Krismasi njema!

Posted by: Dan

Well, first of all, I’d like to ask how on earth it got to be Christmas time already? When did that happen? One minute we were arriving in Kenya in July, hung over, confused, excited and overwhelmed – and the next there were Christmas lights flashing from Nairobi’s shopping malls and Jingle Bells was playing on the radio. Yeesh. That sorta passed me by. Perhaps not surprising as I sit here in my shorts and teeshirt sweltering in our apartment in one of the coolest parts of the country…

It’s quite bizarre to find that Christmas still exists even here. We half-thought we might escape it this year, but nope, it seems Kenyans are well up for a bit of Santa Claus. Apparently the man himself will be at The Junction Mall in the Nairobi suburbs this very weekend. Not since I was a kid have I been so impressed with Santa’s ability to overcome the seemingly impossible logistical task of being in Nairobi, London, St.Albans, Winsford, Lancaster and Edinburgh all at the same time, catering for all our festive wishes!

Other similarities here are that all kinds of Nairobians travel “up-country” to their villages for the festive period, much like us all travelling home to see family in the UK.  But in Kenya, Christmas is the end of the school year and often the only time Kenyans take any break from work.  This might be the only time they can afford a bus fare hundreds of miles home, to check on their land and crops, and see both the extended family, and even the wives and children they live apart from.  Kenyan families are BIG (at least 4 children in normal) and the more wives you have, the more it grows so there’s lots of people to see.  From the Kenyan folks we know here, Christmas day seems much like any other Kenyan celebration (a wedding for example) in that Christian worship plays a leading role,  and animals are slaughtered for roasting (the Kenyan national dish of nyama choma).  The decorations, presents and rich food we see advertised here are only for the small, urban percentage of middle class Kenyans who can afford it.

Here in Nairobi, it’s emptying fast as everyone heads up-country; less traffic and shorter queues (hooray!). We confess to having no tinsel, no tree, no chocolate advent calendar…. but don’t feel sorry for us, because this year, our Christmas present is:

Dr Matthew Ball!

Our great friend arrived this week to spend Christmas with us, and much like Santa (but with a PhD), he came loaded with presents from back home:

Here it all is! Including shoes for Helen's pavement-less commute,
risotto rice, sweets, and a whole lot of cheese...

Such. Good. Cheese!

Right now we are feeling massively lucky and loved, what with everything Matt’s brought (including an epic amount of cheese and risotto rice – he’s a legend!), and all the things Jake brought us too (including a hard-drive full of films and our beloved West Wing – awesome). Last night turned into a huge Christmas-fest as we unwrapped a massive parcel from my Mum and Dad containing everything required to recreate a xmas dinner – including tinned turkey breast and mini Christmas puds! We were overwhelmed – thanks M&D! (and thanks Jake for dragging all 2.9kgs all the way from the UK!) :o)

Ready to unwrap Mum & Dad's parcel, G&T in hand...

Detailed instructions for unwrapping our "Do it yourself Jones Christmas Dinner"

Christmas turkey in a can!

Mini Christmas puds!

Happy with all our awesome Christmas presents!

And our good fortune continues, as we’ll all be spending Christmas day on a dhow boat on the Indian ocean with some other volunteers we know.  Delicious fish BBQ and swimming have been promised, so we’ll report back in the new year.  I can almost smell the jealous rage that that plan will have provoked… but I comfort myself with the thought that we are supporting Kenya’s struggling economy and tourist industry. Which is of course the only reason we’re going. We’re taking one for the team.

It has to be said that as UK friends tell us about the recent snowfalls, the cold British winter nights seem very very far away.  As we enter this, our only Kenyan festive season, I thought I’d tell you what we’ll miss, and what we won’t, about Christmas this year:

What we won’t miss:

·    Working hard up to the final day, and Christmas Day becoming just the Day of Recovery in which your Christmas cold starts.  This year we have a lovely long break (sorry!)

·    Trying to be everywhere at once.  Christmas for us is normally a tight schedule of visits to all those we love.  And while we miss you all, we don’t miss the mad dash through Christmas traffic jams round the M25, up the M1, and up the M6. Although now we realise these are NOTHING compared to an average daily commute in Nairobi.

·    Christmas TV (apart from the occasional good film)

·    The strangeness of spending so much money on presents, decorations, other Christmas things.  We can report that even if you take that all away, it’s still Christmas, folks.

·    The cold.  Helen, in particular, won’t miss cold, grey, rainy days stuck indoors.

And what we will miss:

·    Seeing our family.

·    Seeing our favourite small children, including our beautiful goddaughter Erin Arbuthnnot – we’re terrified you’ll all be grown-ups by the time we’ve blinked and spent a year abroad.

