Hilary’s Travels

I spend a lot of time with cab drivers. They take me to and from work, about 30 min each way when traffic is not bad and I have hired a few to take me on trips around Nairobi. I learn a lot from them. They tell me about the political situation – unanimously they say the previous regime (under Daniel Arap Moi) was very corrupt, swindling the country of most of its profits and that the current, democratically elected regime (under Mwai Kibaki) is better. They are my informal tour guides, pointing out areas of interest as we drive by.

They greet me by name and if I have not yet met them they always introduce themselves. They are dignified, well read and educated. Most are outgoing and if you indicate the desire to talk, will oblige with accounts of their lives, their hopes and dreams, the political climate, what is going on in the city. They are a fabulous source of information. One public holiday I was looking for a foreign exchange bureau and I called one cab driver, Waynayna. Within a few minutes he had gotten back to me with an answer, saving me hours of frustrated searching.. They are punctual, always arriving 15 min earlier than booked.

I have my favorites. Issac has three children and tells me about his work, the necessity of providing well for his family and the importance of being kind to people. “Hilary”, he says, “it is always important to be kind. To all people, to animals and to the environment. There is not enough kindness in this world!” Another driver, Joseph, has seven sisters, one who is a nun, another is a doctor with her own clinic in their home town. He runs tours for the cab company also and his greatest joy is to go to one of the National Parks and to view the wild animals. One Monday when he picked me up he entertained me with a vivid description of what he had seen that weekend; lions killing a wildebeest, a crocodile attacking a zebra whilst its herd watched placidly. On another occasion we passed a bus stop where his wife happened to be waiting and he asked if we could give her a lift. I obliged and after he had dropped her off on our way, he confessed that they were not actually legally married but had a two-year old child. I enquired if this was a common and accepted practice and he said it was fairly common, but that he was to undergo a cleansing ceremony, involving being beaten with dried dung. What seemed to be holding back the marriage ceremony was the price of a dowry, which was competing with the need to get a better education in order to get a better job.

The Nairobi Marathon is an event where fortunes are made. Talented runners, often average folk who have not yet run a race, come hoping to win the top prize of 1 million Kenya Shillings. This year it was Hosea Kiprotich Rotich, a forest ranger at a game reserve, who plans to buy farm land with the money. The previous year, Chilapong Chemokil, a mother of three, who’s husband sold a goat to raise the fare to Nairobi, won the woman’s category and has since become a serious athlete.

One city of a series called the Greatest Race on Earth (GROE), it is certainly one of the highest at 1800 meters above sea level. People from all walks of life come to run the race, top athletes, handicapped in wheelchairs, families run the fun run. Teams of athletes also compete to run the best overall time of the four races: Nairobi, Hong Kong, Mumbai and Singapore.

The Greatest Race on Earth (GROE) was created in 2004, a virtual relay race across four marathons. The main team challenge category is open to men and women over 18 years of age, of any nationality, with no restriction on the level of competence.

Scene 1: I am in an office rented by several consultants. They rent out their space to other consultants or people who want the use of a computer and internet and I get used to people coming and going. On a certain morning when three men arrived I didn’t think much of it. Two of the consultants I am working with, partners in the consultancy firm, were called away to speak with them. Eventually, overheard bits of the conversation started to intrigue me. “No, we already signed a contract”, said one consultant. I turned to look at the three men and once I took them in, I noticed their demeanor was quite different from others who had come and gone. They were standing in a way to block the door, looking … big. The smallest said “You seem to have a kitchen here … I don’t think that is in the contract”. “Listen the contract was signed and sent to your office. We don’t need to pay anymore money.” Afterwards I wondered if it was the building people wanting more money …. No, I discovered, it was the municipal authorities attempting to extract a bribe.

