How Rough Can It Get?

I was a little apprehensive about the driving we would have to do on our 4 day holiday. We did have a four-wheel drive vehicle from work, but it didn't feel all that large and hardy to me. Leaving Nairobi, we drove about 2 and a half hours on fairly good roads. Even though we had three maps, the roads aren't marked every 20 meters with signs indicating what road it is or what direction you are going. We had a couple of 'are we still going the right way?' moments including 'I didn't see a sign that said we were supposed to turn there, did you?' So I was always happy when we knew we were on the right road, going the right direction.

We reached the town right above the Tanzania border where we would turn to head towards the game park. The road was dirt and REALLY rough - little dips everywhere. I was driving and pretty nervous about it - I worried about the car getting hurt, sliding accross the road, etc. Stephen wanted to get there by lunchtime and thought I could drive faster so we switched positions. After seeing how the car could handle it, I felt more comfortable when it was my turn to drive again. I was expecting bad roads in the game park, just not 50 kilometers of bad road before we got there.

It rained while we were out on one of our game drives. The land was so dry it definitely needed it, but this meant that the roads - which were flat and often no taller than the surrounding land - got flooded. I had some hairy moments driving through puddles worrying about flooding the engine and such. But we managed through that, too.

Leaving the first park to go to the second, we had to drive 100 kilometers on bad roads. We were both SO happy to get back on a paved road - and it was a GOOD paved road so we were able to go a decent speed.

You know in the U.S. when they are doing roadworks on the highway they often pave another road alongside the road being worked on? Well, they create a new road here - but it's not paved and really horrible to drive on. There were several streches on our way back to Nairobi where we had to detour onto these really rough roads. We wondered if we were ever going to get home.

I was also nervous about driving in the dark in areas we didn't know - the rough roads, no streetlights make for uneasy going in my opinion. It took us 6 hours to get home and we didn't make it before dark, though we didn't have to drive in the dark for very long. I was glad that Stephen was driving that last stretch. We both found it pretty nerveracking, I think.

Other interesting tidbits - when we got on the good road going to the second park, we wanted to get gas as there aren't many possibilities. The first two stations that we came across (about a 20 minute drive in between)had no gas. They mentioned a town further along where there would be gas - we made it there and there was gas. Thank goodness!

On the main highway between Nairobi and Mombasa, you see plenty of goat and cattle herds (and sometimes have to stop for them to cross the road). We also had to come to a complete stop for a herd of zebra! Guess many of you don't have that problem regularly. We also saw a giraffe by the side of the highway which was neat.

And a little piece of local road etiquette: when passing someone, you turn on your blinker the whole way as you pass them in the other lane. If you are trying to see if it is ok to pass the person in front of you, they will turn on their signal to let you know. If they turn on their left turn signal, the way is clear; the right signal indicates that someone is coming in the other lane.

Playing at the game parks

We spent the last few days vacationing at the opposite end of the spectrum from the majority of people in this developing country in which we now live. Soon after we arrived here, we made plans to go away during Christmas week, as Sarah had the week off work and we didn’t have any family here to spend the holidays with or anything else to do. I visited a travel agent, and we agreed to visit a couple of game parks. She choose some luxurious places for us to stay.

Early the morning after Christmas Day, we set out in the car and drove first in the direction of Mombasa (southeast from Nairobi) and then south toward Kenya’s border with Tanzania. The first place we visited was Amboseli National Park, which boasts Mt. Kilimanjaro as its close neighbor right across the border in Tanzania. We saw the peak’s top only on the last morning we were there, but we didn’t get to see the “icing on the wedding cake” – the mountain’s familiar cap of snow. Most of the time, the rain clouds hid the top of the mountain.

We stayed at a tent camp on the far edge of the park, which meant we had to drive across the length of the park to get there. Even on that drive, we saw a couple of giraffe, some elephants and some water buffalo. There are a handful of places to stay in this park, and most of them are lodges – five-star hotels that have traditional rooms and that are the ultimate in luxury. Our accommodations, however, were in tents, which was a lot of fun. It felt more like we were roughing it (but not so badly) and out there as explorers conquering the bush.

