The opening of a commercial overheard on FM radio the other day (the minibus drivers tend to blast it):
(Sound of a couple saying their wedding vows; “I do.” “I do.”)
Voiceover: Getting married is the happiest day of your life. On this day, you would never even think about how cement products are all around you.
Best. Non-sequitur. EVER. Come back zinc!
Brilliant ads like that aside, FM radio in Kenya is identical in every way to FM radio in Australia – apart from the fact that the announcers are African, you could be listening to 2Day FM. It’s a good example of the sort of mix of tradition and modernity that you see quite often here. On another occasion, I was sitting in a mudhut in a tiny village a 45-minute motorbike ride down narrow dirt tracks, attending a microfinance meeting of a group of women, as rural as you can get – when suddenly a mobile phone starts ringing with a Kylie Minogue ringtone, and one of these old African mamas picks it up and starts talking away, and nobody (bar me) bats an eyelid.
In many ways it’s a very different place to what I’m used to, but at the same time the marks of a globalised world are everywhere. Mobile phones are the most obvious thing – it almost seems like a phone has become one of the bare essentials: the fourth thing you spend your money on after food, water and shelter. The English Premier League is another. It’s strange how certain aspects of Western society are embraced wholeheartedly, but ways of thinking tend to remain very African.
To return to Trevor, star of one of the previous posts – the guy who’s trying to introduce new agricultural techniques to shift local farmers from subsistence operations to profitable businesses. One of the things he’s trying to do is to stop farmers growing so much maize, which is the absolute staple crop here. One of the national dishes is a flavourless paste called ugali which is made from maize and water, and they eat it with everything. Trevor’s trying to convince people to grow cash crops like bananas, tomatoes, sweet potatoes etc instead of maize. His attempts to explain that if you sell enough cash crops, you can buy all the food you need and you don’t need to worry about living on a paste made of maize and water are just too much for most people – they think if they don’t grow maize, they’ll starve. What would people say of a farmer that couldn’t provide enough maize for his family? The social sanction is too much to bear.
And another thing. Cows, sheep and goats are everywhere, and they’re all strange-looking. The cows are skinny and have horns; the sheep are furry and have long fat tails. Thing is, they don’t seem to do anything. They’re not used for milk, and they’re seldom eaten. So why do people have them, we wanted to know? Much of it relates to status – if you have a cow it means you’re well-off, even if that cow produces nothing. If you have two cows… woah.
We met an English doctor called Ailsa on safari. She’d been spending her time doing medical camps in various villages. The way a medical camp works is, they advertise in an area that a doctor will be in town on a particular day, and then on the day hundreds of people show up to get medical care they can never usually access. Many of them have conditions that really, really need treatment – in fact should have been treated some time ago. Ailsa told us that, for the most part, she could prescribe something and send people on their way, but on occasion she’d have someone who was really sick. She was blown away when she first said to someone “You need to go to hospital right away or you could die” and was told “Oh, no… I can’t go to hospital today”. Even when she offered to pay.
It seems to me (and I’m sure many have pondered this before me) that while the trappings of modernity may be creeping in, it’s a change in the way of thinking that would really make the difference for African development. Investment in health, education, more effective agricultural practices, entrepreneurship… these are the things that made us rich and could do the same for Africa – if only they’d think and act like us. The paradox is, if you think like a Westerner, you can be rich like a Westerner, but you might be giving up a lot in the process. A lot of positives come from Africa not being like the West – strong community support networks and family ties, a spirit of togetherness, a willingness to share virtually everything one has – is forsaking those qualities the price of development? Or is it that we think they need to be like us in order to develop, simply because that’s how we are and we can’t imagine a different way? You can be poor and communal, or you can be rich and individualistic, but does the choice have to be as stark as that? Or can you mix the best of the two?
Friday, May 28, 2010
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
The Eleventh Post
I really like reading the comments that people leave on this thing. For those who aren’t looking at them, I highly recommend Cameron Murray’s piece in response to The Fifth Post. It’s about doing things to sacred cows. Trust me, you’ll love it.
On the subject of comments from the punters, my darling sister wrote the following in response to The Eleventh Post:
“Benny, aside from various wacky adventures, what are you actually doing??”
Naturally, I gave her a gobful for being so impertinent. But after I’d put Lozzie firmly back in her place, it did get me to thinking that I haven’t really said much about the work I’m doing over here. That’s not really going to change much in this post, so bad news for anyone who’s hanging to hear about that. I am intending to write a post specifically about work, just not right now. Right now, the reason I bring up work is because I want to talk about health issues. Read on – you’ll see the connection.
For those who don’t have the slightest idea what I’m doing here, primarily I’m working on a couple of microfinance programs being run out of two community centres near where I’m living. As they’re both quite small programs, I decided it would be good to spend some time at a larger microfinance organisation as well so I could get a broader picture of the field. Microfinance is a big deal over here (and I assume in plenty of other developing countries now as well) and there are some pretty largeish organisations running around with hundreds of branches and millions of clients. So I worked a few contacts and managed to line up a couple of days at a bank called K-Rep.
K-Rep’s big thing at the moment is a project called FAHIDA which targets financial services at victims of HIV/AIDS, their families and carers. I spent much of my time with them visiting borrowing groups who were part of this project. The first time I’ve ever knowingly met an HIV sufferer actually. It looked like a pretty impressive operation, with people clearly benefiting from the loans being extended to them. The one thing I couldn’t figure out was, why do HIV/AIDS sufferers need specific financial services? Why can’t they just use mainstream services as regular (albeit micro-) borrowers?
