Sunday 29 March 2015

Nairobi Series - Everyday scenes

Very often I venture outside of the hotel and office, travelling in a van provided by the business. Whenever the traffic stalls, I try to capture everyday scenes on my iPhone.  

These visual experiences bring me closer to how the poorer section of the local population live. To put things into perspective, according to the website MyWage/Kenya, the monthly minimum wage of a driver is 13,000 Ksh (just under £105), whereas the hotel is charging $245 per night (about £165). 

From the van, behind tinted windows, I see hawkers weaving among cars selling bananas, grapes, snacks, mineral water, car chargers, newspapers, kites, etc. It remind me of the young boys selling sweets in the Sao Paulo traffic. I read once in the newspaper that these Nairobi hawkers, if apprehended by the Nairobi city inspectors, could be fined as much as US$58 (~£38). 

Those selling from a more stable environment operate from pavements or roadside stalls.




On the way back to the office from a late afternoon meeting, I came across the pavement hawkers selling from their bags. In Beijing, I also came across vendors selling from pavements - no rent, no licences, just hard work and a keen eye on the police to eke out a living.


There are quite a lot of roadside stalls selling fruit, shoes, clothes, everything one can find in a Sunday market. I read in the newspapers that a lot of smallholder farmers who have been struggling to make a living growing coffee have shifted to growing bananas, a major staple among a variety of communities in Kenya.


I snapped this photo one early morning at about 08:30 on way to the customer's office. As it was still early, the stalls were not yet set out. 


This is a roadside food stall next to an M-Pesa top up hut. It is between the office and the Nairobi Java restaurant that a lot of us go for lunch when we are tired of the sandwiches and Indian food at the canteen. I am curious about the food served at this joint and maybe one day I should stop and inquire. Note the lack of pavements, which is very common in Nairobi. 


On a major junction, a woman was seen watering the plants and the grass. It was 18:06 and traffic congestion was at its height. Driving in Nairobi requires nerves of steel, with cars inches away from each other. The drivers would tell me: you will get used to this, madam.


Traffic congestion seen from the back window of the van. To get moving in Nairobi, it is necessary to squeeze the car into the next available space. 


View from the front seat of the van. Traffic jam goes on forever. The majority of cars in Nairobi are imported from Japan. It is very rare to see European cars; sometimes I see the hotel's BMW 5 series parked at the entrance waiting to take hotel guests around. The sin of corruption - premium cars - are absent from the roads at Nairobi.


To avoid the traffic, the driver often goes off road. Once the short cut took us to a waste ground blocked by oil drums. So the driver turned back and joined the traffic again. Thankfully by then we had avoided a lot of the heavy traffic.


This scene greeted me on my first trip to the office from the hotel. High rise buildings are perched next to residential properties. The building that is under construction seem to be making very slow progress. Once again, note the lack of pavements.


When taking the stairs in the office, I see this commercial building shaped like the sail of a ship. Mirage it is called and it is seeking buyers at 11,000 Ksh (£87) per sq ft . In the foreground is the Westlands Hostel. I tried to Google this hostel but it has not gone digital yet.

Saturday 28 March 2015

Nairobi Series - The tourist traps

In order to see all the tourist attractions in one day, I visited the elephant orphanage and the giraffe centre on the same day as the Nariobi National Park.

A colleague advised: go see the baby elephants in the evening, make an appointment to adopt an elephant. However, the hotel advised otherwise. Go between 11:00 am and 12 noon to see the feeding of the elephants. On arrival at the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, I was accompanied by a gun-toting female guard from the van to the animal centre. After paying a fee of 1000 Ksh, I entered the compound where the elephants were being fed and were playing around. There was a man talking on a microphone about the background of the elephant orphanage and introducing the elephants one by one. Most of them had fallen into a well after losing their mother. Such sad tales.

A baby elephant drinking from a container

Two baby elephants rolling in the mud

Baby elephants being fed with human breast milk formula
Next to the Giraffe Centre. At the centre, visitors were allowed to feed the giraffes pellets. During an information session, the staff informed visitors that feeding takes up most of the giraffe's day - up to 75% at certain times of the year. 