·    Walks.  I’ll miss winter walks in forest and countryside a la The Jones Family.

·    Eating my Mum’s food.

·    Cheese.  Helen is gutted that the Christmas cheese boards are so far away. [But wait – thanks to Matt and M&D, there’s cheese in our kitchen right now! Woohoo!]

·    Seeing lots of our good friends, you know who you are chaps.  We wish we could pour you all a glass of mulled wine and tell you how awesome you are, and how much it means to feel your support from back home.  Love and big warm Christmas hugs to you all.

May we wish you all “Krismasi njema na mwaka mpya wenye fanaka.”  That’s “Good Christmas and new year with prosperity”

Thanks to our loyal readers – we’ll be back for more Jonchard shenanigans as the adventure continues in 2012…

Blogs we love

With Christmas holidays rather dominating the month, December's going to be a quiet time for new blog posts.  So, to get you through the fallow weeks ahead, we're recommending some top-class blogs to read in our absence.


Funny, true and brilliantly written, these VSO volunteer blogs are penned by friends in Nairobi and provide an extensive back-catalogue of stories, people and cultural comment that puts more meat on the bones of the life we describe.  There are many subjects that affect us here, but we won't write about them because our blogging friends have already nailed it; no need to re-hash.


If you have time over the holidays, settle down and enjoy the treats within (glass of sherry in hand, optional).



Aurelia in Kenya



Taking a year our from her job at HM Treasury to be a VSO, Aurelia Valvota joined her fiance Tom when his PhD research brought him to Nairobi.  Read great tales of their adventures, the people they've met in the 'robi and all illustrated by Tom's gorgeous photographs.  Her year over, Aurelia has just left Kenya and is back in her home town of...St Albans!  We look forward to seeing her in 2012, I'm confident our paths will cross.

aureliainkenya.wordpress.com



It began in Africa


Allys and Eddie are our neighbours in South B.  And regular drinking buddies.  And regular dinner guests.  And regular work-out partners.  You get the idea.  It all began when we arrived in Nairobi exactly one year after they had, and they welcomed us to South B with helpful chat and local wisdom (Allys) and the enthusiasm of a labrador (Eddie).  Luckily, our relationship quickly moved on from, Guys, how do I...? and, Guys, where can we...? conversations into proper friendship. 

They have an awesome blog, to which we're loyal readers.  Much more than a purported 'blend of holiday snaps and half-baked cultural analysis,' this blog is 18 months mature, and ripe for digesting.  Plus, Eddie gets deported half-way through so that makes a good story. 

allyseddie.blogspot.com


So, enjoy.  I'd consider it a personal favour if you didn't switch allegiance from Jonchards in Kenya to these fine blogs, but I wouldn't blame you...

Jake meets Kenya

In which Jake comes to stay, and we visit a new place called Tourist Kenya

Posted by: Helen

He's the one on the left

For one glorious week earlier this month, we played host to our good friend Jake Cocker. Taking the chance to visit Africa for the first time, he just booked a flight from the UK and left the rest to us. 

We half expected Jake to be stared at everywhere we went, due to him being a) white, b) 4 foot 2 and c) still clinging to the colonial moustache he'd grown in honour of his 'Movember' fundraising efforts. But we were delighted to discover that Kenyans welcomed Jake with as much energy as everyone else. Yes, it’s probably due to his easy charm and extensive knowledge of the English Premier League, but I think it’s also because:

• Tourist money is tourist money, and a guy with ready dollars in search of food and souvenirs is everyone’s friend; and
• There’s a lot more disability in Kenya.  With poverty and disability having a complex relationship, people with disabilities make up a higher percentage of the population here.  Whilst I’m guessing it was a sight to see a short white guy on crutches, nowhere did we make the stir we might have expected.

We've all been friends for 10 years but had never really holidayed together - so how would it go? Answer: brilliantly. Nice to know that even on a different continent, nothing stops the long chats, long card games and even longer rounds of 'The Movie Game' that are an inevitable part of us all hanging out.  Although discovering that Jake couldn’t recall my birthday, degree subject or full name led to a small diplomatic incident that we’ll say no more about.

In honour of Jake, who needed a little more accessibility than our average visitor, we swallowed our snobby ‘we are volunteers – we are better than mere tourists’ mentality and for one week entered the very different world of ‘Tourist Kenya’.