I asked the incredibly helpful K-Rep Regional Manager this when I got a chance. I think it really showed my ignorance of the situation. The reason, he said, is because infected people experience so much discrimination in day-to-day life in Kenya. Apart from the stigma attached to the disease, lending institutions don’t want to know them because they’re marked for death. That sounds blunt but that seems to be the way it’s seen here. Why would you lend money to someone if you were worried they’d die before they paid it back? This just exacerbates the social isolation that sufferers can face in every aspect of their lives.
The same day, we visited a group that was running a sort of refuge for AIDS orphans from their local area. The manager told me that there were 3400 orphans involved in their programs – all orphaned by AIDS, and all within an area maybe the size of Bankstown. The prevalence of HIV in Kenya is around 7%, compared to nought point something in Australia.
The very idea of an orphanage seems Dickensian to us. Here there are orphanages all over the place. People are always going to funerals – sometimes several in a week. Of course it’s not all due to AIDS – there are plenty of other things in Kenya that can lead to untimely death – but every time you’re talking to someone and they tell you “yes, my parents both died” or “my sister died earlier this year” that’s always the first question in your mind.
There are some things you can just never know about the struggles of living in a developing country until you actually spend some time in one. The devastating effect of HIV certainly becomes much more real when you see it up close, but at least we do hear about it and talk about it (a bit) in the West. Not so jiggers. Have you heard of jiggers? No, I thought not.
Jiggers are little fleas that live in dusty soil and like to burrow into human flesh and lay eggs. People living in dusty rural areas who don’t wear shoes are at high risk of being visited by them. That means a significant minority of the population of rural Kenya (in a crowd of children walking home from school, it’s not unusual that half of them will have no shoes). When you get lots of jiggers, your feet look like this:
… and you literally can’t walk anymore. This is an old guy that one of the other volunteers has been treating, but the worst affected are often kids. Kids who are crippled because of jiggers take to crawling around – until they get them in their hands and knees and can’t do that anymore either. In extreme cases, the sores can turn septic and you can die from them. Removing jiggers is a slow and painful process involving a scalpel and an agricultural chemical called Lysol. In some areas of Kenya the problem is so bad it’s considered a national crisis, with TV fundraising appeals and celebrity spokespeople and everything. All because of little critter you’d probably never even heard of before you read this.
In a country with an HIV/AIDS prevalence of 7% and 40-something percent of people below the poverty line, why do there also have to be little bugs that crawl under your skin and lay eggs there, and keep doing it until you’re crippled or dead? That’s life here.
On the subject of comments from the punters, my darling sister wrote the following in response to The Eleventh Post:
“Benny, aside from various wacky adventures, what are you actually doing??”
Naturally, I gave her a gobful for being so impertinent. But after I’d put Lozzie firmly back in her place, it did get me to thinking that I haven’t really said much about the work I’m doing over here. That’s not really going to change much in this post, so bad news for anyone who’s hanging to hear about that. I am intending to write a post specifically about work, just not right now. Right now, the reason I bring up work is because I want to talk about health issues. Read on – you’ll see the connection.
For those who don’t have the slightest idea what I’m doing here, primarily I’m working on a couple of microfinance programs being run out of two community centres near where I’m living. As they’re both quite small programs, I decided it would be good to spend some time at a larger microfinance organisation as well so I could get a broader picture of the field. Microfinance is a big deal over here (and I assume in plenty of other developing countries now as well) and there are some pretty largeish organisations running around with hundreds of branches and millions of clients. So I worked a few contacts and managed to line up a couple of days at a bank called K-Rep.
K-Rep’s big thing at the moment is a project called FAHIDA which targets financial services at victims of HIV/AIDS, their families and carers. I spent much of my time with them visiting borrowing groups who were part of this project. The first time I’ve ever knowingly met an HIV sufferer actually. It looked like a pretty impressive operation, with people clearly benefiting from the loans being extended to them. The one thing I couldn’t figure out was, why do HIV/AIDS sufferers need specific financial services? Why can’t they just use mainstream services as regular (albeit micro-) borrowers?
I asked the incredibly helpful K-Rep Regional Manager this when I got a chance. I think it really showed my ignorance of the situation. The reason, he said, is because infected people experience so much discrimination in day-to-day life in Kenya. Apart from the stigma attached to the disease, lending institutions don’t want to know them because they’re marked for death. That sounds blunt but that seems to be the way it’s seen here. Why would you lend money to someone if you were worried they’d die before they paid it back? This just exacerbates the social isolation that sufferers can face in every aspect of their lives.
The same day, we visited a group that was running a sort of refuge for AIDS orphans from their local area. The manager told me that there were 3400 orphans involved in their programs – all orphaned by AIDS, and all within an area maybe the size of Bankstown. The prevalence of HIV in Kenya is around 7%, compared to nought point something in Australia.
The very idea of an orphanage seems Dickensian to us. Here there are orphanages all over the place. People are always going to funerals – sometimes several in a week. Of course it’s not all due to AIDS – there are plenty of other things in Kenya that can lead to untimely death – but every time you’re talking to someone and they tell you “yes, my parents both died” or “my sister died earlier this year” that’s always the first question in your mind.
There are some things you can just never know about the struggles of living in a developing country until you actually spend some time in one. The devastating effect of HIV certainly becomes much more real when you see it up close, but at least we do hear about it and talk about it (a bit) in the West. Not so jiggers. Have you heard of jiggers? No, I thought not.