Scene 2: On my way home after a very long day, it is 8:00 at night. I ask the cab driver to stop for a phone card and water. He forgets and drives right to my hotel. I remind him and we drive away from the hotel, down the road, but the little kiosks along the road are dark, closed. I have a sinking feeling that somehow I’m not going to get right back to my hotel. We go to a gas station, closed. We drive to another. I buy what I want. On the way back, we are stopped by a policeman. He flashed his light in the back seat and I sit there smiling, thinking he is looking for guns or something. He tells me to get out. I wonder “what the heck?’. Out I get and he says. “Don’t you know that not wearing a seatbelt is an offense?” I almost laugh at his gravity, barking at me for a mere seatbelt. “Oh, I didn’t know”, I said (I do remember being told but didn’t take if very seriously, and have not seen seatbelts much in use). “I could send you to court”, he says. Still not taking him seriously I think I have to play the game one does at home with policemen who stop you for going over the speed limit or not making a complete stop at a stop sign: to seem very contrite and the police officer will feel he has done his duty, enhanced his feeling of power and will possibly let you go without a fine. So I do this. To my surprise, the officer ups the ante. I can hardly believe it when he says that I have now to go to the police station and receive a summons to court on Wednesday. “Oh, please don’t”, I say, suddenly feeling a little desperate, “I must be at work, and they need me”. He asks what I do and I explain. He keeps repeating things like “can you sheph me sheph you?”, “How can I fughive you?” I don’t know what he is saying and keep asking him to repeat himself. I have to bend down a bit because he is smaller than I (I am 5 feet 2). I say “now I know and I promise I will always wear my seat belt. I really didn’t know it was a law”. Finally he does let me go and with great relief I get in the car. I put on my seat belt as we drive away. “Why do they take seat belts so seriously here?”, I ask, truly mystified that in such a crime-ridden city a police officer would be bothering with such trifles. “He was waiting for a bribe”, says the cab driver. That’s why he kept saying “How can I forgive you? And “Can you help me to help you?”

The night sounds from where I sit right now seem to me a representation of Nairobi. Crickets and tree frogs sing and chirp in the garden outside. Some of my favorite sounds. In contrast to that, a bit further off, like a windup cricket gone wrong is the endless repetitive screech of a siren. It goes on and on without respite. Grinding car motors, horns sounding occasionally from the street outside muffle it all. Upstairs in the apartment above, the sultry music of a French singer is playing on a stereo.

As I travel through Nairobi by cab I am driven through a variety of neighborhoods; some very rich with vast manicured lawns, beautifully tended gardens and luxurious designer houses. And I see the other extreme everywhere, ramshackle huts, youth gangs wandering the streets prompting a “lock doors, rollup windows” reaction from all drivers even in broad daylight.

Nairobi is a place where people from all over the world come together – it boasts the second largest UN site and is the preferred destination of international conferences hosted by UNESCO, UN, The British Counsel to name a few. Kenya itself encompasses many different ethnic groups, 70% of the population is made up of 5 different ethnicities and the other 30% is said to encompass up to 65 other groups. Most Kenyans are Christian, but there is a strong Muslim presence and other religious groups are represented also. Many of the people of Kenya converge in Nairobi, many of them poor, hoping to change their way of life with the promise of opportunity. This situation has contributed to the slum and crime situation in Nairobi.

Although my hotel is a lovely sanctuary from the dusty streets with its inner garden, swimming pool and outdoor terrace, only a few miles away lies one of the biggest slums in Africa, the notorious Kibera. This place is known for crime, extreme poverty, lack of sanitation and disease. Almost 1 million people live in this slum and it is growing as more and more people flock to it, hoping to change their lives and find themselves stuck in the poverty trap with no means of escape.

Now it is more silent … the alarm sound has stopped as well as many of the cars and the French music. The call to prayer is sounding from a nearby mosque … I always find this such an exotic sound; mournful and plaintive.

A flashlight is indispensable in Nairobi. There are numerous brownouts and blackouts and you never know when you are going to be caught in darkness. This evening, I was working at the office and suddenly all the lights went out. The only illumination was from the monitor of my laptop. I’m not sure what I would have done if I hadn’t had a flashlight. Luckily I had one in my briefcase and I was able to pack up, lock up and get out of the building.

Getting home was another matter. I called the cabdriver who had dropped me off and he said he’d pick me up in 10 minutes. I spent my time listening to the crickets and looking at the stars. Even without a blackout, the streets are not illuminated and you can see the stars at night. About 20 minutes later, the cabdriver called to say he couldn’t pick me up after all. I called another cab driver who I’d relied on in the past.

