Chiromo Challenges

"If you are not feeling stupid,
then you are not doing research!"
                               Dr Justus Simiyu

It seems like an age ago now, our very first day of work here in Nairobi. The Chiromo Campus of the University of Nairobi has since then become like our second home to us. Meaning that we basically spend 90% of the hours not spent in our home in Kileleshwa there. This might otherwise sometimes be referred to as a “workplace”. So on the contrary to what a lot of people might think when reading the blog up to now, it’s not all fun and games for us here. We have actually discussed the fact that it is quite likely that we will spend more time and effort on this master thesis-project, than we have during the rest of the entire education. Not that it says a lot, considering that both me and Nils might just be the two biggest slackers that Engineering Physics in Uppsala has ever faced. The campus is a maze of buildings and roads, trees and trails, located just north-west of the city centre. One might even argue that it has its own jungle, due to the fact the there are two types of monkeys climbing around the trees inside the campus. Like most places in Nairobi it is a gated and sealed-off area, surrounded by almost prison-like walls and huge blast doors. And complete with armed guards. This was something that we struggled with in the beginning. Not only is it a very strange and unusual experience for a swede to be almost constantly confronted by guards as to where you are going and why, I myself have a specific problem with certain uniformed people staring at me. It automatically makes me feel guilty, even at the times when I am as innocent and law-abiding as Ned Flanders. Not then to mention the times when I have actually done something naughty…

So, as if we not only had to be nervous for the fact that it was our first day at work, in a new and exotic country, and where we were supposed to meet and be presentable to our future supervisors and colleagues for the project, we now also had to worry about even being let inside our workplace. Maybe it was the slightly nervous aura that we emitted, or the fact that they were certain that they had not seen us two pale-faces before. Nevertheless, the guards swarmed us like Matatu-drivers in the Westlands. The problem was that we did not really have anything very official to explain our presence at the university, apart from the generic documents that we had been given by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA). This did little to impress them, despite all the stamps and signatures. “You need a letter of recommendation!” was their answer as they shook their heads. We started to feel rather desperate and tried to display our very best skills in articulation and persuasion. In a last attempt to be allowed to go to work, we said that we could phone our supervisor; Dr Simiyu, and have him explain the situation. That did the trick, or maybe they were simply tired of standing there arguing with two wazungi, because they waved us in. Off the hook. For this time. After this shaky start of the project what happened next was a true sign of the gods. In the parking lot just beside our walk-path to the physics department building, neither me nor Nils could believe the sight that was appearing before our eyes. Right there, in a condition as if it had just left the factory in Torslanda, stood a beautiful Volvo 244 GL. Most likely a 1986 model, and in the colour Volvo 213 “Middle-blue”. In other words the exact same car I myself bought as a naive 19-yearold and after a painstaking renovation still drive today! There is not quite words to describe my ecstasy. All I can say is that after that, the memory of the intermezzo with the guards was as blown away by the savannah wind.

The first week was primarily spent with trying to meet and establish a good contact with all of the people that we were going to work with during our time in Kenya. As if this was not a job enough in itself, we also had an initial meeting setting the outlines for the project. And as so many times before, it turned out that whatever we had sketched up as an engineering solution before arrival was completely scrapped and we were returned to square one. Well, not entirely scrapped. But we decided to change the methodology for the project and also the microprocessor that we are going to use and design the system around. Up to now we have only worked with the relatively old Atmel AVR-series microcontrollers, but since the team here in Nairobi usually work with ARM-powered microcontrollers that is what they opted for. And the ARM-architecture is a much better choice in almost any aspect. It boasts very good performance, excellent power-management and efficiency, and is also very versatile and complete. It has since its launch become almost an industry standard, and is being used in almost any smartphone and other “smart device” in the world. Nevertheless, for us it would mean that we would basically have to learn a bunch of new things to work with this more complex systems architecture. Then there is the academics. Because, since this is a Master Thesis for a Master in Science diploma, you cannot just do the project as you might do sitting at home in your basement, soldering away with your soldering-iron. No, it has to be done academically… What it means basically is that one is to follow a strict academic procedure of steps to justify and verify everything that one does. In our case it would mean first simulating the system, then building a prototype or somehow test all of the real components and the architecture, then designing a full product with a printed circuit board with the components, a proper casing and all of the documentation needed for basically going commercial with the product. Since we are aiming for an open-source product, meaning that anybody can access all of the schematics and program-code for free and be able to contribute to it, our standards are not quite as high as for a purely commercial product. But there is still a lot of things that needs to be done in just three months’ time, taking an idea through to a finished product.