Jiggers are little fleas that live in dusty soil and like to burrow into human flesh and lay eggs. People living in dusty rural areas who don’t wear shoes are at high risk of being visited by them. That means a significant minority of the population of rural Kenya (in a crowd of children walking home from school, it’s not unusual that half of them will have no shoes). When you get lots of jiggers, your feet look like this:
… and you literally can’t walk anymore. This is an old guy that one of the other volunteers has been treating, but the worst affected are often kids. Kids who are crippled because of jiggers take to crawling around – until they get them in their hands and knees and can’t do that anymore either. In extreme cases, the sores can turn septic and you can die from them. Removing jiggers is a slow and painful process involving a scalpel and an agricultural chemical called Lysol. In some areas of Kenya the problem is so bad it’s considered a national crisis, with TV fundraising appeals and celebrity spokespeople and everything. All because of little critter you’d probably never even heard of before you read this.
In a country with an HIV/AIDS prevalence of 7% and 40-something percent of people below the poverty line, why do there also have to be little bugs that crawl under your skin and lay eggs there, and keep doing it until you’re crippled or dead? That’s life here.
Monday, May 17, 2010
The Tenth Post
The other day I met a man called Trevor. Trevor is another Australian who first came to Kenya last year with the same organisation as me.
Trevor is also an excellent talker, and we've had a number of long chats. That’s been really handy for me because I think I can learn a lot from his experience. I can see parallels between the two of us in that he came here, like I did, with a general interest in development but without much idea of what to do when he got here. As he puts it, he had to spend some time “finding my niche”.
He was initially supposed to be here for a three-month stint (I’m here for two). He spent the first part of that time visiting different projects that were happening around the community, helping out here and there, then trying something else. In this way he got involved in promoting an agricultural technique called ‘push-pull agriculture’ – an organic way of protecting crops against pests that can increase yield sizes significantly. Flash forward 15 months and he’s now the ‘push-pull’ guru in the region, with about 70 demonstration sites plus a whole range of other projects in the works such as dairy goat breeding and plantation timber. He’s back in the country for the fourth time, having spent 11 of the past 15 months here.
He sees opportunities everywhere, but he’s not one of those hyperactive save-the-world types who are always so full of ideas and who wear their passion on their sleeve that I’ve come across previously, and who I assumed the development world would be full of. I know that comes across as a criticism of those types of people and I know I’m being unfair because a lot of them do great stuff, but my negative tone comes from a feeling of frustration – and, I admit, a little bit of envy – that I’m just not that sort of person. It’s always worried me that not having that sort of personality would prevent me from… well… achieving things. And by that I guess I mean achievements that have an importance beyond my own life.
Rather than a hyperactive save-the-world type, Trevor is methodical, patient and level-headed. He looks at problems dispassionately, and comes up with solutions in the same manner. Actually he’s more someone I’d expect to meet in the NSW public service than in a community centre in rural Kenya. Which, as you might expect, I find heartening, because Trevor’s is an example I’d like to be able to follow, and it feels much closer to my reach.
So naturally I was very keen to learn how Trevor had gone from ‘Trevor with no particular knowledge of agriculture besides a small vegetable garden in the backyard’ to ‘Trevor the push-pull agriculture guru’ in the space of 15 months. How did he know this was a problem that needed fixing? And how did he know how to fix it?
His answer: by listening. Just by asking people questions and listening to what they had to say. People who live here know what the problems are here, he said, because they live them every day. And often they have the solutions as well – sometimes they just need an outsider to coax them out of the old way of doing things and see the possibilities that are there. A lot of things are holding countries like Kenya back – debt, poor infrastructure, corruption – but (according to Trevor) one of the most significant ones is simply an attachment to existing practice and an aversion to trying new things. I guess when you’ve got literally everything to lose, even a small risk seems too daunting. So, the logic goes, one of the most helpful things we outsiders can do is nudge along this vital process of attitudinal change. That really hit home for me and it’s made me look at my role here in a new – and I think more constructive – way. It's less about "what can I achieve in two months?" and more "how can I contribute to this gradual process of change?"
I said before that this sort of approach feels closer to my reach, but that doesn’t mean it comes naturally to me the way it seems to do for Trevor. Nonetheless, it’s something I feel I can realistically aim for – if I want to. Of course Trevor has a few other advantages over me, especially those 25-odd years’ more life experience – he’s run his own business for many years, worked in a bank and in factories (he also left school at 14, so maybe we don’t need to be spending all this money on extending the school leaving age in NSW after all?). But I reckon if I can get to that age, look back on my life and tell the sorts of stories that he can, I’ll be pretty pleased with myself.
At the moment I’m reading the story of Muhammad Yunus, father of microcredit, founder of Grameen Bank and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. Not that I have pretensions of winning the Nobel Peace Prize (I mean, what’s it worth these days anyway? I like Obama but honestly…), but speaking of looking back on your life, wouldn’t it be nice to do that and be able to say “hey, I founded the Grameen Bank!” I certainly would allow myself a little pat on the back if I could say something like that. Reading that book, I find myself looking for clues as to how one comes to be a person like Muhammad Yunus. He seems a little out of my league, but the Trevor philosophy might get me a bit closer than I would have got otherwise. And hey, aim high right? Professor Yunus didn’t found Grameen Bank till he was 37, so I’ve still got a few years. Hmm... maybe I should take back what I said about the Nobel Peace Prize...