Tourist Kenya

Whilst we’ve travelled around Kenya, and been to some of the touristy areas, we’d not been proper tourists in Kenya.  It's the world most of us inhabit when we come on holiday to Kenya.  It’s a truly lovely place to be, but initially, Dan and I found it very strange for the following reasons:

1.      There is no public transport in this world.  Instead of matatus and buses there are safari vans and lots of taxis.  There are no journeys crushed against a stranger in Tourist Kenya, no deafening music and no odour of stale male sweat (except Dan and Jake’s).  There’s still traffic and the occasional breakdown, but it’s a lot more comfortable

2.      You are greeted with ‘Jambo’...  Apparently true to coastal Swahili but mostly wheeled out just for the tourists, this greeting is easy to master since the response is also ‘Jambo’.  I never hear it in the Kenya we normally live in, but we were greeted in this way every time in Tourist Kenya.  Unable to let go of my volunteer credentials and Swahili training so easily, I generally replied ‘Mzuri sana’ (I am very fine) in a sarcastic tone.

3.      ...and The Jambo Song is sung a lot.  I’m telling you, this song only plays in Tourist Kenya.  After being here for 4 months, a UK friend who’d holidayed here assumed You must’ve heard The Jambo Song so much by now! We asked What’s The Jambo Song?  We found out once we’d entered Tourist Kenya: it was sung and played all the time. Generally AT us, or towards us, and sometimes followed by requests for money.

4.      No coins are needed.  The lowest note denomination here in Kenya is 50 shillings (35p), but in our everyday lives there’s a LOT of things that costs less than that.  In a normal week in Nairobi, Dan and I hoard coins like gold (exact change for buses, matatus and lunch means a lot less faff, and less chance of being ripped off), but during our week in Tourist Kenya, we didn’t even touch a coin.  Nothing is less than 50 shillings and contrary to normal Kenyan life, any small change is expected to be left as a tip.

5.      You meet Americans. Well, more precisely, you meet other tourists, but the Americans stick in my mind.  Whether on an organised tour or backpacking through the country, these folks are here in Kenya to see the wildlife and soak up the sun.  They were interested that we were living here, and shocked that we live in Nairobi (and how do you find the crime?), but mostly they were nice to be around.  An exception to that was a nameless woman from Florida who greeted the waiters with ‘Jumbo’ and asked her companions where the ‘pointy peak’ of Kilimanjaro was, was it hidden by clouds? When she learned that she was looking at it’s full, flat shape, she grumbled that back in the US there are ‘proper’ mountains.

6.      There’s a lot more flesh.  Most Kenyan women dress more modestly than those in the west.  To work here and be accepted, my day-to-day wardrobe quickly reduced to anything with sleeves; vest tops, shorter skirts and all shorts were out.  Dan wears shorts in the house but never outside, otherwise he looks like a tourist and gets ten times the street hassle. Occasionally I see white female tourists in Nairobi wearing <gasp> shorts or <gasp> strapless tops.  Whilst I don’t condemn these holidaymakers (I’m no different when I go holiday), after a few months it actually shocks me to see so much flesh on women not touting for business.  In Tourist Kenya, everyone looks like a prostitute.  Or so it seemed to me at first.  White women in tiny hotpants wandering down the supermarket aisles, and standing in the car park in a bikini top!!  Plus all of them wear shorts, everyone one of them, and sometimes strapless/backless/side-less tops.  Society is generally fine with it, and coastal Kenyans are used to it or join in, but at first I found it very shocking to see that much flesh after months of living in Kenya.  But, ever adaptable, and when in Rome, I flashed some leg on the beach (get me).

After a few days living in this new world of Tourist Kenya, we got used to how it all worked and had a truly wonderful time. Highlights included,

• watching the horizon in Amboseli National Park, and seeing it simply litteredwith elephants, maybe 100 in all,

• waking at dawn and looking towards Tanzania to see the snow-topped summit of Mount Kilimanjaro

• snogging a Giraffe in Nairobi,

• chatting about the latest Manchester United news with a Kenyan guy called George, in the dining carriage on the overnight train to Mombasa, as we all lurched and lurched with the train movements, trying to keep our soup in the bowl, and tea in the cup,

• arriving at our enormous beach-front cottage and seeing the view,

• Dan buying live crabs from the beach and cooking them in a big pot,

• sailing on the Indian ocean in a warm breeze on a little wooden boat crewed by Omar and Pepe, to arrive at a beach bar where dozen oysters cost 2 quid and the white wine was ice cold...

A massive thank you to Jake for taking the plunge, trusting us to plan you a trip and giving us the excuse to live in Tourist Kenya for week.  It was fantastic to see you and we’re so glad you had a good time.  Hopefully not even your horrendous journey home will dint your view of this country.  It’s great to know that regardless of whether you’re in Kenya, or Tourist Kenya, the welcome is just as warm.

Pause the slideshow to go at your own pace, or click through to see bigger pictures in Picassa online....enjoy!