Our arrival and first day here

Welcome to our new blog about our new adventures of living and working in Nairobi, Kenya. This blog is our second and will be focused on our lives in general in Africa. We will keep our other blog - Baby Abroad - about our adventures in parenthood and a chronicle of Alexendria's growing-up years. You can find a link to the other blog in the list at the right.

Below is the first message I sent out, on November 26, following our arrival in Nairobi. I like to write, and I appreciate details, and with no other "entertainment" options on the day of our arrival in Nairobi, I wrote more of a journal entry about our trip here and our arrival in Nairobi mostly so I can remember it all myself, but I'm sharing it with all of you so you know that we got here and are doing well in the setup of our new lives.

It was a long journey to Nairobi – nearly 48 hours. It really started Friday morning when we left Sarah’s parents’ place in Chariton, Iowa, at 9:30 a.m. We drove north for several hours and arrived at Brian and Jen’s in New Brighton, Minnesota, at 3:45, having made good time, even after sitting down and being served for lunch at Bennigan’s along the way. So we had a long car trip that day to get back to Minneapolis. We visited for a little while and had a simple dinner with Brian and Jen and left for the Minneapolis airport at 6:15. After returning the rental car, getting our luggage together and to the check-in counter, which took some effort and time, we purchased a temporary membership in the Northwest Airlines lounge and arrived there shortly after 7:00. They started boarding our flight for Amsterdam an hour before departure, and we got on the plane at about 8:50. We left the gate at 9:35, probably considered early for the 9:30 scheduled departure time, but the flight wasn’t full and everybody was on board. As soon as we pushed back from the gate, I snagged a pair of seats in the row behind us so I could stretch out and sleep on the flight. In the airline lounge, Sarah finally got her request granted by the airline for a bulkhead row, which allowed us to put Lexi in a bassinet in front of us. We had the middle four seats in a row to ourselves, so Sarah also got to stretch out across the two seats the armrest went up between and get some sleep. The flight to Amsterdam was about 7 ½ hours and was uneventful.

We arrived in Amsterdam around the noon hour local time and were able to go into the KLM lounge at the airport, where we were each able to shower and where they served enough light food that we could get our fill for meals over the several hours we were in there. We just hung out there until the evening. We were able to check e-mail for free, and all of us were able to nap some.

Our next flight to Nairobi left at 8:45 p.m., and of course they started boarding the plane early too. In the airline lounge in Amsterdam, Sarah was told that the flight to Nairobi was actually overbooked, so there was no chance of us getting seats in the bulkhead row again, meaning we were looking at Lexi sleeping on our laps on an overnight flight. But when we got to our assigned seats, a woman was in my seat and had the same numbered seat on her boarding pass. After informing a flight attendant, she disappeared and after a few moments miraculously led us to a bulkhead row right behind the entrance to the plane. This also meant Sarah and I had extra legroom too, so God was really looking out for us. Unfortunately, this flight was packed, so we couldn’t lie down across any empty seats. But Sarah and I did sleep some, although Lexi did not sleep for any long stretches of time. Fortunately, she was not the noisiest baby on the flight. There was a family with three young children just across the aisle from us and another child in a family next to them who screamed all night.

The second flight from Amsterdam was uneventful as well, and we arrived in the early morning, just before 7:00 a.m. in Nairobi. In the last hour of our flight, the sun was rising to our left as we headed south, so the entire western horizon was a blaze of orange that faded into an azure blue and into the dark blue sky of night, a fitting welcome to our arrival in Kenya. After we waited a while for our luggage, we found that the main stroller (which we brought as checked luggage) did not arrive, although the car seat did. So we filed a claim for that at the luggage desk, and hopefully it will show up in the coming days. Lexi was starting to relax and sleep as we waited for our luggage to come out on the conveyer belt, but then as we drove to the house, she was alert again. But since our arrival at the house, she has definitely shown signs of confusion over what time zone she should be in.