Trevor is also an excellent talker, and we've had a number of long chats. That’s been really handy for me because I think I can learn a lot from his experience. I can see parallels between the two of us in that he came here, like I did, with a general interest in development but without much idea of what to do when he got here. As he puts it, he had to spend some time “finding my niche”.
He was initially supposed to be here for a three-month stint (I’m here for two). He spent the first part of that time visiting different projects that were happening around the community, helping out here and there, then trying something else. In this way he got involved in promoting an agricultural technique called ‘push-pull agriculture’ – an organic way of protecting crops against pests that can increase yield sizes significantly. Flash forward 15 months and he’s now the ‘push-pull’ guru in the region, with about 70 demonstration sites plus a whole range of other projects in the works such as dairy goat breeding and plantation timber. He’s back in the country for the fourth time, having spent 11 of the past 15 months here.
He sees opportunities everywhere, but he’s not one of those hyperactive save-the-world types who are always so full of ideas and who wear their passion on their sleeve that I’ve come across previously, and who I assumed the development world would be full of. I know that comes across as a criticism of those types of people and I know I’m being unfair because a lot of them do great stuff, but my negative tone comes from a feeling of frustration – and, I admit, a little bit of envy – that I’m just not that sort of person. It’s always worried me that not having that sort of personality would prevent me from… well… achieving things. And by that I guess I mean achievements that have an importance beyond my own life.
Rather than a hyperactive save-the-world type, Trevor is methodical, patient and level-headed. He looks at problems dispassionately, and comes up with solutions in the same manner. Actually he’s more someone I’d expect to meet in the NSW public service than in a community centre in rural Kenya. Which, as you might expect, I find heartening, because Trevor’s is an example I’d like to be able to follow, and it feels much closer to my reach.
So naturally I was very keen to learn how Trevor had gone from ‘Trevor with no particular knowledge of agriculture besides a small vegetable garden in the backyard’ to ‘Trevor the push-pull agriculture guru’ in the space of 15 months. How did he know this was a problem that needed fixing? And how did he know how to fix it?
His answer: by listening. Just by asking people questions and listening to what they had to say. People who live here know what the problems are here, he said, because they live them every day. And often they have the solutions as well – sometimes they just need an outsider to coax them out of the old way of doing things and see the possibilities that are there. A lot of things are holding countries like Kenya back – debt, poor infrastructure, corruption – but (according to Trevor) one of the most significant ones is simply an attachment to existing practice and an aversion to trying new things. I guess when you’ve got literally everything to lose, even a small risk seems too daunting. So, the logic goes, one of the most helpful things we outsiders can do is nudge along this vital process of attitudinal change. That really hit home for me and it’s made me look at my role here in a new – and I think more constructive – way. It's less about "what can I achieve in two months?" and more "how can I contribute to this gradual process of change?"
I said before that this sort of approach feels closer to my reach, but that doesn’t mean it comes naturally to me the way it seems to do for Trevor. Nonetheless, it’s something I feel I can realistically aim for – if I want to. Of course Trevor has a few other advantages over me, especially those 25-odd years’ more life experience – he’s run his own business for many years, worked in a bank and in factories (he also left school at 14, so maybe we don’t need to be spending all this money on extending the school leaving age in NSW after all?). But I reckon if I can get to that age, look back on my life and tell the sorts of stories that he can, I’ll be pretty pleased with myself.
At the moment I’m reading the story of Muhammad Yunus, father of microcredit, founder of Grameen Bank and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. Not that I have pretensions of winning the Nobel Peace Prize (I mean, what’s it worth these days anyway? I like Obama but honestly…), but speaking of looking back on your life, wouldn’t it be nice to do that and be able to say “hey, I founded the Grameen Bank!” I certainly would allow myself a little pat on the back if I could say something like that. Reading that book, I find myself looking for clues as to how one comes to be a person like Muhammad Yunus. He seems a little out of my league, but the Trevor philosophy might get me a bit closer than I would have got otherwise. And hey, aim high right? Professor Yunus didn’t found Grameen Bank till he was 37, so I’ve still got a few years. Hmm... maybe I should take back what I said about the Nobel Peace Prize...
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
The Ninth Post
First let me say that, despite all of what is to follow here, this trip to Nairobi has been lots of fun and I dig the city. It's much more than the most dangerous city in Africa (perhaps not counting Mogadishu).
I came here to the national capital to do the safari that we get as an add-on to our volunteer program. We needed to spend a night in Nairobi at the start and the end of the safari. Before coming to Kenya I had heard horror stories about Nairobi, and we had also been warned away from it by our organisation, so I had resolved to spend as little time here as possible. When my flight arrived my first day in Kenya, I was most displeased to learn that I had to walk across a carpark between the international and domestic terminals so I could catch my domestic flight. I was on the lookout for muggers/hoodlums/international terrorists all the way across. Mercifully, they spared me on that occasion. After a month in Kenya that attitude now seems ridiculous to me (as I suppose it does to anyone reading this, even if you haven't been to Nairobi at all - it was a little over-the-top I admit).
Having had a bit of experience of the country now, Kenya no longer holds any real demons. So when it came time to book the safari, it seemed like a great opportunity to check out the Nairobi. We extended our stay here for a couple of nights so we could do that. Timing was good because one of our fellow volunteers was finishing up her program and was coming in to Nairobi at the same time to catch her flight home. So we decided to set up a massive farewell dinner at Nairobi's famous meat-themed restaurant Carnivore, where all kinds of delicious meat is barbecued over hot coals and served up on swords (man grunt).