At that moment my mobile phone ran out of credit. I had more credit but it was with another SIM card for a cheaper plan (credit runs out at an astonishing rate). The cab driver called me right back and said he was nearby and he’d pick me up. I waited another 20 minutes. I got another call from the same cab driver who asked that I wait by the gate.

The office is in a compound guarded by a gate and I asked the guard to let me out. I walked along the cobbled street, my roll-along briefcase in tow. At the end of the short road is another, smaller gate to keep cars out, which is where I thought the cab driver wanted me to wait. I did. It was not the most comfortable place to be waiting. I had a lot of expensive stuff with me as well as cash and here I was waiting pretty well on the street, the streets where I have been warned not to be at night. Another 10 minutes went by and I decided that this is not where he had meant me to be. I returned to the relative safety of the office compound and decided that it was time to change my SIM card. Flashlight in my mouth so I could use both hands, I performed the delicate operation of changing SIM cards and then added credit by keying in a number on a scratch card. Finally I called the second cab driver who said he’d been waiting at the hotel where he thought I wanted to be picked up. By then he had left. He promised to call someone to pick me up.

I did eventually get home but it took an hour and a half for a journey that normally takes 3 minutes by cab. When I reached my hotel the lights were back up.

Gunshots sounded outside during a meeting I had downtown today. I have heard them a few times before, even near my hotel. This time they were persistent. Someone in the room said “Car-jackers!”. Once the shots had stopped everyone ran to the window. Outside people were strewn all over the road. It looked as if dozens of people were wounded. Then slowly a few got up and then more and more, like actors in a movie once the take was over. I realized that they had all dropped to the ground when they heard shots. Across the roundabout, one man was still lying on the ground, poker straight, arms at his side, like a toy soldier who had tipped over.

There was a moment when everything was still, then one, two, dozens, hundreds of people from the square, the surrounding streets, ran, converging on the dead man. I thought abstractly what a beautiful pattern they made, a perfect circle filling up from all sides. We came back in and returned to our meeting and then stopped, realizing we had just witnessed a death, a tragedy where we did not know the story and had not felt a thing other than vague curiosity. I wondered at how easily I had sliped into a perspective where witnessing such an event could seem almost “normal”. We spent some time speculating about who the person had been, if he was innocent or not, if guilty why he would be foolish enough to be trying to stage a robbery right downtown where “every other person was a plainclothes cop”.

Later we discovered that the man who had been shot had made off with 3000KS (about $50) from a cybercafé. The other causality was a woman, a pedestrian shot by a stray bullet.

I discovered the hotel information booklet under a shelf last night. It has all the normal things that are found in such documents; useful phone numbers, laundry information, etc. Then, on page 6 reading to the end (12 pages) I came across a section entitled “Security”. The first suggestion reads as follows: “Please lock your apartment Entrance door always. Do not open for anyone, even if it is the security guard or someone claiming they are from the police station. Remember, the Entrance Door of your apartment is your last line of defense”.

As if this wasn’t startling enough, the next section is entitled “Car hijacking”, subtitled “Car hijacking is a fact of life in Nairobi and there is no foolproof system of beating it.” The document mentions that should you be car hijacked, the best thing is to be cooperative with the thieves, to expect to lose your car and to get out of your vehicle “to not even wait to be told” and to leave your keys in the ignition. It ends with this comforting message: “the thieves would probably put you in the back of your vehicle, drive around for 30 to 40 minutes and then release you. Walk away slowly from the vehicle and count your blessings that you are alive and unhurt”.

I brought this up at lunch today with my colleagues. EACH ONE OF THEM (3 women and 2 men) HAD BEEN MUGGED OR THREATENED AT LEAST ONCE! I found this absolutely astonishing. These are professional people who would tend to go about their lives without tempting fate. To them a mugging is one of those things you risk in life and the neighbourhood you live in, your comparative wealth, or where you go in town may not minimize your risk. They told their stories with humor. One man had been mugged right in front of his house; his car, keys and wallet were all taken. He asked the thieves to at least leave his house keys, which they did. They had humorous stories to tell: the pregnant woman who was car-jacked somewhere outside Nairobi and then driven the long ride back to her neighborhood in Nairobi. After dropping her off, the thieves then noticed a gang prowling around and came back to pick her up again and drove her right home, telling her they wanted to make sure that she was safe! Of course they left with her car.