Each “room” was its own separate, large canvas tent (big enough for you to stand up in) under another, more sturdy (thatch) roof structure. Inside the tent was a double bed, and the back third was divided off and had a real working sink, toilet and shower (with hot water only in the morning and evening at scheduled times). In front of the tent was a small stone porch where you could sit. All of our meals were eaten buffet-style in a dining hall/restaurant building behind the main building. There was also another building that was the bar. The camp even had a swimming pool, but the water was cool. Because every meal is a buffet, and there are many dishes to choose from, you eat very well at these type of places and stuff yourself at each meal. The trouble is, however, that much of your time is spent in a sedentary state, or else you’re riding around the park in a vehicle, so you don’t have much opportunity between meals to get hungry or burn off the full meal.

At these sort of places on up to the luxury lodges, hotels and resorts, as soon as you step into the lobby area (usually an open-air area), they give you a glass of fruit juice (usually with chunks of fresh fruit in it) and a small wet towel to wipe your face off. When we arrived there on the 26th, it was just in time to eat lunch. One usually takes an afternoon game drive before sunset – when it gets cooler in the day again for the animals to come out and eat. The other good time to go out on a game drive is in the cool of the morning at sunrise. So this was our routine, following the daily schedule of the animals – wake up early and immediately go on a game drive, return to the camp and have breakfast and shower, then nap, relax, read, go swimming, eat lunch and do all the same in the afternoon before going out again around 4:00. When we returned around sunset, we enjoyed sitting in the bar as it got dark and hearing the crickets start their nighttime noises.

In this game park, if you drive yourself there in your own car (an SUV or 4x4 is really needed), although many people (tourists from overseas) fly there, you can then drive yourself around the park yourself to see the animals and come and go around the park as you please. Otherwise, people hire vehicles to take them on the regular, scheduled drives, and this gives you an expert guide who knows how to find the animals and is sometimes told by other guides via the radio in the car good places to go to see animals. But the trick when you drive yourself around is just to follow the guided tour vehicles, which is okay with them. So we went out on our couple drives a day. The park has a varied landscape. In addition to the above animals, we saw plenty of impalas and other similar deer-type animals, plenty of wildebeests, warthogs, a hippo, plenty of baboons, and we think we saw a leopard, although they’re hard to spot during the day. The birds in these parks are also amazing to look at. During one afternoon game drive, on the way back to our camp, we came upon a small herd of elephants, and there were a handful of vehicles parked on the road watching them. The elephants crossed the road and went among the other vehicles, very close to them. We in our car several yards back watched these elephants with both fear because they can be very dangerous animals and with fascination at getting so close to them.

We stayed at this tent camp two nights, which was plenty. On the second morning, we headed out to another game park – actually a small(er) privately owned game reserve surrounded by the country’s largest game park. After driving all morning, we arrived at our second place, an oasis of luxury in the middle of nowhere practically (although we did pass through some very poor and run-down small towns getting there, which makes the luxury at this place and even greater contrast). This place was a lodge – more of a traditional luxury hotel. Our rooms were all in one building that surrounded a beautifully kept garden with ponds and a swimming pool. As at the last place, the meals were buffet and were full and wonderful – every lunch and dinner is a four- or five-course meal.

Because we were too tired of driving all morning, we didn’t go out on an afternoon game drive at the second place, but we waited to go on a nighttime drive, which isn’t allowed in the government-run game parks. We left at 9:00 and were back at 11:00. We didn’t see any big animals on this after-dark drive (except for a sick elephant that was lying on the ground), but we did see a tiny bush baby (it was funny how quickly it could climb around a tree and then how far it could hop on the ground), plenty of impalas, foxes and a serval cat. The guides kept us out a half hour later trying to find some real game, but there was none out for us to see.

We had similar difficulty spotting the game the following morning when we went out ourselves. This second park is in a very hilly area, and the vegetation is so much greener and denser. At one point, a guided vehicle passed us on the road as we were driving slowly and just about to give up on spotting anything. The driver motioned for us to follow, and we quickly headed off in one direction, most of the time going well over the speed limit of the park. Toward the end of this frantic wild goose chase, as we actually left the private game sanctuary and went past the sign the said “No trespassing”, we came to a place where a handful of other vehicles were clustered. And there, in the distance, we saw a large lion, a lioness laying over to the side, and near them, two cubs. We all sat there for several minutes looking at them, simply in awe. Seeing a lion in the wild while on a visit to a game park is the biggest prize – and it was an even bigger bonus to see the whole family! And on another late-morning game drive, trying to find some giraffe, we stumbled upon a family of elephants.