So yeah, safari was great (although we only saw three of the big five - stupid rhinos and stupid cheetahs were hiding from us), hostel is possibly (no shiz) the best I have ever stayed in, we've had some really good nights and met some great people.
Now, let me tell you all the things that have gone wrong. Even for me, I feel this is quite an impressive list.
Problem 1: We fly to Nairobi. I leave the book I was reading on the plane.
Problems 2 and 3: My camera's memory card had suddenly stopped working the week before we left for Nairobi, and I couldn't find a shop that sold ones that fit my camera. So I was looking at going on safari without a camera. Great. Also, I've been having major dramas trying to get a SIM card that works properly. I've now bought four SIM cards, all of which have had some kind of flaw. The latest one was giving me a message 'SIM not active.' But there were no instructions on how to activate it. So the plan was to spend the first afternoon in Nairobi looking for the right camera memory card and either getting the SIM activated or buying a fifth one.
When we arrived in Nairobi, things got really eerie - we got off the bus in town, walked about five metres and found a camera shop. We gave them a try and they had the right card! AND it was in stock AND when I tested it in my camera, it worked! Amazing. We walked out of the camera shop and, lo and behold, there is a phone shop almost next door. They fix the SIM in a couple of minutes! Walking out of the phone shop, I start to feel that things have gone just a little too well. A sense of foreboding comes over me - are we going to get mugged now or something?
No, although we do get scammed shortly after (see problem 4 below). We head off on safari and the memory card continues to work fine.
Ah. But.
Day two of the safari, life gives me a little tap on the shoulder to remind me that modern cameras need two essential accessories in order to work: a memory card; and a battery. The battery, of course, goes flat - and who's forgotten to bring his charger with him? So I succeed in going on safari without a camera in the end. I knew it was too good to be true.
Problem 4: The scam. Walking in central Nairobi, a nice guy starts chatting to us about where we're from, etc. He's a medical student at the university just up the road. They're having a day of action to improve access for disabled students. We're looking for an adapter so we can charge our phones and cameras, so he takes us to a few electronics shops until he finds one that has what we need, bargains the price down for us and everything. Then, would we like to see the uni? It's very nice. Sure we say. Making conversation, I ask him if he's doing anything for the day of action. Why, yes, as a matter of fact he is. He's collecting donations. Out comes a donation sheet where people have been putting their names and amounts down. He's been so nice, we feel like we have to give something. A lot of people have already donated - I fail to notice the significance of the fact that all the donors (suckers) are from Western countries - and, awkwardly, they have donated quite large amounts by Kenyan standards - 500 to 1000 shillings. Well, I don't want to donate a thousand (13 bucks or so), but I don't want to look like a tight arse either... I decide on 500. I know I have a 500 note somewhere, but it's buried in my money belt and I don't want to go digging around in there in front of this guy, so I'm blindly pulling notes out of my pants. They are all 1000 notes. Eventually he says, "Ah, just give a thousand - it's for the disabled!" Oh fine, I say, and hand it over. Kelly has done the same. That's when it becomes clear what's happening because as soon as he gets the money he says "Thanks bye!". Maybe he forgot he was going to show us the uni...
Problem 5: After the safari, we meet up with our fellow volunteers back in Nairobi. I call Carnivore to book our glorious farewell feast for that night. It's a Monday night but we have already confirmed that Carnivore is open 7 days a week, and virtually every night of the year.
Virtually every night. But not tonight. Tonight it's closed for a private function.
So what can we do? Everyone had their hearts set on this. I suggest plan B - we could go for lunch? People are up for it. It's about 11am and two of us have just eaten a full English breakfast, so it will need to be a late lunch, but ok. We ask for a reservation for the latest possible lunch sitting. Unfortunately for us, because they're closing early today that is 1.30pm. So we will just need to find some room between the bacon and sausage. And hey, we manage to have a good time in the end even though we perhaps eat a bit less meat than we might have at dinner. Still, that's probably a good thing.
Problem 6: We have an early flight back home the day after Carnivore. We get up on time, the hostel has booked us a cab, the cab comes on time, and off we go to the airport.
But it turns out they haven't allowed enough time to get through the Nairobi traffic. We miss the plane.
Life might be trying to tell me something, I don't know. But I don't care - I still like Nairobi.
I came here to the national capital to do the safari that we get as an add-on to our volunteer program. We needed to spend a night in Nairobi at the start and the end of the safari. Before coming to Kenya I had heard horror stories about Nairobi, and we had also been warned away from it by our organisation, so I had resolved to spend as little time here as possible. When my flight arrived my first day in Kenya, I was most displeased to learn that I had to walk across a carpark between the international and domestic terminals so I could catch my domestic flight. I was on the lookout for muggers/hoodlums/international terrorists all the way across. Mercifully, they spared me on that occasion. After a month in Kenya that attitude now seems ridiculous to me (as I suppose it does to anyone reading this, even if you haven't been to Nairobi at all - it was a little over-the-top I admit).
Having had a bit of experience of the country now, Kenya no longer holds any real demons. So when it came time to book the safari, it seemed like a great opportunity to check out the Nairobi. We extended our stay here for a couple of nights so we could do that. Timing was good because one of our fellow volunteers was finishing up her program and was coming in to Nairobi at the same time to catch her flight home. So we decided to set up a massive farewell dinner at Nairobi's famous meat-themed restaurant Carnivore, where all kinds of delicious meat is barbecued over hot coals and served up on swords (man grunt).
