Too Few Good Days Like This

It’s been a few days since I’ve blogged, not because I’ve been too busy, but because I’ve actually had the opportunity to have some enjoyable time here in Nairobi.

After the first round of tournaments was completed on Thursday, Friday was a quiet, unstructured day while we waited for our crews to fly back from the other tournament sites in Uganda and Tanzania. As they came into the office there was lots of laughing and exchanging of stories.

For dinner that night Mary took us to Furisato, a Japanese restaurant in Nairobi near the tony Westlands area. Most of us ate family style; we started with gayozas (pan fried pork and vegetable dumplings) and BBQ chicken wings. Then the staff brought out 3 wooden boats, each about 2 feet long, laden with an assortment of sashimi. Now, I know what you’re thinking because I was thinking the same thing, too; Where do they get fresh sushi-grade seafood from in Nairobi? But Mary assured us that it was all first class, and she was right. I’ve never been able to indulge to that extent on the rare occasions when I enjoy sushi, so I took full advantage. We all ate our fill and toasted each other with hot sake, shouting Kampai!

Saturday the staff from Los Angeles had only a little work to do, and most of that could be done in their rooms at the hotel, so Mary gave us the morning off and scheduled a very rare day of touristing for us. She sent us off to the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust elephant sanctuary. Located within the Nairobi National Game park, the Sheldrick centre rescues and cares for orphaned baby elephants and other large game from the park and after raising them to the point where they can be self-sufficient, releases them back into the reserve. They allow visitors only once a day, for one hour at 11am.

Elephants and Giraffes

(Click on the slide show to view it in a larger size)

We left our hotel at 10am in a steady rain. Our driver, Jimmy, laughed at us crazy wazungu (the plural of mzungu, the Swahili word for “white man”) dressed in shorts and without rain coats or umbrellas. As Jimmy drove us further out of town it continued to rain harder. By the time we turned off onto the dirt road for the sanctuary it was coming down in buckets. We had arrived about 10 minutes early, so we waited in the van and hoped that the rain would slacken. It didn’t.

By 11 a crowd of about 30 people had gathered, mostly white Americans and Europeans. I was happy to see that most were not any more well prepared for the weather than we were. A guide led us down to a clearing where there was a roped off area where they would bring the baby elephants to feed. Within seconds we were drenched to the skin, sheltering our cameras in our pockets under our windbreakers. I was starting to wonder if this would be worth it.
And then from off in the distance we heard the trumpet of an elephant and from around the trees came a herd of 8 tiny elephants, none higher than my chest. All thoughts of the rain disappeared and cameras quickly came out of pockets. The little baby elephants were very excited because they knew they were going to be fed and they pushed and jostled for position near the handlers. There was plenty of room for all of us against the rope to view them. When finished feeding the babies were ready to play. There was a soccer ball on the ground that they kicked and knocked with their trunks. Some of them picked up leafy branches and carried them about. The elephants were very social and enjoyed their audience and came close to the ropes , close enough to touch. At first I only touched the flank of those passing near me, but as I realized they did not mind I felt brave enough to touch their head, ears, and even let one explore my hand with its trunk.

Although we knew to stay on our side of the ropes, no one told the elephants and soon 2 of them had crossed to mingle more closely with us. The elephants had a playful way of backing into them, bumping them gently. This might have been more fun for those bumped if the elephants had not been covered in wet red Kenyan mud. One elephant explored a young man’s face with her trunk, leaving a long red smear from his forehead to his cheek. Another elephant head-butted David from our group from behind, tattooing him with the muddy print of her trunk from his butt all the way down his leg to his socks.

After half an hour the elephants were led back to their corrals and we were led to another set of corrals where we saw some infant elephants, only 2 weeks old and abandoned by their mother. There was also a 2 week-old black rhinoceros. The black rhino is very endangered so it was very special to see a new-born one at all, and it made me happy that the sanctuary was there to help protect the abandoned infants of this species.

By this time, of course, the rain had stopped. We had no choice but to load up into the van soaking wet and covered with mud. We were in good spirits though as Jimmy drove us away from the sanctuary. On the road on the way out Jimmy stopped when he saw a Dik Dik in the brush by the road, a type of antelope, and then on the main road he stopped again when he saw 2 baboons nearby, one of them quite large.

