Halfway

Posted by: Helen

Happy New Year to you all, we hope you all had a wonderful Christmas break.  We had a fantastic time with our friend Matt, travelling and celebrating Christmas and New Year along the way (pictures to follow soon).  Hoping the very best of things for everyone in this brand new year of 2012.

As January dawns it comes to pass that we’ve been in Kenya for 6 months.  Our year is whooshing by, and I’m sure time will only gather pace now we’ve turned the corner into 2012. But I want to stop for a minute and look back from this halfway point.  Reflecting on the last 6 months, it’s a whole jumble of Joys and Challenges.  What follows is a way of bringing order to some of these thoughts to mark this milestone of being halfway through.

On Nairobi

The joy of seeing and feeling the hustle and bustle of an African city on a daily basis (and surviving).

The challenge of getting anywhere when too many cars and people jam the city to a standstill.

The joy of a weekend in Nairobi, as the traffic thins dramatically and we can potter about with ease.
The pain of a suspected stress fracture in my foot from months of walking over a construction site on my way to work (x-ray showed nothing in the end, and I'm very happy in new, better trainers)

On South B
The joy of our neighbourhood, with its friendly people and community feel.

The challenge of a good night’s sleep on Saturday nights between the bar that blasts music until 4am, and the church that starts very loud worship at 6am on Sunday morning.

Street food
The joy of buying fruit, veg, samosas, chicken, chips and roasted maise from right outside our flat.
The challenge of saying no to the scruffy young boys that ask us to buy dinner for them every night.

Our building
The joy of the view from our flat over the city.

The challenge of climbing 5 flights of stairs to reach the flat in the first place.


Laundry
The joy of having our clothes washed for us by a local lady, Marietta.
The challenge of communication with our poor Swahili and her poor English.
The challenge of our clothes drying outside where the women make stew; our clothes always smell like meat.

The challenge of washing all our underwear by hand, every week (because it’s not done to outsource that, apparently).
The unexpected joy of washing all our underwear by hand, every week, because it’s satisfying and takes the length of a BBC Radio 4 Desert Island Discs podcast :-)

Being a VSO
The privilege of working within a Kenyan organisation, and being given the chance to share our skills to improve people’s lives.
The challenge of trying hard not to just ‘do’ things, but to hold on fiercely to VSO principles of training, sharing and leaving things behind.  It’s not about me, it’s about them.
The challenge of working in partnership when colleagues are busy, uninterested, absent or have many home-based pressures; when it feels like the chance you've been given to affect change is just slipping away...
The challenge of being employed to ‘strengthen’ and ‘build capacity’ for the longer term, when often giving food or money would give us a more immediate sense of achievement, and serve our conscience.
The sometimes longing for a ‘normal job’ with objectives, tasks and a clear sense of focus.
The challenge of working alongside Kenyan colleagues who behave in unexpected ways, and challenge my definitions of ‘work,’ ‘good practice.’ and ‘best use of time’on a daily basis.
The joy of working alongside Kenyan colleagues who teach me unexpected things, and remind me that family and friends are more important than work. 

Lunchtimes
The joy of my hearty working lunch that costs 30p.
The challenge of a complete lack of variety for lunch (a choice of chapati, ndengu (lentils), or chapati AND ndengu has almost killed this foodie)

Work-life balance
The joy of leaving work at 4.30pm, and 2pm on a Friday
The strangeness of there being less distinction in Kenya between ‘work’ and ‘life’; they overlap so much.  (At first I thought my colleagues were office-idle; now I know they will work weekends on a moments notice and give up their Christmas break if the boss asks them to, and without complaint.  I'm given time off whenever I want it, but I'm also always expected to be working...so how does THAT work?)

Exercise
The challenge of keeping fit in a hot, dusty, pavement-less city, especially when you feel like a target after dark.
The joy of our now-weekly circuit training on the roof of our building, led by Dan; four muzungus running up and down the stairs and lunging with bean-cans to the strains of Bruce Springsteen (much to our neighbours’ amusement).  We give thanks to a January in which it’s warm and light enough to exercise outside!

Friends
The joy of making new friends very quickly when you’re all away from home.

The challenge of only ever socialising with people you’ve known a few months.
The joy of hanging out regularly with lovely people in a new place that we’re all exploring together.

The challenge of being away from old friends and missing how well they know you and your quirks.

Travel

The joy of travelling to incredible holiday destinations just hours from our home.
The challenge of having limited time off to enjoy all the places we want to go.
The joy of residents’ rates at National Parks.