The most beautiful car on campus, and what looks like a used-car dealer from Dallas

Chiromo campus foilage

Nils the janitor

Academic humour

I was put on the simulations, at the same time as Nils was starting to work on the actual components. We had to cut some corners to even have some chance of finishing in the scheduled time, so we needed to decide a lot of the sensors that we were going to use straight away, and also aim for a specific processor to interface them to. For Nils that meant using a so called “evaluation board”, basically a processor (in our case a Freescale K64 ARM-based microcontroller) connected with all of the gadgets that could possibly be used with that particular processor, and a lot of open connectors to connect all kinds of different things. A lot of swearwords has been escaping his mouth over the past weeks, as he (among a lot of other things) has been trying and eventually succeeded to measure temperature and humidity, call my telephone and communicate via wifi using the evaluation board. He has made some really amazing progress, even though we still have far to go. To do the simulations, the team here recommended that I learn the tool that they use, something called “SystemC”. SystemC is a library which is used with regular C++ code to simulate both hardware and software, from a first high-level design down to each individual transistor in the design, if that is what the user desires. It can be used to simulate both hardware and software and is designed to make it easy to deal with parallel processes, processor threads, interrupts, concurrency, and everything else which an electronics designer could ever desire. So far, so good; on the paper it all looks super swanky. But in reality it has not been a smooth ride. First of all, it is what I would like to call a real “hipster software”. It is not widely used, and all of the sources of information that is available usually says completely different and contradictory things. And then add to that, the fact that the actual documentation and user manual for the software has not been updated for the last three versions. Something which then means that a lot of things, including key syntaxes, are wrong even in the supplied documentation! I myself usually struggle with strange compilation errors and irritating bugs even when using well-documented languages, so using this one has sometimes been very frustrating. If it had not been for the help of our colleague David, who is a bit of an expert in SystemC, I would not have gotten far.

The first days we were pulled over by the guards every morning, and every morning we had to go through the same procedure as to who we were, “where is your letter of recommendation?”, “we will call our supervisor”, and so on and so forth. But one day at the beginning of the second week the head guard simply said “oh, it’s you people…” as we approached, and after that we never had to show anything. We were mighty startled when we found out during a lunch, that they were about to change the guard company that handled the security at the university. There was a rumour that there had been some scandal, or some might even call it a set-up, where the guards had missed to check the wife of the principal. She had then gotten furious, called her husband, and he had ordered that all of the guards be fired and exchanged to another security company. A security company closely tied to the business of him and his relatives… We anticipated problems, and like we expected we again had to go through the procedure of being cross-interrogated and held for a couple of minutes before they would let us in. That continued for about a week, after which they would simply just let us in. Since then we have established a very friendly basis, including hand-shakes, polite conversation, and if it is on a Friday the mandatory appeal that we “really should praise the Lord and go to church on Sunday”. The Nairobians sure are hard-workers, 10-12 hour workdays are almost standard at the university. A lot of Kenyans, including our friends in the guard and a lot of our colleagues, work on Saturdays as well. Me and Nils refuse to do this. We are tired enough anyway after our work-week, despite the fact that we arrive later and leave earlier than everyone else, and strictly do not work on Saturdays. Overall we think that most of our colleagues work way too hard. Sometimes, it ironically feels like we are the ones bringing “Hakuna Matata” to Nairobi. But despite that we might still be the laziest students on campus, we have now started with the real and final electrical schematics of the system. And, if all goes well, we should have a working prototype to test in 4 weeks from now. Hakuna Matata.

It might look like the middle of a tropical rainforest, but it is just someone burning trash at the Chiromo Campus

Brothers from different mothers

Kicking back

Post-apocalyptic Merc

Students heading home after a hard days work

Safari Shuffle

"What is that?"        Our driver called out in an excited tone of voice
"It's bush."        Eddy replied
"What is that?"        Our driver repeated in an even more excited tone of voice
"It's a bush, it's a bush..."       Eddy replied
"No, it's not a bird that one!"        Our driver explained with passion
"No, it's a bush"        Eddy again repeated, almost without even getting irritated

The time for our roommate and friend “Eddy the Dane” in Kenya was running out. With only a couple of days left in this country of safaris and exotic adventures he thought that he should at least get around to do a smaller excursion in search of the lions, giraffes and all of the other animals roaming the country. Luckily for him Nairobi is the only capital in the world that boasts a real national park just adjacent to the city where one can see all kinds of what we mzungu call “exotic animals”. Luckily for me and Nils he was kind enough to ask us if we would like to tag along on this mini-safari. Skipping school and going searching for lions instead? Not too many times in your life that you have the chance to do that. So off-course we excused ourselves at the university and packed ourselves in a taxi headed for the park. Oh, yes, it is allowed to drive around the park in practically any vehicle. Preferably you own a big Land Rover. If you don’t you can bring your tiny Toyota or Mazda. Or if in our case you don’t own a car at all and don’t fancy renting one at the quite ridiculously high prices, you can just hire a taxi with a driver for the trip, something which is a lot cheaper and easier. So that’s what we, or rather Eddy, did. He hired a taxi-driver by the name of Muragu that he had used on a lot of previous occasions. Turned out that it would be a choice of mixed feelings.