Next we went to the Giraffe Centre, dedicated to the protection of the endangered Rothschild giraffe. There they had a 2 story structure where you could stand on the upper pathway at the level of the giraffe’s heads to feed them, or you could feed them from below and the giraffes would bend down to take their snacks. The staff there was not only willing to take a picture of you with your own camera, but they knew the best way to pose us for a fantastic photo.

When we left there Jimmy took us to a nearby curios shop. He told us that here we would be able to negotiate our own price and maybe get some good deals. I have to say that they had a wonderful selection of souvenirs, both large and small. My wife had already told me that, this being my 4th trip to Africa it was not necessary for me to bring back any new trinkets. Never-the-less, I found a pretty little beaded headband that would be a nice gift for the daughter of a friend of mine who had helped me build the tree-house for my boys, and a simple soapstone version of a marble game that Marion and Brodie like to play, so I thought if the price were right I would bring those home.

When it came time to agree on a price, the man asked me how much I expected to pay. I told him that I thought the headband was about 250 Ksh (Kenya Shillings, about $4), and that I would pay 650 bob (the slang word for Shillings, about $10) for the game. The man looked at me like I was crazy and told me that the two pieces together were worth 3,850 Ksh, about $50. I told him that he was the one who was crazy, and that I was not some tourist here for my first time on vacation. I told him that I knew I could get that headband on Moi Avenue in town for 250, and that I had seen a beautiful soapstone carving for 650 at the gift shop at the Giraffe Centre, so there was no way I would pay more than that for this simple game. It soon became obvious to me that there would be no good deals to be had here; these guys were determined to get $50 from every wealthy American who walks in there, and the other 5 people in my van were more than willing to oblige them. I didn’t want to spend 30 minutes haggling over $15 dollars worth of stuff I didn’t really need, so I told them man that we both knew that my offer was fair, but if he would rather have none of my money than to make this deal, it was no problem for me. He would not agree, so I walked away and he did not follow. The other guys in the van were all smarting from the beating they had taken in there.

From there Jimmy took us back into town, dropping everyone off at the hotel except for me. I still had work to do at the office that afternoon, completing preparations for the second round of tournaments to be held in Ghana, Malawi, Zambia and Sierra Leone on Monday. I finished work at the office at 6pm and rushed back to the hotel where I needed to meet with 2 of my colleagues to transfer some files onto their computers before we left for dinner at 6:45.

Mary took the entire staff to Carnivore, Nairobi’s most famous restaurant. Carnivore is a restaurant for meat eaters. As you walk in you see their enormous wood-fired grill with dozens of meat roasts on spits cooking over the glowing coals. We started our dinner with their signature cocktail, the Dawa, a mixture of vodka, honey and fresh limes. There are 4 halved limes in each glass and before you enjoy your drink you must crush the limes with a ceramic stick to release the juices. It was very refreshing. When it was time to eat we were each given a heated metal plate, and then the servers came out to our table carrying the whole roasts on the spit and slicing them directly onto our plates. That night they offered chicken wings, pork sausage, chicken livers, beef rump steak, leg of pork, beef sausage, ostrich meat balls, pork spare ribs, lamb chops and crocodile. The server urges you to eat all you can, I ate all I wanted and maybe a bit more. I passed on the beef roast, the beef sausage and the ostrich but tried everything else. The crocodile was very good.Carnivore is a restaurant that everyone who comes to Nairobi should try at least once. I’m glad to have experienced it, but I won’t make plans to go there again. Why, you ask? Three words: Too Much Meat.

Tournament Diary

So, today was our first tournament day.

I wrote the software that they are using today to conduct this question and answer quiz tournament in 6 game rooms today, 2 each in Dar es Salaam Tanzania, Kampala Uganda, and here in Nairobi Kenya. The top 4 teams at each of these tournaments will win an all-expense-paid trip to Kampala in February and will appear on the televised game show, Zain Africa Challenge.

My software is used to display the categories for each of the 3 rounds of play, to show the next question in the selected category to both the Host as well as to the players and audience, and then to score the results. The application is fairly simple to operate after a little practice, but if something goes wrong with my computer code or if the scorekeeper is confused, it is my job to help them fix the problem and get them back on the right track. If there are problems here in Nairobi and can easily go into the room to help, but if the problem is in Uganda or Tanzania they reach me by cell phone. If my day goes well, my job is to sit in the hallway with my cell phone and listen to my iPod or read my novel. If my day doesn’t go well it might mean that we’ve all wasted our time; This tournament cannot run without my software.