The challenge of playing down my western-savings-funded trips when speaking to my colleagues who struggle to pay rent.

Living in the tropics

The joy of a warm climate where even in the rain you’re never cold.
The pain of being bitten to death by mosquitoes and the craziness that takes us over when they all itch at once.

Being a Mzungu (foreigner)
The joy of being greeted and welcomed by a nation of friendly people.
The challenge of being asked: when will you come to my church? and, Can you take me to your country? and Can I have your contacts so we can hook up?
(OK, I’ll admit it) The joy of feeling like a complete celebrity when strangers target you for cheery greetings wherever you go, adults and children alike.

The challenge of being yelled at in the street and hassled everywhere we go. 
The annoyance of other bus passengers just 'checking' there's nothing in our back pockets, or being successfully pick pocketed by desperate people.

Language
The joy of using our basic Swahili to change the atmosphere and invite big smiles and warm handshakes.
The challenge of often not knowing what’s going on as colleagues, crowds and bus passengers blend Swahili, sheng/slang and their mother tongue language at high speed.

Learning

The joy of learning wonderful, funny things about Kenya and its people (educated women fetch a much higher bride price; in Swahili phones don’t ring like a bell, they cry like a baby).

The worry of learning the scarier things about Kenya and its people (corrupt police, mob justice, ethnic violence, and ignorant, harmful local beliefs)

Economy
The joy of getting by on a few shillings a day.
The strange feeling of knowing that most people only have that, and we have so much more.

Kenya
The optimism that comes from Kenya’s new constitution, new progressive legislation, and their hopes to be a middle-income country by 2030.

The cynicism that comes with knowing endemic corruption and massive social challenges mean this dream is still so far away.

Being here together
The joy of experiencing everything together; the support, the discussion and excited sharing of stories from our day.
The challenge of finding head space to support the other, in this jumble of joys and challenges.
The complete joy of knowing that even if it’s just us; we’re all we need.

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!

Cocktails and Volunteering

Or: Exposing the hidden challenges of being a VSO in Nairobi.

Welcome to a blog post that’s longer than normal, but I believe it’s worth the journey; grab a cup of tea and see if you agree.  I promise the very next post will at have more than one picture to look at...

It’s VSO-ing, but not as we expected

When Dan and I first hatched a plan to be VSO volunteers, we did a typically large amount of research on what it might be like, and listened carefully as returned volunteers and VSO staff set our expectations.  From all those sources, a picture began to emerge...

The two of us are living in a one-room accommodation, walking to our rural placements and home before nightfall, preparing simple meals on a stove in the corner, and having every evening free to read, learn a musical instrument or write home.The main challenges we face are filling our time, being stuck in one place, eating the local food every day, and coping without home comforts like hot water and TV.

Once we were successfully through the VSO selection process, we waited a year to be matched to placements somewhere in developing world; will it be Nepal?  Guyana?  Or Uganda?  And all the while we had this same picture in our heads of what our lives would be like when we ‘volunteered overseas’.

Flash forward to now and here we are placed in Nairobi.  Safe to say the reality has been enormously different from our initial picture.  Take your pick from –

ü  Nairobi is a large, busy city with restaurants, cinemas and traffic jams.

ü  We’ve a hot shower, a spare room and a spacious kitchen.

ü  We can find all the ingredients for our favourite home cooked meals with varying degrees of ease,

o   Red wine (expensive on our salaries but widely available)

o   Fresh basil (cheap but available only across town)

o   Good cheese (expensive on our salaries and available certain places)

o   Risotto rice (very hard to get hold of and very expensive even by UK standards, but anything’s obtainable...)

ü  Evenings are spent watching TV and films on our laptop, skyping friends or meeting people for drinks, meals out and house parties.

ü  The main challenges we face are long and unpredictable commutes, having a social life that’s too busy, and fitting in all the holidays we’d like to take.

So far, so comfortable.  Lots of the time we feel we’ve really fallen on our feet with a placement in Nairobi:

Having a bad day?  Let’s treat ourselves to cocktails at the posh hotel across the highway.  Shoes falling apart?  Let’s visit a shoe shop in a shopping mall as shiny as those in Dubai.  Feeling homesick for our favourite Italian cafe back home?  Let’s go a coffee shop that serves wonderful cappuccinos.

You get the idea.  But therein lies the hidden challenge of being a VSO in a place so different from the place we first imagined.  The karaoke bars, Italian restaurants and exclusive spas are catering for the western, mainly white, expatriate population, and the steady stream of tourists and business people who arrive every day. We are not them, and (most of the time) we do not live like them.  But we look like we should.

