My one reader will be so pleased

After 3 weeks without a keyboard, and 2 weeks on holiday in the UK, I'm back...with a super cool new bendy keyboard that plugs into USB port. I can use it anywhere, 'even in shallow water', if the fancy takes me. My only disappointment is learning from the instructions that 'It cannot be pulled into the oven and putted on the fire to teast'. Well, you can't have everything.

Technically this could be a problem

It's ok though - J was here to save the day by using C's hairdryer to melt half the keys off. We forget how this was meant to help.

Oh horrorxs

i xspi.lt perppermjint teza on the cdomjputer zancd now it'xs zautomjzaticdza.l.ly turning evferything i type into whzat .loo,kxs .li,ke cdzaecdh

Health and Safety

Being of a dramatic persuasion, I often utter the phrase ‘I’ve lost the will to live’ but I never knew what that would actually feel like until last Thursday. I was at the gym with my friend C - in itself an ambitious act because C is a runner. I don’t mean she goes for the occasional jog in the park – I mean she entered the New York marathon as an amateur and came 14th. Anyway, somehow she had persuaded me to come with her to a Tae Bo class – we were both a bit hazy on what this might entail but it sounded like that gentle exercise/meditation thing Chinese people do in parks, and certainly nothing that would warrant a sports bra, let alone any real athletic ability. In actual fact, the class was led by some sort of bionic woman, programmed to inflict a finely calibrated program of torture by eliciting from the hapless participants a non-stop series of manic punches and roundhouse kicks delivered while our feet moved wildly in a style reminiscent of Riverdance. Our instructor clearly favoured psychological warfare as well as physical, constantly demanding 20 repeats of something, only to bark instructions to do another 20 just as we got to zero. After a few of these, there wasn’t much energy in my punches, but there was real aggression. Gradually it dawned on me that this wasn’t just a high-energy warm up to prepare for the tree-hugging – this was going to last for the full hour.
As latecomers trickled through the door I wanted to yell at them ‘It’s too late for me – but save yourselves! Run, run for your lives!’ but I didn’t have the energy, plus tunnel vision was kicking in, making it increasingly hard to avoid walloping the elderly lady to my left. Halfway through a guy came round to make an announcement about a car parked in the wrong place but damn it, the energy required to keep waving my ankle around my earhole had dulled the other functions of my brain and I didn’t even have the wit to pretend it was mine and hobble out, so I had to carry on until the bitter end – 15 minutes of stomach crunches which by the time we got to it felt like a cocktail on the beach.

5:52am

That sodding rooster.

I've joined a choir in Nairobi

It's full of feminists with Tourette's.

Silver Linings

Looking back at my first two posts I detect a slight note of cynicism and negativity. Perish the thought that I should come across as a Moaning Minnie, when in actual fact there are plenty of things I quite like about being here in Nairobi. Here are some of the things that make me snort with frustration together with their silver linings.

1. Every morning I get woken up by a demented rooster who thinks it’s meant to start crowing at 4am and make noise incessantly until midday. It is joined at intervals by two mosques chanting the call to prayer – I’m all for religious tolerance but it would be nice if they could at least synchronise with each other rather than doing it 20 minutes apart.
On the bright side – when I do drag myself out of bed, it is almost always sunny which makes me SO much happier than getting up in the dark.

2. We are crazy bad at doing the dishes which makes me miss my dishwasher almost as much as I miss my friends*
On the bright side – the lovely J comes twice a week to do our laundry and clean up our mess (even though she does refuse to wash my underwear – I know it’s not a great job, but from the face she made when I suggested it, you’d think I was an incontinent 3 year old).

3. Small business owners and taxi drivers in Nairobi appear to operate under a strict code of never, EVER having change - even for the smallest note. My husband greets this with a pragmatic shrug and educational musings on the political and economic reasons for lack of business skills in developing countries. I usually deal with it by shrieking out of my nose and ranting for 10 minutes.
On the bright side – Nairobi is the only place where a supermarket has ever given me three shillings change in the form of a one shilling coin and two sweets – cute hey!

*only joking – I won’t have any left if I make comments like that, and my dishwasher’s conversation skills are limited

Height Restrictions

So I hear the U.S. Embassy has instructed their workers that they shouldn’t leave Nairobi. Just for clarification, that’s as in ‘don’t leave Nairobi in order to enjoy the scenery around Eldoret’, not ‘don’t leave Nairobi because you’re now our prisoner and will never again set foot in the land of the free and the home of the brave’. So, I guess the responsible, safety-conscious thing to do is to look for ways to amuse ourselves in the capital over the next few weekends.
I don’t think the Rough Guide is going to be much use. Turning to the section on Nairobi, it suggests bribing the security guards at the bottom of no less than three skyscrapers to take you up to the top floor and let you see the view. Seriously – how much can there really be to see? And is it really necessary to see it all three times over? The incentive offered is that from the top of one building, it becomes apparent that another is built in the style of a Roman villa. Am I being cynical or are they kind of scraping the barrel here?

Brit trying to stay safe in Nairobi

Lots of people sign off emails to me now with the phrase 'Stay Safe'. It's rather sweet. I am trying, but things like this make it a lot harder...



Taxi Driver: So I think the quickest way home is through Kawangware.

Me: Well…that would mean driving through a Nairobi slum on a day of widespread civil unrest…but…I’m sure you know best! (surreptitiously locks passenger door)

Me (after a pause): So where does this road bring us out?

Taxi Driver: uh?

Me (getting suspicious): Are we heading towards the Ngong Road?

Taxi Driver (happily): Ah – yes! Yes!

Me: Uh…you do know there’s trouble on the Ngong Road today?

Taxi Driver: Yes, yes.

Me: So…you know, you’re the boss and everything…but I just think maybe we should try another route?

Taxi Driver: Yes, yes.

Me: So we need to turn left here.

Taxi Driver. Ah yes.

Me: …and…yet we’re still going! I really hate to hurry you…it’s just that there are people throwing stones and burning buildings down this road and we’re going fairly fast towards them…
Taxi Driver: Ah yes – but it is safe now.

Me (preparing to swallow wedding ring in order to regurgitate later in a safe environment): Well…it’s not totally safe. People are rioting, throwing rocks and burning things about half a mile down this road, and it’s just that I’d hate anything to happen to your car (adds silently ‘or myself’)

Taxi Driver (sudden dawning of understanding): That’s happening today?

Me: Ok that’s it. Give me the wheel.