I had been “on safari” at other game parks in other African countries before, and Sarah had visited the famous Masaii Mara game reserve on her first trip to Kenya last year. So both of us had seen the wild animals of Africa before. We enjoyed going to these parks and getting outside Nairobi to see other parts of the country. And we enjoyed the luxury of the accommodations. But this gave us a good chance to evaluate what Kenya has to offer (a lot of parks like this to visit) and what types of places we’d like to visit while we’re living here. We like very active vacations and would prefer to visit a city where we can be out doing things and seeing places all day over the large amount of time one spends just relaxing at the camp/hotel when one goes to a game park. But now we’ve been there and done this in some of the best, nicest and most luxurious places and parks.

Christmas and election fever

It has been strange to arrive in Kenya in late November in time to experience the full Christmas season. I had spent one Christmas in Africa before - in Zimbabwe when I was an exchange student there. That was a strange Christmas too, and I knew a bit what to expect this time. The strangest part is the weather. Moving here during the northern hemisphere's winter months and being dropped into a tropical climate is bizarre. I think I have worn short sleeves and sandals every day since our arrival here and have enjoyed the warm air and sun. But to me, Christmas means cold and winter - Christmas is defined by that season. So it has been hard to get in the Christmas mood.

However, the stores have been filled with Christmas sights and sounds for several weeks. There have been a lot of sales. We attended the Christmas party a few weeks ago for the staff of Sarah's office. And we bought at a craft market a small nativity set made of banana leaves and put it up on our mantle. So, aside from the weather, there are certainly signs of the season.

We went back to Nairobi International Lutheran Church for the second time on Sunday for a joint service of the English- and Swahili-speaking congregations, although the service was 95 percent in English. But the real reason we went back was to see their annual live nativity, which is supposedly the only one in all of Kenya. After chai (tea) and Christmas cake following the service, we all trotted out to the busy road that runs in front of the church for this display. The organizers had borrowed a couple of goats, a cow and even two handsome camels. Members of the congregations dressed in robes to play all the parts of the people. There was even a choir of angels (with tinsel halos) of a good 35 or 40 people. Those of us not in the display stood on the sidelines and helped to sing Christmas carols. The congregation uses this as a witness to the community.

Today we will go over to the Methodist Guest House near us, a popular spot for church meetings here, where they will have a barbecue and short program. We bought tickets for this lunch, of course. They are also opening their pool for lunch guests to use. Another part of a strange Christmas - having an outdoor barbecue lunch and going swimming on Christmas Day.

Later, we will listen to the annual Christmas Day message of Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, on the BBC website. Now that we live in a former British colony and a member of the Commonwealth, we are subjects of the queen and will dutifully listen to what our sovereign has to say.

Last night for Christmas Eve, we attended the 6:00 p.m. service of lessons and carols at the Anglican cathedral downtown. To me, nobody "does" Christmas better than the Anglicans (specifically the Church of England, so the Kenyan Anglicans weren't absolutely everything I like). Unlike Sunday mornings, when we've attended worship a couple of times at the cathedral, the congregation was mostly mhuzungus (white people) last night. It seems most of the white community here are Christmas and Easter Christians. This will be a topic for a future blog post (living in the minority). The choir sang quite a few songs, most of them English and American ones.

However, it seems that the Christmas ambiance is all overshadowed this year in Kenya by a different kind of fever. On Thursday and Friday this week, the election for the country's president will be held. Since we have arrived, the newspapers have been filled with all sorts of tracking of the campaign. Everywhere you go, there are posters and billboards hung for all the major candidates. We hear and see vans and large trucks driving around all the major roads blaring out campaign messages for particular candidates. And there have been rallies around town.

