the higher, the better

We watch with amazement as these four inch heels navigate pot holes, gravel, mud and broken pavement.

life in the big city

When friends have asked what life is like in Nairobi, I almost feel strange trying to explain to them just how comfortably we can live here. I'm sure images of mud huts, dirty water and bad roads are flashing through their minds, and while they are certainly part of the picture in Kenya, there's a whole other side to Nairobi / Kenya / Africa that perhaps we aren't so aware of in the West.

Nairobi is a big city. There are skyscrapers (best viewed from here). There are big shopping centres. There are restaurants from almost every corner of the earth. In rush hour, the streets are teeming with smartly dressed Kenyans, off to their office, to do the shopping, or to get to university. It's not so different from home.

There are small businesses on every second corner, selling electric goods, furniture, video and editing services, groceries, vehicles and so on. In the matatus, I've sat next people with vocations as diverse as a university lecturer, an IT officer, an NGO's driver, a school teacher, a young mum, and a lumberjack (with his chainsaw sitting awkwardly across his lap).



There's a growing middle class in Kenya and Nairobi caters well for them. Within 15-20 minutes of our apartment, you can find not one, but two, cinemas, hospitals, dentists and chemists, a golf course, a casino, an Irish pub, a horse racing track, a war memorial, a great green grocer, a fish market, a wine bar (which we just had to check out, see above) and a microbrewery bar with salsa dancing every week.

We've already tried out the local Ethiopian, Italian, joint Japanese/Lebanese, Chinese, American, Mediterranean, Brazillian, Swiss and Kenyan restaurants, and we certainly can't complain about the food. I'd even go as far to say that sometimes, we're eating much better than at home.

Nairobi feels surprisingly like our hometown, albeit a little more mud and far fewer blondes. Even the trees feel 'homely' at the moment - there are jacarandas in bloom throughout the city and I can't help but think of all the uni students studying for their final exams.

So when you're thinking of poor W + L in 'deepest darkest Africa', please imagine us eating delicious fresh sushi, heading out to see the latest Bond flick, or catching up with friends for a drink at the bar, because that might be just what we're up to!

obama fever

Spotted while driving out of Nairobi the other week, but certainly not our first sighting of Obama in Kenya. Like in many parts of the world, the US election is being closely followed here.

We've discovered very quickly that Kenyans love their politics and are well versed on their MPs, presidential candidates and the nitty gritty of electoral processes. The front page news story is almost always a political one and I've never met so many people who have not only read, but seemingly memorised, their country's Constitution.

Everyone from the taxi drivers, to fellow colleagues, to the guy that shines shoes down the street can and will give us their insight into the latest political happenings. It's fascinating!

chasing giraffes

Sorry for the loooong blog silence, we've been very busy chasing giraffes, eating spare ribs on a floating restaurant and convincing a Chinese Hot Pot restauranteur to introduce chocolate fondue to the menu. It's all hard work and no fun here in Kenya.



Will has some amazing photos from our last weekend away in Crater Lake. He'll share as soon as we can get him a working card reader. I've got some other bits and pieces to put up over the week as well, so I promise there will be less blog static this week and some more tidbits from our life in the big N.

Lake Magadi

I had a field trip a couple of weeks ago to a place called Lake Magadi, southwest of Nairobi and close to the Tanzanian border.

Wow. Despite the dying quality of my very-aged iPhone camera, I hope you can see how beautiful this part of Kenya is. Rough, arid and yet spectacular.

I spent the trip interviewing project staff, Maasai health workers and even a Maasai chief. It was HOT (Nairobi is not so) and sweaty and we had to pause our interviews a few times because I couldn't hear my interviewee over the bleats of a noisy group of goats! It was an eyeopening, enjoyable mid-week adventure.

Things only got strange when my colleagues took me out one night to the hot springs on the lake, turned the car headlights towards the water and then proceeded to strip down to their underwear.

I remained polite but firm, and thankfully, fully dressed.

   

And as I watched all the gorgeous scenery rush by on our way home, I saw a young goat herder trip over his goats because he was too distracted playing with his mobile. Two worlds colliding, don't message and muster folks!

my 9 to 5

I've been working for almost two months now, but have somehow failed to share a single experience from my placement here on the blog. Pole sana. I'm working for quite a large international health organisation* that most of you probably haven't heard of, but is well-known and well-respected throughout Africa.

As my colleagues and I still figure out exactly what I can and should contribute to, my weeks have been alternating between rather quiet days reading background documents until I have nothing left to read and must turn to trashy news sites online (news.com.au I'm looking at you!), through to busy, busy days of deadlines, writing and field trips. Of course, when it's busy, I'm wishing for one of those quiet days, and when there's not much to do, I'm itching to get stuck into something challenging!

But thus far, I'm really loving the work part of life in Kenya. I am helping my team document the successes, innovations and tools they've developed in various projects, so they can apply lessons learnt or models used to future projects and can encourage other agencies to make use of them as well.

For me, that involves a lot of background reading on Kenyan health policy, strategic plans and the target community/culture, developing question guides and interviewing project staff, community leaders and beneficiaries, drafting a document that captures everything I've learnt in an easy-to-read, concise format and working with various people to redraft, rewrite and polish it up into something worth sharing.

I'm getting exposure to a number of different projects and different regions, from maternal and child health services, to addressing female genital mutilation (FGM), to implementing systems to collect important health data at the community level, to projects tackling the huge shortage of health workers in the country. In addition to documentation, I'm also working on some advocacy projects and will hopefully be contributing to business development in the coming months as well.

There's so much to learn and I'm finding it all fascinating. I often get that 'Yes, this is right where I want to be' kind of feeling, which is a such good feeling to get when you hold two very broad degrees, have a wide range of interests and are still not exactly sure what you want to be when you grow up!

*I'm not naming the organisation I work with or the volunteer program I'm supported by to save myself the hassle of submitting everything through their social media policy person, but if you'd like to know more, feel free to contact me via facebook / email / twitter.

a swahili update

We've been taking two Swahili classes a week and practicing with each other and Kenyan friends when we can. I, however, I'm trying to unlearn some mistakes I made early on. I shared my embarrassment with some girlfriends back home, but decided sharing is caring and who doesn't want to hear a funny story about Laura's laments when language learning?!

So, taken straight from my email home...

"And in other news, I have the uncanny ability to turn an innocent Swahili word into something a little less polite. Our second lesson in, I mispronounced the word 'house' and instead of saying 'I like my house', I announced that 'I like my flatulence'. Our poor teacher was so embarrassed as she corrected me, and to my horror it appears my brain is permanently unable to get that word right and almost every class I've made the same mistake. 

If that's not bad enough, I also mispronounced the word 'drinking' and instead shared with the class 'I am pooing tea'. Seriously, what is wrong with me?! Asides from those two highly embarrassing mistakes, Swahili is fun to learn - easier than French and there are a lot of opportunities to practice each day."

So there we go, friends. However, you should know there are a bunch of other great Swahili words we are mastering, like pilipili hoho (capsicum) - how cool a word is that?