The house: It’s very large, but we will do quite well in it. At the moment, there is hardly any furniture in it. Njeri, one of the finance people in the LWF office, picked us up at the airport, along with a driver of a bigger vehicle for all our luggage, and after we saw the house quickly, she took us to the large supermarket a short drive down the road to get some basics – food for a few days and a few household items like bath towels, dishes and pots and pans. After looking in the kitchen cupboards a bit more when we got back from the shopping trip, we discovered some dishes were there already as well as some appliances – a coffee maker, a tea kettle, a blender and a microwave. The stove and fridge were here as well. Anyway, there is a little bit of living room furniture and two beds upstairs.

As we anticipated, the house is basically a townhouse but does not actually share side walls with other houses – there is a narrow passageway between each house. And it is in a compound behind a guarded gate. The compound is called Oasis Villas. It’s on a quiet residential street just off a busy thoroughfare.

The layout is thus: You walk in the front door, and there’s a small entryway, and you step down slightly to a large living room in the front of the house. Opposite the windows, which span the entire width of the living room, is an enormous, tall fireplace, and to the right of its chimney, which rises quite high in the living room, you have sort of a balcony – the upstairs hallway/stairway among the bedrooms up there. Passing under that on the first floor, going toward the back of the house, you can duck into a half bath with a toilet and sink, or else you come to an enormous dining room. To the right of that through a door is a large kitchen with a large walk-in pantry tucked away on one side. One entire long side of the dining room is an enormous sliding glass door that leads out onto the lanai, and beyond that, of the same size, is another patio, which is fully outside. I hope we can get some patio furniture for each of these two spaces. The lanai, at least, should be a lovely place to eat breakfast while reading the paper and drinking coffee, assuming the weather in the morning is warm enough. Behind the enormous fireplace is a big stairway. On the second floor is a good-sized master bedroom in front of the house with an en-suite full bath. Then there are two other bedrooms, one smaller and one medium-sized in the back of the house with another full bathroom between them. In order to sleep on the same floor as Lexi, Sarah and I decided to make this front bedroom ours, and Lexi will sleep in the smaller of the other two bedrooms. We’ll use the other bedroom as the office/computer room. Because there are two full bathrooms on the second floor, Sarah will use the en-suite one, and I will use the other, and so we won’t get in each other’s way. Both bathrooms also have a shower stall and a bathtub, so you can see how spacious even the bathrooms are. Continue up the stairs to the third floor, and there’s another fairly good-sized bedroom up there with its own full bathroom too! This could be the master bedroom for the house, but that would mean a lot of trekking up and down the stairs, and we wouldn’t be close to Lexi then. So this will be the guest suite, which is nice because it’s private on that floor, guests would be alone up there, and they would have their own bathroom. They can shut the door up there and be all on their own. In each bedroom there is abundant built-in closet space. So overall, the house is very big and roomy. The floors almost throughout the house are dark wood parquet, and it’s clear that just before we arrived they were cleaned and polished nicely, although there is a strong smell everywhere from the oil they used to polish them.

In back of the house, on the outside wall from the kitchen sink, is a little washing area with an outdoor sink, and just behind that is a little house – the servant’s quarter. It’s got a small room for a little living/sleeping area and, separately, a bathroom with a basic shower stall, squat toilet and sink. There is a small yard/garden next to this and behind the house, but with a lanai and outdoor patio, there really won’t be much use for this small patch of grass. It does have a length of clothesline, so we can hang our laundry out there.

Sarah and I spent part of the day deciding what each room would be used for and starting to unpack a bit, although there is little furniture in each room, so we can’t put all our stuff away and get very settled. After getting back from the grocery store, and after our rides from the airport left us, we ate some breakfast food quickly and then took a nap. I fell asleep right away. Lexi needed some coaxing to take a nap but then slept. We set an alarm for 2:00 to give us an hour before people were due to come back. I could have continued to sleep deeply, and after I woke up, I realized the few days of travel had finally hit me. My body was really feeling it. I just feel drained, and for a few hours, I didn’t know what I needed to do – eat or sleep some more. And it was clear Lexi was feeling it too – but feeling mostly tired. She was mostly sleeping no matter what we were doing – carrying her in the sling around the house or just putting her down in the crib, which the LWF staff guy went out and bought for us.

