Lights out

November 28 and 29, 2011

In the last 48 hours, I’m sure I’ve inhaled more exhaust pollution than after five years in Copenhagen.

Finally we are alone. Don’t get me wrong, spending a week with the nursing students has been nice enough, but I think we both really needed to scale back the social demands. We even got a two-bed-room complete with ensuite bathroom and lots of noise in the hallway.

We had a quiet Monday morning(we were not due at the office before noon-ish) and decided that walking to the ActionAid office would be the wiser choice so we could get some “fresh” air and exercise. It has been my experience that making the choice to walk somewhere you’re not completely sure where is in a city you don’t know, is never a dull experience. It does take some guts though because the likelihood that you will get lost is constantly present.

Outside the Kenyatta Conference Center

The hike there was not uneventful – as predicted. We scaled a fence, tried to blend in with the students when crossing the campus of the biology department at the university(unsuccessfully), took a wrong turn when trying to do a detour, came upon a Road Closed sign on the road we then were supposed to take, didn’t let a Road Closed sign stop us and walked through the construction site like the rest of the pedestrians, passed a fire truck and seized the opportunity to surprise a couple of very relaxed firefighters with random questions about the Nairobi fire department and last, but not least, managed to survive crossing multiple roads without getting hit or honked at more than maybe once(for the record, they might as well be honking at something else, it seems to be a favorite pass-time when in traffic).

At the office we thankfully had to wait for a bit for our meeting which gave us a chance to cool down – it’s hard work hiking like that. We then met with the Emergency Response coordinator. Neither he nor we were really sure who each other was, but after we understood that it was emergency not security that was his area of expertise, we had a good talk. He was very friendly and seemed somewhat eager to help despite the fact that he didn’t really have time to talk to us(and as he said, us being girls wasn’t exactly a disadvantage either).

An hour later we were on the road again, this time having learned from our detours; so after a visit to a nearby mall to get Charlotte online and the both of us fed, we made it back in what felt like half the time it had taken us to get there.

Like most other nights the last couple of days, the power went out at the Y Monday night. It seems rather frequent and not limited to the Y. At Westgate on Sunday, all the power went off for about 3 minutes in the middle of the afternoon. Monday night at the Y, it was gone for almost two hours though, so we both sat in the dark with our computers.

Tuesday was a reverse repeat. This time we started at the mall to get Charlotte online again after she was prematurely disconnected on her modem Monday night. We took a taxi though and had an amusing conversation with the driver. We had to ask about why the traffic lights are always off and he said that besides the fact they didn’t work, people really didn’t respect them anyway. “Green means go, red means go” – that pretty much says it all about the Nairobi traffic scene.

I have no pictures from these days, so instead you get pretty flowers

From the mall, we walked to the office to meet Christian Sloth. Exactly what his position at ActionAid Denmark is, is still a bit uncertain to me, but it is my understanding that he is in charge of program development in some way.

He had no idea why we wanted to talk to him - he had just been told that there were two people who wanted a meeting with him – which in itself was more than what we had assumed he had been told. After a bit of explaining and clarifying we ended up just talking about humanitarian aid in general. Well, mostly he talked and we interjected comments, questions and observations on occasion and after an hour and a half, we had talked for enough of the time he didn’t really have for us and we left. It wasn’t a meeting with an exact measurable outcome, but he was clearly very knowledgeable and opinionated and had perspectives on conflict resolution I hadn’t really thought about before – so I think we both left feeling wiser and maybe even a bit inspired.

We walked downtown where I wanted to get a certain book Christian had recommended and that I knew I had seen in a bookstore downtown. After adding more weight to my luggage, we asked a security guard where to find pizza and made it there just in time before it started raining.

Back at the Y, we once again have to pack our things for yet another trip north. After almost two weeks of knowing more or less what the next day would bring, we are now getting very close to clueless. We’ll be picked up Wednesday morning at 8 and then…