A brief diary of my day.

5:00am I woke a few minutes before my alarm and showered and got dressed. After checking emails for any overnight crises (there were none) I packed up my computer and headed downstairs.

5:45am I convinced the service staff at the breakfast restaurant to allow me to grab a bowl of cereal and some fresh fruit before they opened at 6.

6:10am Mark, Raj and I were in front of our hotel waiting for Jasan to pick us up and take us to the Sarova Panafric Hotel where our tournament will be taking place.

6:30am We arrive at the hotel to prepare for the day. We had come the night before to set up the rooms in advance, but one of our 2 rooms was in use that night for a dinner so we had one entire room to set up before the participants arrive at 8am.

8:05am Room setup is complete, just in time.

8:20am Our participant registration table reports that there are 5 player changes. I discover that there was no built-in way to print Name Plates so I quickly design a new report for that purpose. I made my way into the player meeting just in time to be introduced.

9:10am Nearing the end of the player meetings, the power goes out.

9:13am The hotel generator comes on, restoring power.

9:30am We start playing our first game of the day. It goes very smoothly.

10:15am Mary and I realize that it is going too smoothly. Neither of us has received a phone call, email or text message from our teams abroad. This either means that things are going exceedingly well, or that their problems go beyond our frequent power failures to include a long-term drop in their cell phone service.

11:05am The hotel generator stops running, plunging us into darkness again.

11:15am The generator has been restarted.

11:18am The generator stops and starts yet again, stopping only long enough that we need to halt game play and then re-set to start again.

12:00pm We have just completed our 4th game of the day out of a total of 15 that we will play. So far we are averaging more than half an hour per game. At this rate we will not finish until after 6pm. We need to speed things up!

12:30pm Good news! Mary’s phone finally rang; it was Lillian calling from Tanzania. Surprisingly, cell phone service is just fine where she is, and the reason we haven’t heard from her is that there have been no problems requiring my help.

12:45pm Charles just called my cell phone from Uganda with the first legitimate problem of the day. It was not a problem where my code exploded, but instead a strange situation where they needed my help to talk them through re-setting a match to a previous round. I’m pleasantly surprised at how well things are going.

12:48pm Because we are so far behind our time schedule, Mary has decided to modify the plan for our lunch. Originally we were going to break for one hour and enjoy our lunch poolside. Now the plan has been modified so that matches will continue during lunch, and that the 13 teams not playing in rounds 7 and 8 will go to eat immediately, and the teams that play during lunch will eat after their match. This means, of course, that the staff manning the game rooms (myself included) will not get a break for lunch, but will eat in their game room during the 5 or 10 minutes between matches. No big deal, but I would have liked to eat outside.

1:05pm It’s warm here today. It’s actually a few degrees cooler than yesterday, but with 50 or 60 people packed into each of the game rooms it’s uncomfortably warm there. I mention this because as I sit in the hallway outside of our rooms I notice that most of the people here are wearing long sleeves. Many are wearing jackets, either fleece hoodies or sport coats. I wonder how that man I see in front of me can bear to sit in that hot room wearing that corduroy sports jacket.

2:20pm Mary’s plan for lunch worked reasonably well for most everyone except for staff. Apparently no one got the message to make some plates for us, so we are taking a 20 minute break to run down and eat.

2:32pm Lunch was very good and I’m sorry to have had to rush it. A nice buffet of chicken tikka, braised beef with brown sauce, chicken curry and fried fish filets. They also had some traditional Kenyan staples, rice and sweet potatoes. I tried the fish and the beef and they were both satisfying. I enjoyed my 12 minutes poolside.

2:45pm I enjoy a small sigh of relief. We just received an email from our Tanzania crew that they have completed their tournament and chosen the 4 teams that will advance to the TV show next month. They are the first ones to finish because they only had to play 7 matches today, not the 15 we have scheduled. They had no problems at all in Tanzania that required my help. Now they get to enjoy the rest of the afternoon on the beaches of Dar es Salaam.

3:00pm Just finished round 9. 6 games left to go at 30 minutes a piece has us finishing at 6pm.

4:07pm Not much to blog about because we have settled into a steady rhythm.

