Toronto-Schipol-Nairobi
Sunday, May 18th, 2008. Nairobi, City Centre, 20C or so, humid, overcast, rain feels likely. No umbrella.
The flights to Nairobi went well, though there was little sleep and not enough food. KLM to Schipol Airport in Amsterdam was very good and I then had a three hour transfer/lay-over. I spent the time in the airport walking in a big circle around the terminal in a bit of daze, trying to get the blood flowing through my legs, cramped from the flight where they were pressing against the seat in front of me at all times.
It was 7.30am local time in Amsterdam, 1.30am Toronto, and the bars were doing a good business with the flyers. Heavy rain out on the tarmac. Kenya Airways was nice and the crew friendly, not freakishly nice like the Dutch crew of KLM, who were almost too much smile. The flight was about one-sixth empty, and I had emergency exit row seating. I slept a bit here and there, but the child in the row next to mine screamed every so often for the second half of the flight.
At Jomo Kenyatta Airport, I found my pick-up without a problem, though he was a bit unhappy with the fact that my flight had been delayed by a good half hour (at Schipol, they had had to remove a passenger and their luggage from the flight after boarding had completed) and he had been waiting for an hour by the time we met. He was squeezed between a mass of other expectant drivers, family, and friends awaiting travellers at the exit gate and I felt for the guy. My two bags made it to Nairobi, and the Jim Cab driver took me to the hostel in silence, too tired or disinterested to converse. It was 8.45pm local, 12.45pm Toronto.
The hostel had a single room available which I took over the four-person dorm, needing sleep desperately. I showered and then ordered a meal from the hostel kitchen, where a lone cook prepares meals to order. A quarter chicken–thigh–fried in oil, some french fries, a coleslaw, and a chicken stock based soup for around 6$. I spent the night talking with the owner Andy and drank some beer to put myself into a deep sleep around 12am.
May 17th, I awoke once early before dawn, a cock crowing somewhere nearby, and what I took in my sleep-state monkey crying out above me. I returned to sleep and woke up close to noon. Over a full breakfast–two fried eggs, two sausage, two strips of bacon, two slices of buttered white toast, baked beans in tomato sauce, half a mango, and a mug of tea ($4.50)–I studied and enjoyed being where I was.
Following breakfast, I planned going to walk into the city centre from the hostel, which is about twenty minutes west south west of there by foot, when I was pulled back to the eating area by a friend of the owner. I so spent the next three or four hours chatting, drinking, and eating with an American, his Kenyan wife, two year old son, and in-law. A big gregarious and easy going white-haired man with a barrel stomach, Jim was originally from Oklahoma, Stanford educated in Economics, did two years of a law degree at the University of Virginia, and had a Masters from Columbia. It turned out that he had lived a great deal abroad and in East Africa, having originally gone to Somalia in the sixties, working with the Peace Corps. He speaks Somali and was the head of the UNDP mission to Mogadishu in the early nineties. He related a few anecdotes of the wholehearted corruption and naked profiteering of the ICRC during this period and its collusion with the warlords.
He made a few very cynical observations about the United Nations in relation to development which weren’t anything surprising and I asked him he felt cynical about his own work in development with this and other organizations. He didn’t seem so and professed that he wasn’t, entirely, but found that the bureaucracy of the UN had in turn trickled down to the International NGOs who were now also bureaucratic, analytic, and not the ones who did any work of consequence–this was done by the local NGOs and certain international NGOs with independent funding. I asked him about the Aga Khan and there was nothing but praise for this organization, in terms of the quality of its work, self-regulation, and implementation.
The conversation had many starts and stops, and we ate a meal of boiled beef and whole peeled potatoes cooked in a thick sauce with green peppers and onions. I learned that the cries I had heard in the morning were in fact Ibises, large birds with long curved beaks. The area around the hostel is heavily treed and mature, the State House just behind us, up the hill, and a big green lot directly across the road. The State House is a government mansion used by visiting dignitaries. I learned that the area was once property of a former prostitute who had been given the land by a Japanese client and lover. The army had taken possession of the land across the road, but the remainder not yet sold off was still in her possession, though I was told she was old and with Alzheimer’s.
Regarding the recent political upheavals, I was given a concise rendition of events; “this was the fastest and most effective response the UN had ever had in its history.” It seems that Kibaki and Odinga were both paid $20 million (I assumed American dollars) to rein in their factions. I asked how he had learned of this and it was due to what his neighbours–finance minister someone I know not–and associates had whispered to him. The knowledge, it seemed, was common to those in the know.
At the end of the talk, Jim gave me his business card with an offer to come visit him at his home, and his in-law, Hannah, invited me to Nakuru (spelling?) 160km up in the Rift Valley where she is the housekeeper of a student residence at the agricultural university. He runs a courrier service now, with an interest in meat, but I did not learn much about this new business, which has nothing to do with restaurants. My drink and food were paid for and I said goodbye as they drove off in the rain–”Kenyans will run to avoid rain but not traffic.”
I spent the evening reading and hanging out in the livingroom, and met some of the other hostel dwellers. Thinking of sleep, I also thought of Saturday night in Nairobi and decided to go out with David, a Peruvian who works for a Catholic aid organization in the city slums, and his friend Alberto, a Spaniard who works for a Spanish electricity company on contract with Kenya. Alberto has lived in Nairobi for two years and he drove us to two clubs, the Gypsy something, a so-so foreign friendly club/bar/restaurant and then Casablanca, a Moroccan-themed club with an outdoor oasis and shishas on the low tables, and also foreign friendly, though I really liked the style of the place. Neither of these are fully local places: the first was a proportionate mix of foreigners and Kenyans of African and Indian descent, the second more locals and a better-off clientele. In this way, I was reminded very much of Hong Kong, in particular the function of young beautiful women shaking their hips over old, overweight, and patently well-off men.
However, the few male travellers I have so far spoken to have all assured me that all the local women I am to ever meet while out on the town are prostitutes. I have pointed out that the probable reason these guys always met prostitutes was because they were foreigners who frequented foreign-frequented bars and the like. Neither David nor Alberto speak Kiswahili, though this is understandable on the part of Alberto given his work environment, though not David, who “works with five people who speak English and the older co-workers speak no English whatsoever” and has been in town for six months thus far, with another year and a half to go.
May 18th, I slept in past noon, mostly due to having gotten to bed only very early in the morning when the cock was already crowing. I walked straight into town after getting up, and have since found myself in a hot and sweaty sub-basement internet cafe which charges 1Ksh per minute. With no breakfast, I am hungry and it is now time to go. Tomorrow work begins, the office clothes go on, and I’ll see how things go down at the UN.
The upside of my hostel is that is well-located in a safe neighbourhood, though I have been warned not to run in the two big western parks at night near the hostel, ideal training grounds. However, it will take a good hour to get to work tomorrow, even by cab, although the traffic runs north to south during the morning rush-hour, and so I will be travelling contraflow. I have also renogotiated the price of my single room so that it is now that I am paying approximately the same rent I paid in Toronto, which is still too high for here. For the time being, though, this will do just fine.
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