A detailed account of my 2005 visit to Kenya was never published, and its draft was unfortunately lost when two of my laptops were stolen on separate occasions. This is an attempt to document that very memorable trip.
In what seemed like a random act from my boss’ side, I was selected to attend a Statistics in Applied Climatology (SIAC) course in Nairobi, Kenya. I was naturally excited as this was going to be my first time visit to a country very far outside the borders of South Africa. This meant having to apply for an official visa, getting the mandatory yellow fever vaccination, and packing malaria tablets. South Africans staying for a month in Kenya did not need a visa, but we did it anyway.
Our travel agent booked us (my colleague and I) on Kenya Airways (KA). Things started on a bad note when a serious fault was spotted (hydraulic pump, or something like that malfunctioned), as we were about to depart. Technicians were summoned, but they would take the whole day to fix it. It became clear that we would in fact not go that day, but could only depart very early the following day. KA booked us at Birchwood Hotel for that night. We woke up early to catch a 5’o’ clock plane. Everything was sorted out, and we took just over 4 hours to get to Jomo Kenyatta Airport, Nairobi.
It was a sunny morning, and the airport itself did not look particularly busy. What made me nervous though, was when I was at the carousel waiting for my bag. Against the wall, not far from where we were standing, there were stacks of bags right up to the roof. This was not a good sign, but I was relieved when I saw my bag emerge from the carousel. Our driver was waiting for us at the meeting point, and it turned out we had a Mozambican in our plane, also attending the course. We changed our rands to shillings in the many currency exchange stalls there. Unlike in SA, Nairobi currency exchange bureaus were very fast, not many questions asked. Soon thereafter we got into our car, a run down, Land Rover, obviously appropriate for the treacherous road ahead. Driving was a precarious exercise, cars popped from all directions. It was such frenzy for a South African. Our driver seemed to take everything within his stride. About midway our drive, we encountered a huge traffic jam, there were major road works, and it is this time that our Land Rover collapsed completely. We tried to push it, but it would not start. Another car was called. This time it was a Toyota sedan, a variety typically found only in Kenya, I guess, as I have never seen anything like it before. Before long we arrived at our destination, Institute for Meteorological Training and Research (IMTR),situated at Dagoretti Corner along Ngong Road.
Upon arrival we found other participants from Zambia and Malawi who had arrived a few hours earlier. This course invited participants from all areas of Africa and we were the first South Africans to take part.
IMTR is the South and East African regional training centre for meteorology/climatology under World Meteorological Organization (WMO). It is situated in the same precinct as the Kenyan Meteorological Office (KMO). It has labs, classrooms and a hostel. Conditions here were pretty basic. No state of the art computers, in fact, because of erratic electricity supply we had to improvise most of time during our lectures. Hostel rooms had a small bed, a mandatory mosquito net, and that’s all! The only thing one could watch in the TV room was news. Kenya Broadcasting Co (KBC) programming was dreadful. It even showed Generations episodes of 5 years ago. KTV (more like etv here) showed mostly American sitcoms and films. I spent most of my time chatting to course participants, and that was one of the highlights of my time in Kenya. My favourite has to be Elly Bodo from Kisumu, west of Kenya. An old man, who told us that he was a lecturer at Kisumu University, but we found that hard to believe, because his grasp of concepts of the very same course he said he teaches were very dodgy. He advised me that I must get a Kamba (tribe) woman, as opposed to the popular Kikuyu women. Kenyans were and still are, particularly conscious of their ethnicity. I was often asked in the nearby Junction Mall, whether I was Kikuyu. I asked why that was important, people said I looked and that my mannerism was like Kikuyu! The first postcolonial president of Kenya, Jomo Kenyatta was Kikuyu. Apparently, Kikuyus in Kenya were close to government and this then created a critical mass of them in many spheres of Kenyan life.
I was a regular visitor to the Junction Mall, across the road from IMTR. The Junction Mall was like your typical village mall, quite small, but with very nice shops. There, I liked their coffee shop that had a variety of teas and very large muffins. On my first visit in this Mall they had a grand opening, as it was new. I was told by a friend (Mnwaninshi) I found there, that there were ministers of government of Kenya, top-level businessmen/women, models and other celebrities. I was at the right place at the right time. Mwaninshi would be my friend for my entire stay in Nairobi.
He felt one thing he needed to do was to find me a nice Kenyan girl. This was an exciting prospect, I then asked him to go ahead. Furthermore, he promised me that one weekend we would hit the Nairobi nightlife. I was particularly well off, receiving a stipend of 10 000 Ksh (R1000) a week. This was a lot of money according to Kenyan standards,even South African for that matter. At some point I bought a top of the range men’s suite for about 9000 Ksh, and a pair of Josef Siebel shoes for about 850 Ksh. I was living large! The guys at the shop asked me whether I was employed at the SA embassy, because such lavish buying was only seen from them. South Africans! Mnwaninshi hooked me up with a girl who was a student at Kenyatta University named Jacinta. Kenyans love their English names. We went to see her with Mwaninshi and his friend Kipto. She was not hot, so I was not interested. But I behaved like a gentleman, took her to a restaurant and we had some drinks. I was well off, remember. After walking her back to varsity, we hit the Nairobi nightlife. By this time I was bored, and did not believe Nairobi had anything particularly exciting to offer. These guys took me to a place called Formula 1 or F1, downtown Nairobi.
F1 was just another place. It was a circular building situated on the 1st floor of a high rise building. It was teeming with women of all variety, Black, Indian, Somali’s and Whites. Foreigners who were in Kenya doing all sorts of things mainly frequented it. I was one of them.
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