After the usual traffic-maze-navigation and about 40 minutes after we had embarked, we reached the entrance to the park. Immediately as we stepped out of the car a group of Masai that were standing a bit further away started chanting and stomping as to get our attention, have us walk up there, take a photo and then ask us for shillings and dollars. To their great dismay we did not fall for that. Instead we walked to the ticket office and payed a quite hefty sum for being allowed entrance. There’s a difference if you are a foreigner or Kenyan, reflected in the price you pay. As a Kenyan citizen you pay something like 10% of the entrance fee for a foreigner. One of the perks of being a citizen of Kenya. After some confusion and waiting we were allowed to enter the park, with the gate resembling the one in “Jurassic Park”. And just as in the movie, the initial part of the tour was somewhat dull. As we were driving we could see nothing but high bushes and shrubs covering all of the view from the dirt road. Just as you enter you pass a part where they keep fenced up animals. Our driver and guide for the day suggested that we should go there and check afterwards if there were some animals that we did not see during the drive. We explained to him that we did not see the point in going to a zoo here, when we might as well do that at home and get the same “fake” feeling as opposed to seeing the animals in the wild. I am not sure if it was a matter of language understanding, or a culture issue, but he really did not understand our point.

As we pushed on we finally cleared all of the bushes and the vastness of the savannah opened up before our eyes. There is something about it that just makes the sky so amazing. It could be the quite monochrome, brownish colour spectrum of it that just makes the colours in the sky seem so much stronger and more vivid. Anyway, it makes that even if there for the moment isn’t anything interesting to watch on the ground one can just gaze up at the skies. Quite soon after we entered the park we got the first close encounter with an animal that we would like to call exotic; a bunch of zebras and a couple of buffalos. They were all over the road, so we had to wait for them to cross before we could continue. Our driver did not really share our perception of them being the least interesting, so as soon as he got the chance he just pushed the pedal to the metal and left them all in the dust. This was really the first time when some glitches in our collaboration started to appear. We kept on driving on the dusty roads of the park, most of the time seeing nothing but the empty grasslands. Watchful, and also trained eyes are a very good asset for a successful safari. After driving for quite some time we came across a couple of giraffes walking a couple of hundred meters away. This was the closest we had come to these majestic animals (we had spotted one very far away in the distance just in the beginning of the drive) so we stood there for a long time and admired them. When driving on we did see a lot of antelopes, so many that we started viewing them as just any other thing on the plains. We had gotten greedy, and wanted something bigger.

Zebras having lunch

The buffalo brothers

The back-road to Nairobi?

Gazelle gazing through the grasslands

“THERE!” Nils exclaimed as he looked through his binoculars. “It’s a rhino over there, you see it?” he said handing over the binoculars to Eddy so that he could also get a good look at it. Yet another time during the drive Nils’ skills as a birdwatcher had payed off as he had spotted something which neither one of us could see. Even the Muragu was impressed, and he was otherwise not very impressed with the rest of us, especially not me for some reason. No, we really did not get along at all. He was constantly saying, or rather shouting:
- “MY FRIEND, ARE YOU SLEEPING? YOU NOT SEEING ANYTHING! LOOK OVER THERE! YOU SLEEPING?”
After which he bursted into a loud laughter at his own wittyness. But even though he was really getting on my nerves, I will have to admit that he was perfect for the job as our driver for one primary reason; he did not give a penny about his car. So when we went looking for the rhino that Nils had spotted, he suddenly took a turn more or less straight out on the savanna. I am not sure I would even call it a path, it was more of tracks that was made by one of the rangers big 4x4 Range Rover. We did not have a Range Rover, we did not even have four-wheel-drive. But that did not stop Muragu as he ploughed through the high grass and out onto the savannah. And his efforts payed off! We found the rhino, who did not seem to interested in our presence and got what I would call close to it. At the same place were also a lot of buffalos, and they were on the other hand not so impressed by our presence at the spot. So we did not dare to stay any longer than necessary before heading back.