The trouble with my skin colour

We’ve already written about being easily mistaken for tourists (see, A Kenya Staycation), and 5 months in, being constantly ‘welcomed’ to Kenya by ‘friendly helpers’ on the street is starting to grate on me.  But the most entrenched mistake people make about Dan and I, is that we’re living an expat lifestyle.

Our skin colour aligns us to the people living lives here that we cannot hope to afford on our small VSO salary; to people with business interests here in Kenya, and working for international NGOs like the UN and Save the Children.  These are the people who have a beautiful house in the white suburbs, only shop in the malls and send their children to posh international schools.  We look like them, so people expect certain things from us:

We’re expected have a car and/or driver

Back in the image of a rural placement, I expected to be stared at, but I never expected the people staring to be white. Waiting for the bus on the side of the road in a posh neighbourhood, a white woman driving past in a huge SUV can’t take her eyes off me.  She’s so baffled by the sight of a westerner taking the bus by herself that she hits the roadside puddle hard with her enormous front wheel, showering me in muddy water.

We’re expected have a ‘mzungu’ job

By which I mean a job with a western-world-size salary.  We recently met a Kenyan friend of my brother’s who grew up in Nairobi but now lives and works in Dubai.  A chatty, beautiful, middle-class young woman, Jacqui was astonished to discover I was being forced to walk down the railway tracks on my journey to work, and speechless when hearing of the tin shack from where I buy my lunch. Recovering, she asked, ‘And how is your stomach feeling after your lunch?  I would NEVER buy from those places.  You know you could get a good job here in Nairobi, and wouldn’t have to walk.  You should get a Mzungu job.’  It was hard to explain how I was choosing to volunteer, to a lady who was rightly most interested in improving her economic situation for herself and wider family.  After comparing our very different lifestyles in Nairobi, she concluded: ‘I’m Kenyan, but I’m more Mzungu than you are!’

No-one expects us to do things ‘Kenyan-style’

A compliment my colleagues often give me is that I’m flexible.  They simply love that I eat the same food they do, that I walk to the roundabout through the mud and that I learn more and more Swahili – and use it.  I explain that I am here to fit in, and that we are trained to be sensitive and adaptable to a local culture.  But still they regale me with stories of the many White People They Have Known who hated this or screamed at that – and how they proud they are of me.  It feels the way it feels when you are showered in compliments for just ‘doing your job,’ but again and again people are surprised at how differently I behave from others with my skin colour.  I am Helen, Who Just Gets On With Things.  I even gather shock and awe in the street; watched everyday by a street-seller at the roundabout (where I’ve never seen another white woman), his word-for-word comment shouted at me as I passed, was ‘Madam,I admire the way you walk on the mud without fear!’  There were maybe 20 other (Kenyan) women walking by at that time – but my journey, it seems, is a statement, an achievement.  Our behaviour here is sometimes seen as upsetting the Laws of Nature, so much so that we even find Kenyans encouraging us to behave as typical Mzungu so that the Order Of The Universe can be restored: on seeing three Mzungus boarding a matatu in town, the tout rushed over to stop Dan, Eddie and I, trying to lead us onto the larger, more comfortable bus.  He never thought for a moment that we might travel to work by matatu every day.

Although confounding expectations has been an unexpected part of the VSO experience, I’m assuming that we would have experienced similar reactions to our flexibility in the rural setting we first imagined.  But the difference, I am suggesting, is our proximity to the other foreigners living in ways that are ‘expected’ of them - my Kenyan colleagues are far more used to the habits of other westerners because there are so many of them here.  And I was simply unprepared for the sheer number of people continuing their western lifestyle here, or even improving on it; in the very same city where our standards of living are much lower than back home.

Angry thoughts – and why I’m wrong

Now, I’m about to share some thoughts I’m not proud of, but in the spirit of an honest blog, here goes... 

I feel occasional jealousy and anger, born of living so close to all the trappings of expat life, but not attaining it.  In our picture of rural VSO life, I was happy to do without all the luxuries I enjoy back home, because no-one else in the community would have them either.  But here, just to visit our doctor takes me into an area of town where British women younger than me have drivers and private gym membership.  I walk into the shopping mall with wet trainers having waded through the burst drain whilst getting off my second bus that morning; they spring out of their car into underground parking and tap-tap their way to the delicatessen in high heels that have never seen the mud.  Or so I imagine.  It’s the same feeling of injustice when I drag myself off a THREE HOUR bus journey across town after work, get drenched by the rain, and enter the shiny bar in my hiking boots (worn to cope with mud) that are now showering mud flakes across the floor; only to feel completely aggrieved when I hear laughter coming from the table of white, glossy-haired, expensively-dressed, chauffeur-driven 22-year-olds who DON’T KNOW THEY’RE BORN!!!   ARRRGHHHHH!!!!