Just to show you how important this election is and how it is foremost on people's minds: Last week, on Friday morning, I went to meet with the bishop of the Kenya Evangelical Lutheran Church about doing some communications work for the church starting in January. The bishop himself had suggested I come to meet him on Friday morning, even though it was a shorter work day for him with the office closing for the holidays at noon. We kept our meeting short and agreed to speak again next month. I asked him a question or two about himself then indicated I should get going, saying I recognized their shorter work day and the importance of their upcoming break to celebrate Christmas. The bishop then proceeded to tell me that Christmas wasn't as important to them (the church) as the election was. He said they are concerned about the peace and further development in the country.

The U.S. embassy has warned Americans to be careful and vigilant during the election days, but don't worry about us - we're escaping to a remote area and visiting a couple game parks, so we shouldn't be exposed to any election violence.

Museums and getting around

Wednesday was an unexpected holiday. The government decided the week before that Id (a Muslim religous holiday) was going to be a public holiday. Not good time for accountants trying to wrap up the year, but what to do?

Stephen thought we shouldn't just sit around the house, but we should go out and do something. So we went to the National Museum of Kenya - or tried to. When I had come to Nairobi a year ago September, I also tried to go to this museum; it was under renovation. Even though today the building looks done, it is STILL under renovation. So we went to the neighboring Snake Park instead. There are lots of things besides snakes at this place - crocodiles, turtles, fish, lizards: things in the replite family. Lexi wasn't all that interested in most of the things, but the fish cauhgt her attention. I assume because they were moving around rapidly. If you are a resident it is cheaper to get into things like national parks, game parks, etc., but we don't have that official paper yet so we pay the full price.

We had to skirt the edge of downtown to get there, but the traffic wasn't horrible. The traffic lanes downtown aren't well marked. It gets a little crazy in the roundabouts as well because they have traffic lights! Sort of defeats the purpose of a roundabout we think. But we made our way home using a route we hadn't driven ourselves so we are slowly figuring out how things connect.

Time flies..and things change

It is hard to believe that we have been here 3 weeks already. The time is going fast. Our home is almost into shape. Hopefully, we will get the rest of the furniture we need from my predecessor’s place this Monday.

The electricity going out is a common thing. It maybe happens once every other day or so. To date, each outage has not lasted too long. Tonight, it has gone out twice and hasn’t really come back on full strength. The lights are pretty dim and we have no lights at all in the kitchen. Stephen checked the fuse box but nothing seems to have been tripped.

I am still trying to clean up a few things relating to Geneva – final payments and refunds, etc. It’s just as difficult to do long distance, but I think I will get it sorted out soon. I just haven’t made them a priority. Sometimes, it’s hard to think back to when we lived in Geneva. Everything has changed so dramatically: from the weather to the size of our home.

Where’s Alice (from the “Brady Bunch”) when you need her?

Now we know how rich people feel when they say, “You just can’t find good help these days.” Well, that’s not totally our case, but something that’s totally new to us here is hiring and having house help. It’s another learning experience for us, and we’ve found that the American ways of hiring people, whether at a company or organization or as a contractor in your home (such as a plumber or a housekeeper), don’t really apply here.

The previous occupants of our house were an American couple as well. He worked for LWF in the same office as Sarah. We agreed to take over their house as well as, perhaps, their housekeeper, Jane, under the condition that we could interview her first, find out what she was capable of (including child care), and have a chance to decide for ourselves if we wanted to keep her or find somebody else.

Our first week here, we tried her out for four days. The first day - the first hour - she went around the kitchen with me, which was empty at that point, and told me what went in each cupboard. Then she saw a hat rack that we had placed near the front door and moved it to the other side of the living room, to an empty space near the bottom of the stairs. She told me – no questions asked – that it belonged in this new place, “not near the entrance.” After several days of thinking about how to handle this, we simply moved the hat rack back near the entrance, where it has since remained.

Also that first week, we had some people from Sarah’s office bringing furniture for us and helping us get it in the rooms where we wanted it. I instructed one of them, Luca, to put a crib that was brought from the apartment of the man Sarah replaced in the room that we had decided would be Lexi’s. Because the doorways up to and on the second floor of our house are quite narrow, this crib needed to be partially dismantled in order to be put there. Luca and another person were very helpful in getting everything they brought in place, including taking apart and putting back together this crib.