The park’s closing time was another issue that made us turn back. It was an issue and not a concern, at least not for Muragu. He kept telling us that he would just make up some excuse when we got back, it would not be any problems, “yes, off-course he knew the way out”. Well, turned out that the last part was not entirely the case. But it all worked out perfect for us. As the sun was setting slowly in the horizon, making the light completely magical, we suddenly stumbled upon something amazing. A flock of zebras was feeding on the grass, at the same time as a giraffe was eating away on a tree. As we follow the road we get within just a couple of feet from the zebras when the giraffe starts walking towards us. He ended up walking just a couple of meters from our car as he passed by and then strolled off into the distance. After this we knew that nothing could even come close to that experience, so we might as well call it a day. Eventually, after a lot of wild driving, Muragu found his way to one of the smaller exits of the park. He instructed us to be quiet and let him do the talking. I don’t think that anybody of us thought any different, also since it seemed like he had been doing at least 95 % of the talking the whole day. As we pulled up the guards were not too happy with our delay. An intense conversation in Swahili followed after which they hurried over and opened the gate for us. Muragu said that he had made up something about no-one of us being from Nairobi, we did not know the area and therefore got lost, there were buffalos blocking our way (which actually was the truth) and we now had to drive to some place in the other side of the country because we white men were attending a meeting there the next morning. The lady in the guard was quite chocked that we were to drive a distance equivalent of 6 hours in the middle of the night and wished us the best of luck. Muragu was more than pleased that he had pulled such a good lie and proceeded the rest of the trip home to let us bash in his wisdom. Of all the things, which a lot were just repetitions, I only remember one thing:

Muragu: “It is better to be bitten by the snake you know, than the snake you don’t know! I only know one snake, it’s my wife! HAHAHAHA!”
Eddy: “But if you know it is a deadly snake, I would rather be bitten by the snake that I don’t know.”
Muragu: “NO, it is better to be bitten by the snake you know, than the snake you don’t know!”

Muragu tests the limits of his taxi as he heads out into the savannah

Antelopes

The iconic African Acaia tree

The park is quite huge, something we could notice as its silhouette faded in the distance

The rhino did not bother very much...

... But the buffalo was everything but impressed by our presence!

Nils looking at rhino

Looking towards the sunset

A walk in the park

Ostrich-outings & coming to Karen

The sun is gazing in through the windows and the temperature is quickly rising.
Nils is doing some shirt-less programming for the project.
Somewhere outside the apartment some witchdoctor is getting excited and shouting loudly at a tree.
It’s just another day in Nairobi.

During a lunch at the university we started talking with our colleagues about the fact that we still had not been outside Nairobi or done any proper “outing”. They quickly came up with the suggestion that we should visit an ostrich-farm located somewhere outside of the city. Justus started describing his previous experience with ostrich.

- “You are standing there looking at the body, when you realize that the head is already back here!” 

he said demonstrating to us with his hand shaped like a biting ostrich head behind his own head. That settled it, ostrich-farm would be the outing for the weekend! Unfortunately I managed to get some sort of food poisoning just before the weekend so the whole of Saturday I was completely out for the count. But even though I was still feeling quite week on the Sunday, Justus performance was etched in my mind, making me realize that I wouldn’t want to miss this chance to get out of the city for the first time. So after our two colleagues David and Arnold where done with church they called us on the phone and shortly after that came with a car to pick us up. Justus was busy with other things, so he couldn’t come with us.

We drove, and we drove, and we drove. Arnold who was driving gave us another one of the by now regular descriptions of how to handle the traffic; “you have to be strategic!”. After we had left the city behind we continued along a big highway, with traffic clogging up every 5 minutes or so when everybody had to slow down to get over the big speed-bumps that are located a little here and there, sometimes without any warning, on the highway. The highway then turned into a country road as we turned our car towards the south and the road towards the border of Tanzania. After another twenty minutes or so we turned off the country road to a smaller paved road with a sign indicating that this was the road to the ostrich-farm. The pavement then quickly turned into gravel. And the gravel then turned into pebbles. And the pebbles then turned into rocks of different sizes. A Land-Rover would probably had been a better form of transportation for this stretch of “road”, but Arnold was brave and pushed on in his tiny Japanese compact. Sometimes it felt like we we’re in some kind of spaceship during the re-entry to Earth, a so called “rough re-entry”. But we made it! Unfortunately Arnold’s left shock-absorber was not as lucky.