So yeah, safari was great (although we only saw three of the big five - stupid rhinos and stupid cheetahs were hiding from us), hostel is possibly (no shiz) the best I have ever stayed in, we've had some really good nights and met some great people.
Now, let me tell you all the things that have gone wrong. Even for me, I feel this is quite an impressive list.
Problem 1: We fly to Nairobi. I leave the book I was reading on the plane.
Problems 2 and 3: My camera's memory card had suddenly stopped working the week before we left for Nairobi, and I couldn't find a shop that sold ones that fit my camera. So I was looking at going on safari without a camera. Great. Also, I've been having major dramas trying to get a SIM card that works properly. I've now bought four SIM cards, all of which have had some kind of flaw. The latest one was giving me a message 'SIM not active.' But there were no instructions on how to activate it. So the plan was to spend the first afternoon in Nairobi looking for the right camera memory card and either getting the SIM activated or buying a fifth one.
When we arrived in Nairobi, things got really eerie - we got off the bus in town, walked about five metres and found a camera shop. We gave them a try and they had the right card! AND it was in stock AND when I tested it in my camera, it worked! Amazing. We walked out of the camera shop and, lo and behold, there is a phone shop almost next door. They fix the SIM in a couple of minutes! Walking out of the phone shop, I start to feel that things have gone just a little too well. A sense of foreboding comes over me - are we going to get mugged now or something?
No, although we do get scammed shortly after (see problem 4 below). We head off on safari and the memory card continues to work fine.
Ah. But.
Day two of the safari, life gives me a little tap on the shoulder to remind me that modern cameras need two essential accessories in order to work: a memory card; and a battery. The battery, of course, goes flat - and who's forgotten to bring his charger with him? So I succeed in going on safari without a camera in the end. I knew it was too good to be true.
Problem 4: The scam. Walking in central Nairobi, a nice guy starts chatting to us about where we're from, etc. He's a medical student at the university just up the road. They're having a day of action to improve access for disabled students. We're looking for an adapter so we can charge our phones and cameras, so he takes us to a few electronics shops until he finds one that has what we need, bargains the price down for us and everything. Then, would we like to see the uni? It's very nice. Sure we say. Making conversation, I ask him if he's doing anything for the day of action. Why, yes, as a matter of fact he is. He's collecting donations. Out comes a donation sheet where people have been putting their names and amounts down. He's been so nice, we feel like we have to give something. A lot of people have already donated - I fail to notice the significance of the fact that all the donors (suckers) are from Western countries - and, awkwardly, they have donated quite large amounts by Kenyan standards - 500 to 1000 shillings. Well, I don't want to donate a thousand (13 bucks or so), but I don't want to look like a tight arse either... I decide on 500. I know I have a 500 note somewhere, but it's buried in my money belt and I don't want to go digging around in there in front of this guy, so I'm blindly pulling notes out of my pants. They are all 1000 notes. Eventually he says, "Ah, just give a thousand - it's for the disabled!" Oh fine, I say, and hand it over. Kelly has done the same. That's when it becomes clear what's happening because as soon as he gets the money he says "Thanks bye!". Maybe he forgot he was going to show us the uni...
Problem 5: After the safari, we meet up with our fellow volunteers back in Nairobi. I call Carnivore to book our glorious farewell feast for that night. It's a Monday night but we have already confirmed that Carnivore is open 7 days a week, and virtually every night of the year.
Virtually every night. But not tonight. Tonight it's closed for a private function.
So what can we do? Everyone had their hearts set on this. I suggest plan B - we could go for lunch? People are up for it. It's about 11am and two of us have just eaten a full English breakfast, so it will need to be a late lunch, but ok. We ask for a reservation for the latest possible lunch sitting. Unfortunately for us, because they're closing early today that is 1.30pm. So we will just need to find some room between the bacon and sausage. And hey, we manage to have a good time in the end even though we perhaps eat a bit less meat than we might have at dinner. Still, that's probably a good thing.
Problem 6: We have an early flight back home the day after Carnivore. We get up on time, the hostel has booked us a cab, the cab comes on time, and off we go to the airport.
But it turns out they haven't allowed enough time to get through the Nairobi traffic. We miss the plane.
Life might be trying to tell me something, I don't know. But I don't care - I still like Nairobi.
Sunday, May 2, 2010
The Eighth Post
Remember that old game show Family Feud? With Rob Brough? Do you know he became a newsreader in Queensland after that show ended? And do you also know that his brother was former Federal Minister for Families, Communities and Indigenous Affairs and former future Prime Minister of Australia (he was aiming for it, mark my words) Mal Brough?
Come with me on a journey for a moment and imagine you are back on Family Feud circa 1992. Your loved ones are beside you on the panel. Rob, beaming at you with his million dollar smile and white guy curl-fro, has given you the topic: African wildlife.
What do you say? Lions, I bet. Tigers? No – hopefully one of your family members is clued-in enough to divert you from this folly. Tigers are found in Asia, my friend. Elephants, certainly. Giraffe, rhino, hippo, wildebeest even, if you’re really getting on a roll.
If you said insects, what would the survey say? I think it would say ‘BA-BAOW’ (for those who don’t remember Family Feud, that’s my attempted transcription of the sound effect they played when a team guessed something that didn’t appear on the survey. I have no idea how you would represent the sound effect they played when a team got something right – suggestions welcome from those who recall the sound). That is, unless a significant number of the survey cohort had actually spent time living in Africa.