One of the giraffes in the Giraffe Centre

Up close and personal
I think I had a fair share of the animals and having rubbed shoulders with hoards of tourists at the elephant orphanage and the giraffe centre, I reflected on what I had learned coming into close contact with the elephants and the giraffes. Sadly, nothing much except that I covered all the tourists traps in one day.

Nairobi - A Day with Animals at Nairobi National Park

Everybody told me I should visit Nairobi National Park, a wildlife park within 7 km of the city, separated by an electric fence from the metropolis. So I duly did. 

The driver was 30 minutes late. By the time we arrived at the park, there was already a queue at the ticket office. In any case, the ticket office also opened late by more than 30 minutes. After enduring almost 45 minutes of waiting to purchase an entrance ticket, exacerbated by the excruciating inefficiency of a mixture of manual and computer processing methods, we finally made it into the park. At the ticket office, there was one man writing down on a piece of paper the purchase items: number of local visitors (the driver), number of foreign visitors (myself) and number of vehicles, which he then passed on to a woman who entered the information into a computer. The woman also demanded to see the identification papers again before the computer slowly churned out the tickets. At the entrance, the guards who examined the tickets decided that the ticket for the car was the wrong kind, so the driver collapsed the backseats of the van to pass it off as a small vehicle. What could have been a simple operation turned into a lengthy process that called for infinite patience.

There were more cars than animals on the day. It was a disappointing introduction to safaris. 

Nairobi National Park
Zebras grazing with human habitation in the background
The odd buffalo roaming the park
Impalas
Gazelles
The odd giraffe
A baboon surveying his territory
Zebras close up, against the Nairobi skyline
Tourists straining their eyes to see a lion's head
Peace and quiet at the park
I suppose it was luck whether I got to see all the animals including the lions at the park. Whilst waiting to purchase the entrance ticket, an English woman excitedly told me that she visits the park everyday to watch the lions at location 7, including her lunch breaks during the week. Such dedication. Later I saw her jeep parked at location 7 but nowhere were the lions to be seen.

Sunday 15 March 2015

Nairobi Series - Jomo Kenyatta International Airport

Avoid this airport if you can.




The car was searched visually on entering airport. It was a meaningless activity because anything could be hidden inside the luggage. But it created a long queue, and jobs.

My flight was from terminal 1B but there is no drop off at 1B, only at the adjacent Terminal 1A. At one point I was walking on the road pushing the luggage trolley towards Terminal 1B with cars inches from me.

There was a long queue at the entrance to Terminal 1B. People were waiting to pass their luggage through security scanning. As I considered myself Priority I showed my boarding pass to the guard who allowed me to pass. At the conveyor belt, each passenger has to manhandle his or her own luggage on and off the belt. A passenger behind me had endless pieces of luggage which she tried to squeeze between mine. It was chaos. (Much like London Heathrow terminal 5 Priority check in).

The check in at British Airways was efficient. The check in desk explained that the BA lounge was a temporary one at gate 10. A permanent one has not been rebuilt since the fire in 2013.

Then immigration. Finger prints on exit!? That's a first. Then to gate 10, bypassing all the tourist tack. It was 22:00 and I was tired after a day's work, a 2-hour drive to the airport, and the hassle of getting myself to gate 10. At gate 10, there was a second security check on hand luggage. Absolutely no smiles. Immediately afterwards, BA mounted their own security check. Three security checks, surely this is overkill.

Into the BA lounge which was no more than a cafe circa 1970. The bottled water in the fridge was warm. There were some sandwiches and crisps, neither of which interested me. There were also alcoholic beverages including the local Tusker beer. The wifi was useless - I could not get on line. The wifi password was taped to a window and one needed a pair of binoculars to see it. Shame on BA. The chair arrangements in the lounge were such that free flow of foot traffic was not intended.

