Hilary’s Travels

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.

The night after my arrival, the day before I am to meet my facilitation team, I decide to call the lead facilitator to announce my arrival and to break the ice after some tense emails over the past week, alluding to some kind of misunderstanding. We exchange pleasantries and we confirm that we are to meet in the morning to clear the air. The conversation was a bit tense and I didn’t spend long chit-chatting.

I arrive at the office at 8:00 and Malkia is already there, telling her story of being threatened by bandits the night before. It turns out that she had been taking some children to the countryside and on her return home, her car broke down. On seeing her stranded some local thugs gathered around her car and there was a tense stand off as she called for help and warded off would-be thieves. I had called in the middle of this and she had pretended that all was well so as to make a good first impression for her client! Soon after help arrived and she had been able to escape without harm or frightening the children.

Our meeting revealed that Malkia had received a series of unrelated emails from different people within the organization, and had pulled them together to create a picture that had made her feel uneasy about her contract. What struck me about the conversation was the different contexts we use to help us make sense of things, which can also serve to distort communication. In Malkia’s case, she admitted that she comes from a country where there is a lot of corruption – so her interpretation of the different messages she had received made her feel uneasy and suspicious. As a Canadian, although I have occasionally been taken advantage of, I find that I can normally give others the benefit of the doubt and if I sign a contract, I can expect it to be honoured. The context I come from had made it difficult to understand the increasingly tense emails over the past week. Luckily we were able to get these different perspectives out in the open, laugh about it and move on.

On the plane to Nairobi after a civilized overnight at a hotel at London Heathrow, I am seated beside two ladies from Cleveland Ohio off on Safari. Most passengers are vacationers, judging by skin colour, attire and the demeanor of excitement and anticipation generated by the giddy crowd, most of whom had just arrived from overnight flights.

I read my training manuals and take notes, now and then looking out to see a blanket of clouds that pretty well cover the whole of Europe. At one point the jagged peaks of the Alps poke through, dwarfed by this perspective, as though they are mere small islands poking out of a cottony sea. Once we reach North Africa the clouds thin so that the desert below is apparent. The Sahara is vast. It takes 3 hours to fly over – longer than it took to fly from London to the North African side of the Mediterranean. All that desert, all that sand. I wondered if it could ever be transformed, if there were the will to do it. If seven maids with seven mops …

Sue and Alice, my flight neighbors were lovely and we chatted about other trips they had taken and they leant me their Lonely Planet Guide. Eventually we feel the plane descend and soon we see the lights of Nairobi. “Its very small”, says Alice. “Its not that small”, I say, “its just not very bright like cities in the West. There is less access to electricity” (Nairobi has the highest urban population in East Africa, estimated at between 3 and 4 million). “Mmm”, Alice mused, “that’s nice, much better for the environment, when people use less electricity”. The comment startled me. Did she really believe what she was saying? Was she feeling uncomfortable visiting a poor country just to see some animals and pretend Masai? I imagined all the people down there, untold millions huddled around candles or bare bulbs, in small shanties and cold apartments, comparatively few others in comfortable luxury. I wondered what they might think of that statement? But Alice seemed innocent of any faux pas and I didn’t enlighten her.

A seasoned traveler, my goal is to eventually leave for a trip in a relaxed manner, but this time, like always, I was in a panic to get my travelers cheques before the bank closed and grab my malaria pills etc from the pharmacy. One last meeting with the contractor who is updating and sending me the documents I will need for my work in Kenya, a rushed dinner, and I’m off!

I am to spend 6 weeks in Kenya overseeing the delivery of a leadership training program for young people and I am to train a team of Kenyan facilitators to deliver this program. My job as Learning Director for an international not-for-profit takes me to interesting places where I meet and work with people of different cultures and enjoy side trips to places I might never have gone otherwise. This blog is a description of my adventures and observations.