Looks like Livingstone: 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.