Later on the day the crib was brought and put in place, Sarah heard Jane instructing Luca to move the crib into our bedroom instead because she believed the baby needed to sleep closer to her mother. Luca obeyed, which meant he had to partially dismantle the crib to move it, and then reassemble it in our bedroom. Sarah asked Jane why she did this and told Jane that she would discuss it with me. Sarah and I immediately decided that the crib would not remain in our room and would go in the room originally intended for Lexi (I was not even going to consider Jane’s reasoning for this but was more determined that we show her who was really in charge in the house). The trouble was, we couldn’t move it back without – you guessed it – taking it apart first. Sarah ended up moving the crib back herself a day or two later.

Because of these things, Sarah initially described Jane as “bossy.” We told her that her primary responsibility is to look after Lexi, and in between that, she is to do cleaning. She is very good with Lexi and knows the needs of a young baby and is attentive to Lexi’s personality – the fact that she likes to be held and receive lots of attention. So for these things, it is good to have her. However, Jane still does have her own theories about how and when Lexi should be fed (breastfed and/or the bottle; Jane says one or the other, while we say both), and after a couple weeks of Sarah working, she still hadn’t caught on to Sarah’s schedule of feeding Lexi before work and coming home at lunch to do it. And in terms of remembering and following instructions, Jane had some more to learn as well.

In some ways, I’m not surprised by much of this. Hugh, the one who lived in the house before and employed Jane, told us that the more specific we can be with instructions, the better. I will always remember the story I heard from another exchange student while living in Zimbabwe: His host mother, before leaving for work in the morning, told her housekeeper to “put a chicken in the freezer for dinner” that night. When the woman came home from work, she opened the freezer to discover a chicken that had been feathered – but was still alive!

As far as compensation, that has been a learning experience for us as well. We agreed to pay her 6,000 Kenyan shillings a month (a little over US$97) for working Monday to Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., which, granted, is very cheap for this type of help (including so much child care!). Hugh employed her only three days a week with only occasional child care but paid her the same amount. We stuck to this amount for her salary because of what Sarah’s predecessor was paying his house help. In the negotiations, Jane told us that she assumed Hugh had told us about her situation (implying that we should be generous with her salary) – that in addition to her own children, she has taken in a few children who are not her own and who are AIDS orphans. I know this is more the practice here, but in the U.S. with any job, an employer would say that an employee’s compensation has nothing to do with one’s personal situation – what one chooses to spend one’s salary on is one’s personal choice and should not be used to influence one’s salary. This is what we’re used to, so it was strange to hear this sort of request.

Then the requests for additional “benefits” came. She said she expected to have tea and biscuits (cookies) for breakfast when she arrived every morning and to be able to make her native dish – ugali – in our kitchen with our dishes and with us supplying all the food for her. Sarah granted this request, although now it seems to be more trouble to shop for groceries for an extra person. I’d rather just give her a weekly food allowance and have her purchase and bring what she needs and likes, but it doesn’t seem to work this way. She also asked for a daily transportation allowance of 30 Kenyan shillings (49 cents) each way. There was some negotiation over transportation costs at various times of the day (a question of whether it’s more expensive during rush hour) and on days when it’s raining (Jane says it’s more on these days; Sarah found out this isn’t true).

It’s just so hard to get good help these days!

Trying to fit In

Friday night work had a goodbye to my replacement, hello to me and Christmas party all rolled into one. Stephen and Lexi came along. It’s interesting to attend these things and see who sits with who, etc. The locals and the expats don’t really mix – all the expats sat together – or were seated together. I’m not sure if it was because we were the outsiders or if it was more a respectful way to treat the higher-ups.

We went to an Anglican church service this morning. The music was much better than that at the Lutheran church though no one greeted us after the service in this place either. It was a large congregation and we weren’t the only white faces, though there were only a handful of others. It is an interesting feeling to know that you are so different looking – we don’t blend here like we did (or thought we did!) in Europe.

For work this week, the management team is going on retreat to Mombassa which is on the coast. As we will there 2 nights, Stephen and Lexi will come along. The retreat is at this resort that I have been to before for a finance meeting. It’s very nice. We will be meeting most of the time though so I anticipate very little free time myself. We will fly down there – it takes about an hour and then you take a ferry to the hotel – that drive takes about 2 hours. So even though we won’t leave the country, it’s a lengthy trip.