Four Englishmen same to sit beside me, swigging beer. They talked loudly and from their conversation, they were expatriates returning to UK for home leave.

A family came with two kids and one of them was screaming his head off, non stop. I wondered where his energy came from. Both parents made no attempt to stop the howling, maybe they too were tired out by the travelling, and the screaming.

Finally the boarding took place - no announcement, just the seasoned travellers getting up from their seats and walking to the departure gate. A woman called my name and gave me a ticket stub that showed that BA had upgraded me. 

Then back to civilization.

The thought of having to go through this again filled me with despair. It was a joyless experience.

Sunday 8 March 2015

Nairobi Series - My daily dose of local news

Everyday I receive a local newspaper. It used to be the Standard, now it is Business Daily. The Standard is front to back local news and without local knowledge it is difficult to follow the politics. 


What else?
About the traffic congestion. It took 2 hours to travel the 18 km from hotel to the airport by car. What puzzled me was this: the traffic lights were working but the traffic was controlled by traffic police. Nothing moved. I asked the locals "Why are traffic lights ignored by traffic police?" The answer? Yes, you guessed it.


Drought threat
Reading about the drought threat made me feel guilty about leaving food on the plate. 


Serious academic matters
This advertisement on the ranking of University Nairobi in the world league caught my eye. On the left hand column you see the Africa ranking and on the right hand column the world rank. It's ironic to me that a ranking of 855 deserves a mention. 


The first piece of news when I arrived
"Who killed Muchai" greeted me when I arrived. The MP was murdered along with his driver and two body guards. 6 suspects were arrested and one suspect accused the police of torturing him for a confession.


From waste to art
Ultimately I prefer more good news and less bad news. I am tickled pink by this article on making art from old flip flops. Trouble is: I don't see a lot of flip flops being worn in Nairobi.

Nairobi Series - Living in a Bubble

Security (or lack thereof) is such an issue that I hardly ever venture out of the hotel. I am not even allowed to walk the 500 m from the hotel to the office. So be it. It's for my own safety. It's surreal to live my life in a bubble, cut off from the real world, unaware of the struggles of everyday life as told to me by the drivers taking me to and from the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA)

Baggage reclaim at JKIA 

It is only fair that I feature the welcome sign at the JKIA, right next to baggage reclaim, after passport and visa.  It would be fair to say that there is probably one luggage cart chugging away between the aircraft and baggage reclaim. Despite my luggage being labelled Priority, the waiting time was 25 to 30 minutes. I count my blessings because unlike experiences at Chicago or Miami, the baggage was not tampered with or missing. Slowness is a way of life here. 

The hotel is almost like an oasis. This is a 5* hotel where heads of states on the Continent often meet. At the entrance to the hotel are security gates where cars are searched, much like the entrances to a lot of public buildings. Staff are well groomed and well mannered and would greet me by name. I am not used to such pampering and have determined not to get used to it because soon I will return to the real world where I have to do most things myself.

Hotel fountain at entrance

Hotel back garden

Manicured lawns and borders at hotel
Waiting for the car in the morning. The car is always late.
View from the hotel facing dual carriageway.
I sleep with ear plugs.
View of hotel at the back, away from traffic.
Is this life equivalent to living in a gated compound? A colleague, an expat, told me that he lives in a gated compound and his house is guarded 24x7 by two security guards. The expat economy is expressed in this simple formula: one expat = 5 local jobs (1 maid, 1 driver, 1 gardener, 2 security guards). His house has 2 levels; if there is a security alert, the second floor goes into lock down. A former prime minister lives within this gated environment and 5 identical Mercedes Benz cars are used on each outing. Also living in the same gated environment is an Indian billionaire who travels by helicopter. He was once kidnapped from his house within the compound. 

Away from the bubble, the landscape can be an eyesore. The fact that I was able to take photos from the car meant that traffic was not moving and it was possible to take a quick photo with my iPhone.
Passing through a part of Nairobi

Tracks of unused land, Nairobi
View from the office canteen