<Deep breath> 

But once I’m calm, I’m embarrassed by the horrible materialism at the heart of this bitterness I’ve felt.  So, I’d like to conclude this blog post by reminding myself of the reasons why this ‘hidden challenge’ that we face by living as a VSO in Nairobi is silly at best, and disgusting at worst:

Silly.  As we’ve seen, the truth is that we really like having access to malls and bars and brie cheese that are available for the expat customers who live here.  That we feel homesick only occasionally is I’m sure in part due to the fact that red wine is just a short walk away!  In our initial picture of VSO life in a rural somewhere, I wonder how quickly I might have longed for the luxuries of home?  And we are truly lucky we can afford to sample all sides of Nairobi life, as described brilliantly by Dan in The Many-Sided Nairobi.

Ridiculous.  I’m not really trying to wage a class warfare against the nameless, faceless expat ‘enemy’.  Those with the fancy cars, and fancy jobs have troubles of their own, and raising children in a city plagued by insecurity would surely have me rushing for a car with the biggest wheels I could find.  Plus, quite a number of the people who have ‘more than me’ are not expatriates, they’re Kenyans who have achieved education and success.  These folks are simply enjoying the comforts of a city they can afford to take full advantage of – exactly what the rest of us do back home.  Finally, many of the people with such different lifestyles are now my friends.  Interesting, caring people from all over the western world, they have come to Kenya to help build it, just like us, whether through NGO work or through business.  Some of them have drivers, international work trips and an expense account.  But the grass is always greener; these are the friends who ask us to help them ‘break out’ of the ‘expat bubble’, whether by taking them on a matatu, for drinks in a ‘locals’ bar or hosting them in our vibrant neighbourhood.  NGO workers we’ve met have described a frustration that’s the very reverse of ours.  In their previous life they were volunteers and back-packers, but their new status as NGO workers brings a feeling of being cosseted by management, their movements restricted and travel dictated: they are not allowed to take a motorbike taxi, and barred from taking the bus anywhere, because it’s ‘too dangerous’.

Disgusting.  The ‘inequality’ I’m feeling is grossly inappropriate when I compare my life to those who have genuine complaints about the unfairness of Nairobi life.  The reality is that our living standards are hugely, massively, extraordinarily higher than the vast majority of Nairobians.  I find that I earn much more than my colleagues, even though I’m called a ‘volunteer’.  With my rent paid by VSO, and private medical insurance thrown in for free, my benefits package is well above those with whom I share an office.  Our apartment building wouldn’t meet any health and safety standards back home, but to live there, you need to be earning way above the average salary, and if I start to compare my life to the 60% of Nairobi residents who live in slums, I find we are not even in the same world.  I find it truly disgusting that I would dare complain about how we can’t afford cocktails every night of the week.

So while we do find it exhausting to constantly challenge the expectations of our skin colour, and we feel a little jealous of our car-driving countrymen and women when we trudge through a rain storm; the challenges of VSO life here in Nairobi are swamped by the benefits of experiencing Kenyan life from within.  I’m proud of that ‘achievement’ the street-seller congratulated me for in the mud, real or imagined.  We love knowing the back streets, moving freely around the city and sharing a few Swahili words with the roasted-maize guy in South B.  And I promise to check myself when having a moan about what others can ‘do’, ‘buy’ and ‘have.’  We’re happy here because our life is rich in so many other ways, not least because of the awesome VSO friends we’ve made in Nairobi, people who know exactly how it feels to rage about cheese, cocktails, and loud upstairs neighbours in a city where the main challenges are providing your family with clean water and a safe place to live.

.........

Further reading:  for a more accurate window on how ‘the other half live', I’ve been reading the Africa Expat Wives Club blog written by an (anonymous) British expat of 20 years, now living in Nairobi. A full-time Mum, she’s been blogging for the last 6 years about what life is really like when you make Africa your permanent home (unlike us visitors!).  It’s a very honest blog as she seems to not be scared of criticism.  Notable for being mentioned in the Telegraph (I know...) as she blogged during the post-election violence in Kenya in 2008.