4:30pm We’re down to our last 2 matches now. I just visited one of our game rooms and the temperature is in the mid-90s in there. When we arrived at 6:30 this morning they had the air conditioner on full blast and Mary and I joked that we might need a sweater. Now the room is a sweat box, and the funk factor is high in there.

4:45pm The results have just come in from Uganda, leaving us the last tournament to complete. We’re the largest one, too, so it’s no reflection on the strength of our staff. Time to put my computer away and get ready to start packing up stuff here. We should be finished in less than an hour.

5:30pm We have finally finished our tournament. Mary is conducting an awards ceremony in one of the game rooms while we, the staff, are breaking down and packing away the equipment in the other room.

6:30pm Pack-up and load-out complete, we board our van, 12 hours after we arrived this morning. There's lots of laughter and energy left in this group on the ride home. Although it was a long day, it went more smoothly than we could have hoped. As we are dropped off at our hotel Mary lets us know that we can sleep in tomorrow as we aren't expected at the office until 10:30.

Walking to Work

It was such a pretty day that I thought I'd walk to work today.

Today was a travel day for much of our staff. Tomorrow we will be conducting tournaments in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, so teams of our staff were off to the airport early this morning bound for Kampala and Dar es Salaam while I stayed here in Nairobi with Mark and Raj, two of our question writers from Los Angeles.

There were no set plans on what time we were due at the office, and no arrangements had been made for Jasan to pick us up in the company van, so after talking it over at breakfast we decided to test our geographical memory and try walking the one mile or so to the office.

It truly was beautiful weather for a walk, and we were grateful for the opportunity to get away from our computers and spend some time outdoors. Lucky for us that Nairobi is a pretty safe place if you stick to public areas during daylight, because the three of us white guys strolling along those streets wearing shorts and carrying our laptops were definitely out of place.

We snapped some photos on the way, making us stand out even more as the tourists that we were.

"Rehabilitated Public Toilet" means that that facility had been upgraded to include plumbing and that you could expect to sit on a porcelain toilet and not hover over a hole in the floor.











On our way we passed through the campus of the University of Nairobi.













That's Raj posing in front of their sign.














A close-up of the very impressive logo of the University of Nairobi.

Finding our way there was harder than you think, because the roads in Nairobi can be very hard to negotiate in a car. Almost all of the roads have median strips in the center, and very often you have turn left when you want to go right and look for the u-turn lane after a few hundred metres. Also, most of the major intersections are traffic-circles so it's not too obvious to a passenger in a vehicle to which direction his driver exited. Our walking route was much more direct than the circuitous route Jasan uses.

Also, pedestrians and motor vehicles have negotiated an uneasy relationship where pedestrians are not afraid to step into oncoming traffic because they know that the cars will avoid them, although just barely. An additional risk for us as pedestrians is that they drive on the wrong side of the road here, so your instincts are to look to the left as you step off of the curb, not right, which can get you killed very quickly if you're not careful.

We managed to brave the risks and arrived at the office with no problems at all. I'm looking forward to making the walk again soon.

Shotgun!

There are about 6 or 7 of us LA staff staying here at the Intercontinental Hotel in Nairobi, a point that will come into play a little later in my story, but . . . .

To get from the hotel to our office we ride in the company van, an 11 passenger vehicle similar to the ubiquitous matatu taxis you see all around town, except that ours does not have the yellow stripe that identifies a matatu. I've never been a big fan of riding in the back of a crowded vehicle, so when the oppotunity presents itself I like to sit in the passenger seat next to our driver, Jasan. That way I have a nice window I can roll down and let my arm rest on the door jamb as I take in all the sites of this busy city through the wide windshield.

Well, apparently I'm not the only one who feels this way. When it was time to leave Mary's house last night after the party I was the first one to wander out to the van and I took my accustomed seat. As the rest of the staff trickled out after me, Jonathan Evans, one of our LA staff tried very hard to convince me that I was sitting in his seat. After trying to convince me with logic, he turned to insults and threats of physical violence, but finally he admitted defeat and climbed into the back with the rest of the group. He good-naturedly complained about the injustice of it all the way back to our hotel.

Fast forward 11 hours to 9:30 this morning. Once again it was time for us to load up in the van, this time for the ride to the office. Once again I was the first one out to the van, so of course I headed for my favorite seat. As I was steps away from the van door, from behind me I heard the loud shout of "SHOTGUN!" from Jonathan.

