Another piece of housekeeping I need to look into is medical insurance for myself here.  The last thing I want is to have an accident here in Nairobi and have to either pay squillions of dollars for care, have to be lifted out and cost another gazillion or not have coverage and not being able to seek treatment.  I never worried about private health insurance back home, but I have a feeling it would be a more of a priority here than anywhere back in Australia.  So last week I started Googling companies and I found one broker who came back with 7 companies that ranged from 1200AUD to 1500AUD for the year.  I was hoping to get it a little cheaper so I enquired with 2 major companies here in Kenya and you do have an option of inpatient/outpatient which is around 900AUD or you can just opt for the inpatient option for around the 500AUD mark, which I am thinking is all I will need for now.  I am just worried being involved in an accident and not having coverage.  I know to look at all the limits and what the excess is, but I have also spoken to a few people here and a lot of them are with the company I am looking at, so I am feeling good about the information I have been sent and I think I will sign up this week.  Speaking of insurance I also need to look at travel insurance for my upcoming trip to West Africa.  I actually scared myself a little on my trip to London when on my last day there before shipping home to Africa, I realised that I didn’t have any travel insurance for the trip to the UK.  It is the first time EVER in my travel history that I have travelled without insurance.  A little scary huh!!!!  I must get onto that this week as well.

Speaking of travel we finally booked out flights to Mombasa this week.  Katie and I are going for 3 nights and Jo and Jess are going to come for 2 nights.  We have emailed a property to check availability and just waiting for a reply to come back but we are heading off at the end of July and it will be nice to get away for a long weekend to suck cocktails on a beach and enjoy some girly company.  I have heard a lot of good reports about Mombasa, particularly Diani Beach and I am really, really looking forward to the mini break.  I guess it is like the lead in holiday before my run of trips start in August.   

I was to meet Jo and Katie for dinner at Junction on Friday night.  Normally the trip takes around and hour, maybe a little longer depending on the traffic for the day.  As it was Friday and it started to rain in the afternoon, we had allowed 1.5 hours for our trip with Steve picking me up at 5.55pm for a 7.30pm date.  Ay anytime during the day, you just never know what the traffic is going to be like (unless it is after 10pm)-it really is that unpredictable and today was no different.  For Steve and I to travel less than 25km today it took us 2 hours and 10 minutes!!!!!!!  Can you believe that?  There were times that Steve even turned off the engine because we just weren’t moving for 10-15 minutes at a time.  Even for Nairobi traffic it was a shocking run but the good thing was that everyone is affected and everyone was late not getting to Junction till after 8pm.  The crazy thing is pretty much after 10pm every night you could shoot a gun down most road arterials and not hit a single car.  Needless to say the journey home at 11.45pm after dinner only took us 20 minutes!  We should make all appointments, parties, coffee dates and dinner dates after 10pm each night-if only we really could do that.  It was a lovely night catching up with Katie and Jo and meeting a new friend Jess.  Katie and I joke about becoming friendly with expats that are here only for a short time, but we have let Jo and Jess into our inner sanctum even though that are only short termers and it will be really sad when Jo actually heads back to South Africa in August, and this is exactly why we don’t want to get too attached to people who are on short term contracts-as you say goodbye to great people and for me at the moment when I am spending 50AUD on taxis to the ‘other side’ of town I want to make sure that I am trying to cultivate friendships for a longer term.  It may sound harsh but that is the way of Katie and Bernie world in Kenya. 

I ended off a great week with a surprise birthday dinner for Elsabe’s husband Altu on Saturday night.  There were 2, no 3 great things about this and one was it was on my side of town: so for a 6.30pm meet I left home at 6.20pm (traffic is not as bad ‘my’ side of town).  Two: I got to meet some new people and three: I got to see the Lord Errol restaurant and what a great experience that was.  I got to the restaurant at exactly 6.30pm and I was pleasantly surprised.  The premises is tucked away on Ruaka Road at Runda and when I said goodbye to Steven and told him I’d see him at 10.30pm, I walked into the building and it reminded me straight away of a country club and felt like I had to be a member and sign in somewhere.  I found the front bar, where we were to meet and walk in, but not knowing who else was joining us for dinner, I just headed straight to the bar and ordered a glass of wine and asked for the Wi-Fi password.  If in doubt: bar and Wi-Fi, it never fails.  Called the Highlander Bar, it really was the lap of mzungu luxury in Nairobi.  The tartan carpet and elegantly furnished plush arm chairs and a lounge with a fireplace gave The Highlander a traditional but elegant feel.  The wood panelling, brass and vintage photographic memorabilia set the scene of the Erroll (Happy Valley) era of Kenya in the late 1930's and with the waiters in their white jackets and shiny buttons, it felt like I had steeped back in time.  There were small groups of other mzungu’s around and I actually felt like I wasn’t even in Nairobi-but it was very much a country club feel.  By the time I had checked in on Facebook, the birthday boy and family had arrived and I went over with glass of wine in hand for the introductions.  They looked like a friendly group as we made our way to our table, after I had to rush back to the bar, as I had forgotten to pay for my wine-not a good look!!!!       

The Lord Erroll is made up of multiple dining rooms that can be booked privately for groups as small as six and as large as eighty. With exquisite Classic French cuisine, superior service and a winning wine list, The Lord Erroll is the premier French and gourmet restaurant in East Africa.  We were seated on the Terrace for the night which was a big massive veranda that wraps around the whole building and there were massive round lanterns hanging every couple of meters and they looked like big round moons and it really gave the whole place a great ambience.  The renowned terrace which adjoins the Highlander Bar, the Conservatory and the Claremont overlooks their delightful garden setting, complete with waterfalls, streams and ponds.  As it was a little cooler they had patio heaters to keep us warm all night long.  Considering the standard of the place the meals were reasonably priced and I had a prawn cocktail for entrée, turkey cordon blue for main and then the piece de resistance was Elsabe had baked a beautiful ‘pig in mud’ cake all hand made by her and her daughter Natanje, and it was an amazing piece of cakeman-ship to rival cake boss AND tasted divine to boot.  I had a really great night and with kisses and hugs to all my new found friends, Steve picked me up at 10.30pm and we were home at 10.35pm!!!  I had a skip in my step and a smile on my knowing that I had met some extraordinary people that night.

So I have now been in Nairobi for nearly 5 months now and I am really enjoying my time here.  My next step is to get the correct visa so that I can volunteer ‘legitimately’, once I have that I can get my alien card which will permit me to buy a car and get discounts on safari’s, national park fees and other things and then I will be able to apply for a Kenyan driver’s license, just to get all the official things done, along with my medical insurance-I am cementing myself into a country that I am falling in love with more every day.