The ostrich-farm itself was a combined resort and restaurant for people who want to escape the city hustle-bustle for a day or two and enjoy the country side. Or at least a fenced-in portion of it with a pool. I wouldn’t call it a farm, at least not that we got to see. It was more of a petting-zoo where they had two ostriches in a pen and took a fairly good pay for letting people riding them one lap around the pen. Neither Nils nor me took the chance as we thought it would be as demeaning for us as for the ostriches. We were content with watching other grown men being led around the fenced in area sitting on an ostrich. After watching the ostriches it was time for the main event of the day, the eating of ostrich meat. I have to say that it was quite tasty, despite the fact that I am trying to be as vegetarian as possible, and becoming ever more so by the day. Something that is very hard in Kenya, where vegetarianism is considered extremely strange and something which is only done by hipsters in Europe. Only here have I heard somebody use the term “she was vegetarian by choice!”. Again, nevertheless it was all in all a very pleasant experience. So we were very well fed and content as we again shook along the stone/gravel-road and made our way all the way back to the big city.

Navigating the traffic together with David and Arnold

The two main attractions of the day

Kenyan goat herder

It took but a couple of days before we had a new chance to do a trip to a new place. One can argue it Karen is a part of Nairobi or if it is a city in its own. In either case it is mostly know to be a “mzungu-place”, a white man’s area. It is said to have gotten the name after the Danish author Karen Blixen who lived in the area during the British-colonial era. The area is still largely populated by white Kenyans and descendants to the British settlers. So with this in mind we got into the taxi together with our Danish roommate Eddy who had asked us if we wanted to tag along. He had a meeting out there together with a businessman and entrepreneur; Michael the Masai. The first impression of Karen was probably as far from what we thought it would it would be as is even possible. We thought that we would be met by large boulevards with huge gated luxury villas on each side. Maybe there are these in Karen as well, but we sure did not see them. The whole place felt very much like what I imagine a smaller, rural Kenyan city to be like. VERY rural. It was hard to believe that we were close to Nairobi when one looked out over the fields and along the small roads with trees on the sides. Michael is a very respected man, and it is obvious that he is the type that knows “how to get business done!”, with confidence and power in his steps. This is also reflected in his driving as we blasted through the roads of Karen to check out the office of his company who is helping in getting electricity and clean water for the Masai-tribes in the rural areas of Kenya. This might be something that could be connected with our project, if we manage to get a working product that is.

After having a lunch in what must be considered a 100% genuine place, seeing the office and taking a stroll through some parts of Karen, Michael now wanted to show us the solar power installation which is located on top of “Ngong Hills”, a couple of kilometres from Karen. So we again get in his car and make our way higher and higher up towards the hills. During the driving around Karen the car has stalled a couple of times, but Michael has always been able to start it again. As we entered the village of Ngong, we suddenly stopped on the side of the road. The car had stalled again. And this time it wouldn’t start. Luckily it was just outside some kind of roadside mechanics workshop, so before Michael could even open the door we were surrounded by four guys who were eager to help with the car. So we pushed it to the side and the hood came up. It seemed like we were the main attraction of the day, because as soon as the hood came up more and more men seemed to appear out of nowhere and then stand and look at the engine trying to figure out what was wrong with it. The ambitions were clearly there, but one can argue if anybody really had the necessary know-how. Since it seemed that we could be stuck in Ngong for at least some time me, Nils and Eddy took the chance to check out a nearby shopping centre. To the joy of me and Nils they carried thin, suit-like pants, something I desperately needed after my only thin pair of pants were exposed to battery acid the first day in the lab and since then had two very fashionable holes in them. After browsing and trying pants for a long time we again went to see what happened with the car. As expected the problem still was not solved, but Michael was determined to get it fixed there. The way forward would be to get someone with a diagnostics machine for his car to determine the problem. We guessed that it could be a time-consuming hunt so we took a Matatu. To those unfamiliar with that term, it is what you call the different sized busses sometimes in very psychedelic colours and with neon-lights that would earn its place on the Volvo 740 in any Swedish industrial small-town. We made it back to Karen, checked out the local Masai-market. Just as we were about to leave for Nairobi we got a call from Michael that he had indeed fixed the car! Never give up.

"Downtown" Karen

Roadside tune-up

Nils, Eddy and Michael waiting for the lunch

Nils found his new ride

Crowded under the hood

One day at the fair

The city of Nairobi is full of somewhat conflicting and confusing sights and sounds.
Like watching a large yellow bus with the clearly marked text "School Safety Bus",
approaching a round-about at roughly 90 km/h, then just barely slowing down and with screetching
tyres completely bomb through the whole thing and when exiting almost killing a person
crossing the road.

Or when being in the middle of a conversation about something seemingly
completely different hearing our neighbour Eddy Mo saying; "What do you think of the elephant?"