I’m going on safari next week so hopefully these stats will change, but so far, a month into my stay in Kenya, my wildlife spotting tally reads thus:
lions – 0
zebras – 0
cheetahs – 0
elephants – 0
Kirk’s Dikdiks (a type of antelope, included here because a) it has an hilarious name and b) I don’t want to discriminate against the lesser known animals) - 0
previously unknown species of insect – 5342
of which gigantic, scary and/or man-eating – 5300
I freely admit that I was not entirely prepared for this. I did expect swarms of mosquitos, and came armed with tropical strength Aeroguard, but actually the mozzies have paled into insignificance against the multitudes of other flying, buzzing and crawling things that invade my room every evening.
Everything seems to be bigger, scarier, and meaner than its Australian brethren. For example. fireants are the size of your little finger (well, the nail anyway), and love love LOVE to bite the soft fleshy bits of any humans that happen to be in the vicinity. Actually, Wikipedia tells us that these ants do not in fact bite; rather they use their mandibles to grab on to the unfortunate victim while curling their abdomen around to hit the victim repeatedly with the sting that is located there. Wiki describes this as “a stinging frenzy” in which the ant may sting 8-10 times, and continue stinging even when its poison gland is empty. Insane. Two of our number have been hit by these hard-arses in the past week.
Then there are the cockroaches. We were warned before arrival that they can get pretty big over here, and that’s certainly true. So far the smallest one I’ve seen is comparable to the biggest ones in Sydney. I reckon I hit a new size record with one I saw the other night, but some of the volunteers who’ve been here longer than me tell me that bad boy was a runt compared to the real big daddies running around. I can only wait with a vague sense of dread until the morning I wake up with one snuggling up and trying to spoon me.
Besides that, there are massive black beetles, dragonfly-type things with fluffy wings that look like something out of Avatar, a huge hornet that makes a noise like a twin-engine Cessna when it’s flying around, kamikaze flying ants that dive-bomb you – and the half-prepared food – when you’re cooking dinner… the list goes on. Mozzies come well down the list, although they have started to appear in greater numbers in recent days. This has coincided with me changing the mosquito net that hangs over my bed.
When I first arrived here there were nine volunteers in the compound, and all the best mozzie nets were taken. The one I got had an odour which I will charitably describe as interesting, and four or five quite large holes in it. I have to big up Victoria Coorey here for giving me the benefit of her experience in the Amazon last year, with a tip to bring along Sellotape to patch up any holes in nets. While the patch job seemed to work, I looked on with envy at my roommate Luke’s shiny, sleek new net – a net which he didn’t even use because being from the country he’s tough as nails. He cared not a jot for even the largest insect, although they never came near him anyway – they came for me because they can smell fear.
When Luke headed back to Oz at the end of last week, I happily switched to his net. Unfortunately, all was not as it seemed. The first night I woke up at about 3am with mozzie bites all over my feet – I’d managed to kick my way through the net and both feet were sticking out into the kill zone. Macgyver-style, I solved this problem by weighing down the net at the end of the bed with a couple of shoes and settled back to sleep, only to wake again a couple of hours later with more bites – this time on my hand – and a buzzing mosquito sound coming from inside the net! Horrified, I switched the light back on, made short work of the little bastard and then did a scan for holes. Sure enough, there were several. Out came the tape and I patched everything I could find.
Unfortunately, these turned out to be merely the first shots of a three-night battle between man and net, in which each night I would be woken by new bites or by mozzies buzzing next to my ear. This would necessitate further scans and further patching of holes, a few more hours’ sleep and then the cycle would start again. On the third and climactic night, I woke up three times, each time finding a new mozzies inside the net. In my searching and patching I noticed a larger flying thing buzzing around outside the net. At first I paid it little heed – the holes on that side appeared all to be patched. However, this particular creature possessed an evolutionary advantage relative to mosquitos – it could crawl as well as fly. It stealthily made its way to where the net met the ground, moved to the underside and, like a ninja, climbed its way up the inside of the net. When it got above the bed level, BAM! It launched itself at my poor unsuspecting person.
I’m ashamed to say I did not react well to this. Anyone who’s seen me when a cockroach has crawled over my hand will know what I’m talking about. Basically, I squealed like a little girl, tangled myself up in the net as I tried to get away from the creature, and fell out gasping on to the floor. I grabbed a thong, swivelled around and swung blindly as the thing came round for another pass. With a thwack! I made contact and saw the two paper-thin wings, now separated from their owner, fluttering to the ground. I never found the body.
After that rollercoaster ride and three interrupted nights’ sleep, last night passed without incident. I’m hopeful that this means all the holes have now been found, but maybe it’s just the calm before the storm…
BK
p.s. while we’re celebrating the wonders of African wildlife, I highly recommend this: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/pages/Holding-your-cat-above-your-head-when-singing-The-Circle-of-Life/111284848887066?v=photos
Check out the third photo in particular. As one of the comments reads, “I think this might just be the best thing I’ve ever seen.”
Come with me on a journey for a moment and imagine you are back on Family Feud circa 1992. Your loved ones are beside you on the panel. Rob, beaming at you with his million dollar smile and white guy curl-fro, has given you the topic: African wildlife.
What do you say? Lions, I bet. Tigers? No – hopefully one of your family members is clued-in enough to divert you from this folly. Tigers are found in Asia, my friend. Elephants, certainly. Giraffe, rhino, hippo, wildebeest even, if you’re really getting on a roll.
