Goodbye Nairobi

Looking back at the six months in Kenya, this was surely one of my most worthwhile undertakings ever. I had no idea how the experience would be like when I left, and I was really scared because of crime and violent clashes. Yet it all turned out much better than I could ever have imagined. To close my blog with style I'd love to be able to sum up what I learned and how the experience affected me, but I'm afraid there is simply too much to say.

Unfortunately I estimated quite correctly how I would feel after returning to Finland. Finland is rather eventless, very expensive, and so grey that the world here seems like a bad copy of the original which is Africa. Being broke, unemployed and homeless doesn't make readapting too easy. Of course having many dear people around softens the shock considerably.

I think most people here don't understand why I loved living in Kenya so much. Much of the time I felt the place brought out the person I wanted to be, and there was stunning beauty everywhere. Yet there was a very crucial emotional reason to come back to Finland, but that's a whole other (love) story.

Each time settling down abroad has been a very rewarding experience. The influx of impressions and the ease of learning new things is addictive. The best part of learning is not so much about knowing more, it's rather about having a feel of in what way things can be different in another country and to what extent, and finding many more shades to what you've previously known about those places.

All the opinions I've tried to form about Kenya seem really elusive - everything I claim about the people or society seems to be true and false at the same time, because realities are so different in Nairobi and the countryside, amongst uneducated and academic people etc. But at least I know that, if nothing else. I know some Kenyans hardly differ from my Western friends, while with some I ran into significant cultural barriers.

I've browsed through my posts from earlier months, and I still find most of my first impressions accurate, but I have to take back a couple of statements. During the first days my perceptions were different because I lived in the fairly rural Muthaiga North, and heard so many warnings about crime, disease etc. Also the political crisis made the atmosphere more tense. So I think what I wrote about security in the beginning was a bit exaggerated. Nairobi is not the most dangerous city in Africa; there's some petty crime, but generally it's a friendly place. I got much more relaxed with time. The matatus weren't so awfully scary either, and eventually I got used to riding them. I also stopped disinfecting the vegetables, poisoning mosquitoes etc.

Also, after trying to talk to our guard on the second day I wrote it seems I'll have to learn to use simple sentences with the locals, but I must say that was a blatant generalisation. Many Kenyans speak better English than me or at least have a richer vocabulary.

Our trip to Dar and Zanzibar in August gave a new point of comparison to Kenya. When I came back, Nairobi felt like a very modern and big city where people seemed really westernized. It also felt like home.

Finally the last visual pleasures of Africa from July and August:

Zanzibar







Our hotel room on Zanzibar, budget travellers' heaven





This dhow took us to snorkle amongst beautiful corals and to a faultless, cappuccino-coloured beach





Nairobi National Park



Nairobi skyline



Mt. Longonot



Second trip to Masai Mara

Wildebeest running



Lions in action





Masais





Camel safari







The end.

Mombasa

We took the somewhat legendary train from Nairobi to Mombasa and back


This guy was hanging from the wall behind our train cabin window and asked us to let him into the moving train claiming to be a staff member - only in Africa! :)


The views from the train were impressive, again seas of trash and slum shanties.

Nairobi - Naivasha - Nakuru with Riie

Winding down

I'm just spending my last day in the office before a very longed-for 12-day break. I might not check my e-mail during that time, at least not too often. You can always send me a text on my phone.

Prospects are fantastic, I'm waiting for two dear visitors from Finland and have booked tickets to Naivasha, Nakuru and Mombasa.

Below are some fotos from last weekend's hiking trip to Ngong Hills in the outskirts of Nairobi.



We were advised to hire this "guide" to protect us from muggers. Weird to do sightseeing with a bodyguard. By the way he didn't speak English and I actually got by pretty well with my Swahili! Yae!



Ingrid and me, sweaty after climbing


Happy Midsummer, everyone!

A slum tour in Kibera

I said I should obviously struggle to make my life here a bit more interesting. Last weekend I made an effort I'm proud of. Instead of getting hammered in Friday's party, I just had one glass of wine, and it was really well used: while sipping it I got to know Gaucho, a self-educated engineer who had family in Kibera, seemed trustworthy, and promised to take me on a tour.

So the following day I finally ventured into Africa's biggest slum with my local guide, who showed me some of the worst parts and some of the better-off parts. It was about time; it's a disgrace that many of the people working for slum upgrading programs at the UN, like me, have never been to a slum themselves.

All of Kibera is really not that bad. Actually most of it can well be described as beautiful and idyllic. Kids playing football, small colourful houses in a row, people selling food and all kinds of stuff, chickens running around on the streets and people doing their housework in front of their houses.

Kids playing football (The apartment building is not typical of Kibera, it's the only one I saw.)



However, what you can see everywhere is loads and loads of plastic waste on the streets. Looking at it it's easy to understand why Rwanda banned plastic bags completely. The roads are also muddy, bumpy and dirty and ditches run through them.

Trash



Another visible problem is the lack of building material. Many houses are built of a mix of everything that is available, with pieces of wood and metal, soil, pipes, cloth, trash piles and lots of creativity. Everything is inclined, small, shabby, and in a way absolutely charming, but the shanties are easy to break into and offer no security against crime.

In the better-off parts of Kibera houses have concrete walls and they actually seem quite comfortable, though small. Gaucho took me to his grandmother's house, though we didn't go further inside than the patio, and offered me very nice Kenyan food called pilau. All in all it was a lovely visit to grandma's sunny garden in the middle of what is supposed to be one of the most miserable places around here.

Gaucho



Kibera had some hygienic toilets built by aid agencies, and people and their clothes seemed generally clean. I also saw some power lines. Still many basic services are quite nonexistent and hygiene is a problem. Kibera is one of the areas in Nairobi where you can catch malaria (hardly at day time when I was there though).

The visit was interesting, as now I imagine to understand much better the scope and nature of the problems in Kibera. However this was just a scratch on slum reality because there are much worse slums than Kibera, it just happens to be one of the most notorious ones because of its huge size.

Too bad Gaucho told me not to take pictures in all the best spots - I guess he thought someone might get annoyed or snatch my camera, so my few pictures are from dull backyards where there were almost no people around. After the visit Kibera's esthetics kept puzzling me a lot. Why does scarcity produce quarters that are so pleasing to the eye? Those small, inclined constructions full of details and colours together with the absence of cars, big even surfaces, and rectangular street plans made the place pretty and pictoresque, much nicer than most wealthy quarters in Westlands, Finland or whereever. Architects and designers are such useless people, everyone should just draw and build their own houses!

Another interesting thing I did this weekend was going to the church on Sunday morning. Religion is really important for Kenyans, who are mostly Christians. There are thousands of different versions of Christianism in this country. We went to see a baptist mass, which was a great show. Kenyans seem to be able to turn anything from a matatu ride to a mass into a good party, something Finns have never been good at. So all of them sang, danced and clapped their hands, and the music was not rhythmless and apathetic like in Finnish churches.

I've also had time to go to the cinema, read novels, go to a lovely gym I discovered recently that is cheaper and better than the previous one, and do very cheap shopping at a huge flee market - there's so much time when you don't get plastered every Friday and Saturday! I'm now planning to keep up the good ways of life for a couple of weeks. Of course only to enjoy more the next time I let it go.

Good times!

Riding in a matatu



A phallic tribal dance



No matter how much I hate the idea of school uniforms, crowds of local school kids make a somehow fascinating sight



A friend's birthday, and on my left is Ingrid, a new friend from Norway I stole these two pics from