Death in Embakasi

Comparing my muddy commute in Nairobi to the Somme has caused some friends to call me pretentious (moi?); after all the mud experienced by soldiers in 1914 was truly life-threatening.  I was once employed to guide school groups around the battlefields of Northern France, and I remember the testimony of Great War soldiers who stood helpless as whole carriages disappeared into the deep mud.  Unable to help, they watched the men and horses drown.

It’s been very rainy over the last week here in Nairobi, and the mud where I work in Embakasi has become even worse.  But, even I admit to being something of a drama queen when I compare it to trench warfare in the last century.  Until today.

Last night here in Embakasi, someone drove their car into one of the rain-clogged construction ditches on the side of the road, and completely disappeared.  The traffic backed up this morning, as hundreds of people gathered to watch the car being dragged from beneath the muddy water.  My colleagues were talking about the driver, was he drunk?  ‘It doesn’t matter’, says my colleague Ken, ‘that one will be dead.’

The Chinese contractors here see no need to put barriers around every ditch; the foreman I saw who was assisting the dredging process looked uncomfortable being the centre of attention, and pretty annoyed that the road building would be put behind schedule.

Life without seasons

Posted by: Helen

We arrived in Kenya in July, leaving behind the UK’s summer.  Flying across the equator, we arrived in Kenya’s winter, but the weather felt much the same. 

Now four months later, I sit at my desk in my office in Nairobi; looking out of the window and it still looks like July.  I have an odd sensational that time is standing still.  Where are my usual signs that the year is progressing?

?    the weather is not getting colder; in fact December and January are summer here, so it’s getting hotter

?    the days are not getting shorter; daylight on the equator is strictly 6am-6pm, all year round

?    where is Halloween, Bonfire night, Remembrance Sunday??

Then, suddenly, it appears that the year is nearly over.  The first recognisable symbol that time was passing came without warning: a string of coloured lights.  Christmas retail season has arrived in Kenya, targeting middle-class Kenyan cash in ways borrowed from the west: Christmas trees in glass-fronted shopping malls, and carol-themed jingles on the radio. I can’t believe it’s almost December. Christmas?!  Already?!  It just seems so wrong.

Back home I can be a bit of a scrooge, preferring long summer days spent outdoors, to cold ‘festive’ holidays stuck in the house.  But how can I grumble about Christmas this year, when the weather continues to heat up?  How can I complain when I’m free of pressured Christmas shopping and the usual decisions about where to be come Christmas day? 

So I won’t protest at all – I’ll embrace it.  Let’s have carols in the sunshine, and Christmas on the beach. And who wouldn’t thank their lucky stars for swimming outside in the sunshine in late November?  I think whining about this situation would prompt my friends and family back home to tell me ‘where to go’, whilst reminding me about drizzle, window condensation and cold fingers.

And yet still, the feeling remains: I miss the experience of seasons changing.  Autumn is Dan’s favourite time of year; never happier than when squelching through forest mud under clear blue skies, watching the leaves turning colour whilst we identify mushrooms.  OK, maybe it’s Mike Jones that knows all about the fungi (!), but in autumn, even I love an excuse to throw on an extra duvet and make soup.  As I embrace the mono-season here in Nairobi, I’m surprised to discover how much I miss the UK, just at the time of year when I normally start to grumble. 

I know it’s just new-ness, and in time the strange would become normal.  But our plan to spend just one year here, may mean that we have no time to get used to any strangeness we feel.  During her first few UK winters, my Brazilian friend Luana would often not leave her house between Friday night and Monday morning, seeing no need to expose her body to such extreme cold, if not for work.  She yearned for the warmth of ‘home’, but after almost 10 years in the UK, the cold no longer feels as harsh.  Now, she wraps up warm and heads out with a stoicism that matches her hard-won British citizenship; a sign of the long-term commitment she made to her adopted home.  (miss you, Lu!)

We have no plans to commit to Kenya in that way, although plenty of our follow volunteers want to – and do.  When he visited, my brother asked us what our plans were, whether we had become convinced of the benefits of an ex-pat lifestyle, as he has.  At the moment, all I can say is that my ‘Britishness’ is coming out here in the strangest of ways:  who would have believed I’d miss the sensation of summer ending, miss the cold weather, even miss a ‘proper’ English Christmas?  I find life here to be so very interesting, and every day is an adventure at the moment.  But, I’m clearly not ready to find new roots just yet, because right now, this life without seasons makes me feel very far from a place I still call home.