If you said insects, what would the survey say? I think it would say ‘BA-BAOW’ (for those who don’t remember Family Feud, that’s my attempted transcription of the sound effect they played when a team guessed something that didn’t appear on the survey. I have no idea how you would represent the sound effect they played when a team got something right – suggestions welcome from those who recall the sound). That is, unless a significant number of the survey cohort had actually spent time living in Africa.
I’m going on safari next week so hopefully these stats will change, but so far, a month into my stay in Kenya, my wildlife spotting tally reads thus:
lions – 0
zebras – 0
cheetahs – 0
elephants – 0
Kirk’s Dikdiks (a type of antelope, included here because a) it has an hilarious name and b) I don’t want to discriminate against the lesser known animals) - 0
previously unknown species of insect – 5342
of which gigantic, scary and/or man-eating – 5300
I freely admit that I was not entirely prepared for this. I did expect swarms of mosquitos, and came armed with tropical strength Aeroguard, but actually the mozzies have paled into insignificance against the multitudes of other flying, buzzing and crawling things that invade my room every evening.
Everything seems to be bigger, scarier, and meaner than its Australian brethren. For example. fireants are the size of your little finger (well, the nail anyway), and love love LOVE to bite the soft fleshy bits of any humans that happen to be in the vicinity. Actually, Wikipedia tells us that these ants do not in fact bite; rather they use their mandibles to grab on to the unfortunate victim while curling their abdomen around to hit the victim repeatedly with the sting that is located there. Wiki describes this as “a stinging frenzy” in which the ant may sting 8-10 times, and continue stinging even when its poison gland is empty. Insane. Two of our number have been hit by these hard-arses in the past week.
Then there are the cockroaches. We were warned before arrival that they can get pretty big over here, and that’s certainly true. So far the smallest one I’ve seen is comparable to the biggest ones in Sydney. I reckon I hit a new size record with one I saw the other night, but some of the volunteers who’ve been here longer than me tell me that bad boy was a runt compared to the real big daddies running around. I can only wait with a vague sense of dread until the morning I wake up with one snuggling up and trying to spoon me.
Besides that, there are massive black beetles, dragonfly-type things with fluffy wings that look like something out of Avatar, a huge hornet that makes a noise like a twin-engine Cessna when it’s flying around, kamikaze flying ants that dive-bomb you – and the half-prepared food – when you’re cooking dinner… the list goes on. Mozzies come well down the list, although they have started to appear in greater numbers in recent days. This has coincided with me changing the mosquito net that hangs over my bed.
When I first arrived here there were nine volunteers in the compound, and all the best mozzie nets were taken. The one I got had an odour which I will charitably describe as interesting, and four or five quite large holes in it. I have to big up Victoria Coorey here for giving me the benefit of her experience in the Amazon last year, with a tip to bring along Sellotape to patch up any holes in nets. While the patch job seemed to work, I looked on with envy at my roommate Luke’s shiny, sleek new net – a net which he didn’t even use because being from the country he’s tough as nails. He cared not a jot for even the largest insect, although they never came near him anyway – they came for me because they can smell fear.
When Luke headed back to Oz at the end of last week, I happily switched to his net. Unfortunately, all was not as it seemed. The first night I woke up at about 3am with mozzie bites all over my feet – I’d managed to kick my way through the net and both feet were sticking out into the kill zone. Macgyver-style, I solved this problem by weighing down the net at the end of the bed with a couple of shoes and settled back to sleep, only to wake again a couple of hours later with more bites – this time on my hand – and a buzzing mosquito sound coming from inside the net! Horrified, I switched the light back on, made short work of the little bastard and then did a scan for holes. Sure enough, there were several. Out came the tape and I patched everything I could find.
Unfortunately, these turned out to be merely the first shots of a three-night battle between man and net, in which each night I would be woken by new bites or by mozzies buzzing next to my ear. This would necessitate further scans and further patching of holes, a few more hours’ sleep and then the cycle would start again. On the third and climactic night, I woke up three times, each time finding a new mozzies inside the net. In my searching and patching I noticed a larger flying thing buzzing around outside the net. At first I paid it little heed – the holes on that side appeared all to be patched. However, this particular creature possessed an evolutionary advantage relative to mosquitos – it could crawl as well as fly. It stealthily made its way to where the net met the ground, moved to the underside and, like a ninja, climbed its way up the inside of the net. When it got above the bed level, BAM! It launched itself at my poor unsuspecting person.
I’m ashamed to say I did not react well to this. Anyone who’s seen me when a cockroach has crawled over my hand will know what I’m talking about. Basically, I squealed like a little girl, tangled myself up in the net as I tried to get away from the creature, and fell out gasping on to the floor. I grabbed a thong, swivelled around and swung blindly as the thing came round for another pass. With a thwack! I made contact and saw the two paper-thin wings, now separated from their owner, fluttering to the ground. I never found the body.
After that rollercoaster ride and three interrupted nights’ sleep, last night passed without incident. I’m hopeful that this means all the holes have now been found, but maybe it’s just the calm before the storm…
BK
p.s. while we’re celebrating the wonders of African wildlife, I highly recommend this: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/pages/Holding-your-cat-above-your-head-when-singing-The-Circle-of-Life/111284848887066?v=photos
Check out the third photo in particular. As one of the comments reads, “I think this might just be the best thing I’ve ever seen.”
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