Confusion was also something there was plenty around to be had last week, when myself and Nils got the opportunity to follow our supervisor Dr Simiyu to the annual Agricultural Fair/Exhibition of Nairobi just in the outskirts of town. First of all, this was our first real trip away from our by now well-known hoods around Kileleshwa. And it was also the first real time with longer exposure in the Nairobi traffic. Both of these facts made us aware that this would indeed be one intense day. Dr Simiyu, by us almost always called by his first name "Justus", was a skilled driver when navigating the sometimes almost impenetrable and the moment later very dissolving and dynamic traffic. He kept repeating the mantra "you have to be tactical!", something which he time after time proved to be true. Driving in Nairobi is like playing chess. With the tiny change that if you make the wrong move you might in the worst case get squashed by that big yellow "School Safety Bus" that is charging down the other lane. But again, Justus turned out to be an excellent driver so we made it to our destination without even a scratch. After finding a parking space in the quite rough parking area we walked towards the exhibition area.

In intensity and feeling it might be compared with the infamous scene from "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas", where the two main characters Raul Duke and Dr Gonzo enter the very weird and "in-your-face-place" of Bazooko's Circus. "So they let us through the turn-stiles and turned us loose inside". When we got in it was an explosion of sights and sounds. A wall of people walking between different stands of exhibitors ranging from big corporate banana farms, technical universities and sellers of heavy farm equipment. A little further up the main walk path was two guys on huge stilts, making them a good bit over four meters tall and thus walking over the crowd, trying to impose their message of commercialism on the crowds through shouts and loud music. Me and Nils just put our maximum concentration into following Justus' neck as he cruised through the masses of people. After what seemed like as a much longer distance than it actually was we arrived at the University of Nairobi's exhibition building. Yes, the more prominent of the exhibitors actually has proper buildings standing on the exhibition grounds. They are there all year round, even though they are only used one week per year for the exhibition. In there we had the chance to have a chat with our friend and colleauge David "Karibe" Karfes and look at this years addition to the exhibition; a spectrum analyzer for determining when a fruit is ripe for picking and a robotic arm completely built and programmed by students at the university.

After leaving our stuff we felt like exploring. Justus gave us a friendly explanation about what the area looked like (there were no maps at all), but unfortunately the only thing that we really understood was that the area was REALLY BIG. So we just started roaming around at random to see what we would find. Among the more interesting things were:

• A group of prisoners dancing and singing to very loud music dressed in cartoon-like, black and white shirts and trousers.
• Almost any place with any self-esteem would have a live choir singing outside their exhibition place. So also the University of Nairobi.
• In Kenya you are not allowed to sell beer before 3 p.m., something that an angry food-lady mumbled to Nils when he tried to buy one of the bottles she had behind the counter.
• It is absolutely normal to have people in camoflage uniforms (sometimes also know as military or "soldiers") walking around in broad daylight at a fairground with huge, sharp loaded and uncocked machineguns.

Something worth working for!

Dazed and confused

Loitering

All of this excitement was enough for us for the time being. So we thought we needed something cooling, nice and bubbly to drink. So we went back to the UoN (University of Nairobi) place to look for Justus. Or well, we were actually more or less lost, but by chance we just suddenly came up beside the building, not really knowing how we got there. So anyway we asked Justus if he knew any place where we could get beer. He said that he had come across one the other day when some guy insisted that he needed a couple of beers when he was just walking by. And then he was kind enough to show us the place, which was the exhibition of a local brewery. But we had trouble again with the Kenyan laws. "No beer before three o' clock!". A well, now that we had already gone here we might as well do the small tour and smell the different types of hops and malt that they displayed in big bags. Didn't exactly make you less thirsty for beer... Neither did the huge pileups of beer bottles. But when we reached the end of the tour, as a miracle and all of a sudden, the "three-o-clock-rule" was unruled! We were led to the back yard which was a big outdoor bar. And before we knew it we were sitting with two locally produced stouts in our hands. Cheers to that!