The grocery store we went to when we arrived is very large and appears to have everything we need. It’s really more of a superstore – a grocery store with additional sections with everything else you need for your home (or think of it as a department store with a full grocery store). It’s three stories high, and on the third floor are all home furnishings (beds, couches, chairs, etc.), and the second floor has everything from clothing to bicycles, from towels to books. So we can probably find literally everything we need there, and it’s only about a 10-minute walk away, so we will probably buy a lot there, although I do like to shop around and find good prices on some things. Before we came, I was totally prepared mentally to live more simply in terms of food – in terms of what I thought would be available here. I learned during our four years in Switzerland how important a wide variety of foods (especially in grocery stores) are to my comfort and happiness (especially when I have time to bake and cook my favorite foods). So I was expecting Kenya to be a step down from Switzerland in terms of what grocery stores would have available. But in fact we have probably gone back to the level of food availability of the U.S. From our quick trip to get some basics to get us through the next few days, I saw a lot of the stuff and the same array of choices that you can get in the U.S. I was even able to buy rusks from South Africa – one of my favorite snacks! The grocery section alone had all the usual parts – produce, meat, a whole aisle of cereal, etc. (a real test of a grocery store for me is if they stock Froot Loops, and indeed, this one does). Plus around the fringes are other little shops and kiosks – cell phone stores, electronics stores, etc. And – get this – it’s open 24 hours a day! So again, we will be just fine and will actually do quite well food-availability-wise and will feel in that way that we have left our limited choices in Geneva to return to the U.S. But wait – there’s more. This superstore is in a shopping center that has a health club, movie theater, pet shop and several other small stores in it. What a deal. Sometimes agreeing on a place to live before you’ve seen it is risky, but in this case, we chose a good place, at least in terms of what is close by.

This afternoon the neighbor from the last house in the row stopped by to meet us. Her name is Sarah as well, and she sounds like she’s from the U.K. It sounds like she has kids as well. She seems to be in her early 40s. She invited us over to chat over a beer or tea right then or anytime later in the week. We will certainly take her up on her offer. I’m sure she’ll be able to fill us in on what else is in the neighborhood.

This afternoon we also heard a call to prayer at a nearby mosque. From what I can tell, it’s not far behind our house. We’ll see if we can hear the call to prayer at dawn and if it will bother us.

This afternoon, when one of the guys from the LWF office was here getting a bunch of things for us together, along with the guy who is installing curtains, I asked him a bunch of questions about the house. Here was one of our conversations:

Me: Hugh [the American guy who lived in the house with his family and who was working for LWF] told us there were switches around the house near the light switches that called the security company in an emergency.

Jack: Yes. (He knew what I was talking about and proceeded to walk around to find the switches. After thinking he had identified one near the outside gate, he pushed it. Then he found one in the kitchen and pushed that one as well.)

Me: Is it okay to push them, even if you don’t have a real emergency?

Jack: Oh, yes. It’s fine.

Me: Are you sure?

Jack: Yes. It’s good to test them.

Me: Who comes? The guard at the gate?

Jack: No, someone more armed than him. The security company sends some guys in a truck. They’re supposed to be here in minutes.

Me: But is it okay for them to come now? Isn’t it bad to raise a false alarm?

Jack: No, it’s good to see if the service is working.

Me: But don’t they charge you for every visit they make, even if it’s not for a real emergency?

Jack: No, you they are paid anyway, and when they come, we will just tell them we’re testing the buttons and say that everything is okay.

About 10 minutes later, two guys showed up at the door, having driven here in their truck from the security company. They didn’t appear concerned at all by the alarm call.