Now, everywhere you go in Africa there are guards, some of them armed and some not. Hotels where Americans stay are protected very diligently, so maybe yelling out "Shotgun!" wasn't the best idea. I'd like to report that a crew of seven heavily-armed Kenyan Police descended upon him and pinned him to the ground, but that's not what happened. He did get a few puzzled looks, though.

In all the excitement over the boarding procedures for the van, no one noticed that one of our numbers was missing. It seems that there are indeed 7 of us in our group, but only 6 made it onto the van before it left. Not one of us noticed that David Tuttle, my travelling companion all the way from LA was not on the van, and indeed, no one noticed him missing until he emailed everyone in the office an hour later wondering where we had all gone.

First Day in Nairobi

As I write this I am enjoying Samosas and a local Nairobi beer at Mary Oberembt's house in the Riverside area. Mary's LA staff came prepared with their Wii and her Nairobi staff came with their hospitality and enthusiasm.

The picture at the right is of me and my travelling partner on this trip, Dave Tuttle. We had successfully braved over 24 hours of travel to arrive in Nairobi at 7am. Our driver, Jasan, met us and took us straight to our hotel to check in, get unpacked, take a quick shower and get something to eat.

The drive from the airport took almost an hour through the crazy Nairobi traffic. There were times we were stopped for more than 5 minutes at a time.

Nairobi has really improved since the last time I was here. Many of the main streets have been repaved, and you can see that there is a lot of work being done to put in sidewalks and other projects to beautify the streets.

After refreshing at the hotel we were off to the Nairobi office to get to work. The staff there was very happy to see me, because they had a chance to get their database issues solved in real time, not delayed 11 hours by the distance between us.

Mary had me driven over to her house so that I could finish working on the database application that will run the tournaments over the next few weeks in peace. She knew that I would be hard-pressed to get work done with her staff taking advantage of my presence there.

On the drive to Mary's, I saw that although the roads have improved the vehicles on them have not. The picture on the right was a heavy big-rig truck with one of the inside tyres (that's how they spell it here) completely shredded. Amazing.

It's 9pm here now, and Mary is promising dinner will be ready soon. It looks like I've made it through my first day here ok, illness, jetlag and all.

On the Ground in Nairobi

It's 10am here and I have just checked into my hotel in Nairobi. It took over an hour sitting in traffic to get here, but we're here at last. My boss has graciously allowed me time to take a shower and have breakfast, which I will do now.

More later.

Cold in London, too.

It's 4:30 in the afternoon here in gloomy old London, 8:30 in the morning where the people I love and miss are. I'm here in the Virgin Atlantic Clubhouse Lounge at London Heathrow Airport waiting for my flight on to Nairobi which leaves in another 2 1/5 hours.

As you can see in the picture, I still have my trusty Kleenex box with me, but I'm feeling a little better than I did in Los Angeles. My travelling partner, Dave Tuttle, gave me a Singulair from his pharmaceutical stash when my Tylenol Severe Cold Medicine proved spectacularly ineffective. It dried me up enough that I was able to get about 5 hours of sleep on the flight. I plan to take a sleeping pill on the next flight to get another 6 or 7 hours before I land in Nairobi at 6:30am local time.

The Lounge here is truly fabulous with a wide assortment of foods and drinks to enjoy, comfortable work and leisure areas, a 15 foot wide TV screen showing English Football, of course, and a bar staffed by 3 bartenders. There is also a children's play area, but on the opposite side of the club from the bar.

I got about 3 hours of work done up to now, and I'm ready to get some more done. I'll check in again, next time from Africa.

Cold in Africa?

The day has finally arrived for me to start my 4th trip to Africa.

For weeks I have been taking extra care to stay well, popping those echinacea every morning, washing my hands often and not letting my boys play with all of those other germ-infested kids. I thought I was doing it all correctly, and it wasn't until 1 o'clock this afternoon that I started to feel sick.

Now, here it is, 7pm and I'm sitting in the Air New Zealand lounge at LAX, waiting for my flight surrounded by boxes of kleenex and non-prescription cold meds. Luckily, they have a very good chicken-noodle soup and I'm enjoying that instead of helping myself to the wall of premium liquor that they have available.

Hopefully I'll get over this cold in about 24 hours, which is how long I'll be travelling before I reach Nairobi at 6:30am local time.