After we had killed a couple of hours drinking different kinds of beers, in a futile attempt to at least seem a little bit cultivated and not like just the average beer-swiller, we took to the streets again. This time filled with courage and thinking that we should probably try and at least get some work done here. And we needed not look for long. Work came for us, and grabbed us, or at least Nils while I was busy handling the cameras. When walking one of the paths Nils was completely kidnapped by a very flamboyant looking ladyboy, and shortly after that a banana-republic-style dictator joined in. I was just busy trying to take as many pictures as possible. It turned out that they were promoting one of Kenya's largest telecom operators. Not quite sure what the advertisement had with that to do, but well. And since we had such fun together with them they thought that we might as well go inside and talk to someone. So we did, and we tried to figure out if they could offer us a good deal on sim-cards for our device (since it will utilise GPRS for remote connectivity). And after that we also went to talk to their competitors and the biggest telecom company in Kenya; Safari-Com. So after that we were very content and felt that we had done an excellent days work indeed. So we walked back to the basecamp to meet up with Justus to ride with him home. Turned out that UoN had won a number of awards, including two first prices for the robot and fruit-analyzer! So indeed it was a great day for all of us, both beer-drinkers and hard-workers.

Note the military strolling down the street

One happy Nils with one happy stout

Nils with his telecom-kidnappers

Expanding our territory

"Kikulacho ki ngudni muako"
"Whatever eats you is in your clothes"
                                        Swahili proverb

The mostly quiet and rather modest apartment in Kileleshwa has become our little oasis in the otherwise very bustling city of Nairobi. Our safe haven from all the storms. With the view from our balcony it is hard to believe that we are in one of the biggest cities in the world. And that's the way we like it. For this can be quite the intense and startling place for two young Swedish men. I have sometimes been overheard claiming to be "a man from the city". It was much later that I realized that what we call cities in Sweden would merely be called villages in a big part of the world. So even though I am a son of Sweden's number 5 biggest city, it gives me little if no confidence when braving the streets of Nairobi. And Nils, being a country-boy even with Swedish standards, well...

The first day we were so tired after the trip that only the thought of leaving the apartment was exhausting for us. Nevertheless, we had no choice, if we didn't want to starve. So after gathering courage for a ridiculously long time we took a deep breath and opened the door to the outside world. A place where the sun was shining and people were going about their daily business. It being either walking to the office in a newly pressed suit, or sitting in the shade by the side of the road just staring at bypassers. Nearby our housing compound is a smaller shopping area with a food store, a butcher, a bakery and some other smaller installations of commerce. "Kasuku Center" is the name, which in English translates to "Parrot Center", so now it just goes by the name of "The Parrot". The distance to this place is just a couple of hundred meters from our compound, but for us it felt like a trip to the moon and back. I've never really felt the same exotism and fright when walking such a short distance in a new place. Off course it was more or less completely safe, maybe apart from the one crossing of a major road that has to be done to get there. But no muggers, no hustlers or other fortune-seekers tried their luck on us. All of the scare that we had gotten prior to coming here had obviously gotten the best of us. Almost everyone that we had talked to before leaving for Nairobi had told us stories about how dangerous it is, that there's a reason why it is called "Nairobbery" and so on. The interesting thing is that almost all of the stories about muggings, shootings and violence came from people who had never ever been to either Nairobi or Kenya for that matter. The ones we spoke to who had been here usually only had good things to say about the city and the people that inhabits it.
Yes, we have been told stories even by people that we now meet here that makes you want to be extra careful and think one more time before you take a stroll down that dark alley. But that goes for almost every city in the world these days. There's a difference between being scared and being careful. But with all the brainwashing that we had it took a very long time for us to let loose of some of the paranoia and stop looking over our shoulders once every two minutes when walking the streets. And with our initial caution we have taken very small baby steps when exploring our surroundings and such "expanding our territory". Our second day was a Sunday. Sunday means that The Parrot is closed, something we found out when trying to go and by some necessary groceries. Just outside we met our neighbour, Eddie, a fantastic man who has "Hakuna Matata" written all over him. He pointed us in the direction of a restaurant where we would be able to get some nice lunch. So we started walking. And walking. And walking. In the dust. Much later it turned out that we had misunderstood the friendly direction, so no restaurant was to be found. So despite being extremely hungry and tired, we could comfort ourselves with the thought that we had expanded our territory and comfort-zone quite a lot.

Lightweight Nairobi traffic

Backyard vehicles

Our neighbourhood witchdoctor, Dr Suleiman offering his services

Walking yes. That's it how we usually get around here. The Kenyan way. There are a number of reasons for this. The simplest is that we were brought up with the Swedish notion that all exercise is good, so also your every-day walking to work. The other reasons are linked; walking is a way to stay out of the crazy Nairobian traffic which is something of the craziest I've ever witnessed. The Nairobi traffic is also quite schizophrenic, it is either going pass in a 100 miles an hour, or completely standing still. So at the times when it is standing still, which is quite often, walking actually gets you places as opposed to sitting stuck in traffic. Our walking is however something that greatly confuses a lot of the Kenyans. Even though a Kenyan walking is nothing unusual, seeing a white man walking is extremely rare here in Nairobi. The white Kenyans NEVER walk. They drive their luxurious Land Rover between their gated, white community and the expensive, luxurious shopping mall and their workplace. Which also makes that it is extremely rare to see another "mzungi" (Swahili for a white person) in this place. Both together which could explain the next phenomena; the staring. Like I implied in an earlier post, it doesn't matter what you are wearing here if you are like us. People you meet sometimes stare their eyes out anyway. This is a bit annoying, but not much to do about it I guess. Nevertheless, the walking has now taken us as far west as the "Yaya-centre"; a place where one can get both a decent cup of coffee and a meal of Chinese food that will make your stomach rebel against you, and as far east as the Westlands, where a more genuine, chaotic shopping area can be found. Last Saturday we even ventured to the city centre for a quick look and a good lunch. Who knows, in another two weeks we might actually even have dared to go outside of Nairobi?

Nils transporting himself, the Kenyan way

Heading downtown for the first time

Our first glance at the bustling city centre of Nairobi

Welcome to the Jungle

"PS. Monkeys WILL come in if you leave the window in the livingroom open!"

Friendly advice written on a note in the kitchen of our appartment.
Turned out to be quite useful advice.

After our somewhat intense first meeting with Nairobi we soon found ourselves installed in a spacious appartment neighbouring with a park by the name of the "Arboretum". This was a calculated move from our side. When we were searching for proper accomodation we had rather modest demands for it. The main thing was that it would be reasonably priced and within walking distance to our workplace at the University of Nairobi Chiromo Campus. Even beforehand we had the feeling that the traffic could be something that one might want to avoid getting into as far as possible. And this turned out to be a very good assumption. Even though our friend, the taxi driver Patrick told us that we can never predict the traffic situation it is almost always completely clogged during weekday mornings and afternoons. So as everybody is stuck in their cars we just gently walk pass them on the side of the road during our 20 minute walk to the university.

Eventhough Nairobi is a huge metropolis it is still a rather green city. A lot greener that I had first thought. There are trees almost everywhere and sometimes you don't have to go far to believe that you are way off in some rural countryside or in the middle of a tropical jungle. That especially goes for our view from our balcony. One can sit there for hours and just gaze into the flora and fauna of the Arboretum. Sometimes it is like living in the middle of a zoo. There are countless spieces of birds who fly in and out of the foilage and above the treetops. Nils, beeing a fullblown birdwatcher is in seventh heaven. The fact that the Arboretum is some kind of migratory landing zone doesn't make things worse. There are new types of birds coming in every week. Some of them aren't always so pleasing for us humans though, especially us who like to sleep in sometimes, or at least sleep past six o' clock in the morning. The park is held hostage by a large number of Ibis birds, and they have a rather nasty habit of screaming. And then I really mean SCREAMING! I've never heard anything like it. Everytime when the sun rises or sets, as on a given command they will all at the same time engage in a cacaphony of screaming noise that would make even Rob Hallford jealous. It is almost eiry how they can be so in sync and all start screaming at exactly the same time. And we keep wondering what they are saying. The best that we've come up with is:

"The sun is coming up!" - screams bird one
"Yeah, it's really coming up!" - answers the other 101 birds screaming on the top of their lungs
"Yeah, the sun is really coming up!" - bird one replies
"Oh yes, the sun IS coming up!" - the rest continue as all of the windows within a mile cracks

But then, all kinds of colourful birds kind of fall short when it comes to exotism, since we got at least two different kind of monkeys living in the trees outside our window. Yes, MONKEYS!! At least for us Scandinavians that is something really exotic! We actually had our first encounter with them the very first day, when they were climbing around on our concrete windowsills. They will sometimes even venture out from their habitat in the trees and stroll around on the streets. They also seem to be interested in higher education since we saw quite a lot of them roaming around the university campus one day. Or maybe they were just interested in looting the trash that is stored in different places around the campus. The most intense encounter although was one day when we came home tired after a long day at work. Sitting on our balcony was a huge monkey, looking slightly guilty but very pleased, eating a banana. "Funny" we thought, "wonder where he could have gotten that banana?". When we walked further into the appartment it turned out that the bugger had pried open our window and elegantly hieved himself into the appartment. After finding the kitchen and messing about with our fruit basked he had settled on a bunch of bananas which he then decided to enjoy sitting on the balcony. So it turns out, that just closing the windows isn't really enough to keep these clever fruit thieves out...

Nils enjoying the view in company with a cigarillo

Nils the birdwatcher

Small monkey outside the window

Nairobi, the green city

The infamous burgler monkey