King Mickey: 
Amazing: 
Pre-trek snap: 
Me and my mutzig: 
Friday, 1 April 2011
Rwanda
So last weekend went to Rwanda with a few peeps. What a beautiful country - rolling hillls and lush greenery. We flew into Kigali, the capital, on Friday morning and went for a really nice lunch at shokola. Kigali is cool - very clean and tidy so that was different having got used to the hustle and bustle and general madness of Nairobi.
After lunch we headed to the Genocide Memorial where we did the audio tour round the museum and gardens. Definitely a must if visiting just to get some understanding of the craziness that went on 17 years ago. I remember the aftermath on the news but actually being there was something else. I wasn't really aware of the whole UN failure to help in time so that was interesting - apparently on of the UN guys on the ground in Rwanda at the time who tried to get the UN to do something has written a book so need to get a copy of that. On a side note, currently reading 'The State of Africa' which is pretty heavy going but totally fascinating.
Next up we did the drive up to Mesanze - absolutely stunning drive, the scenery was amazing and so many people on route waving and shouting 'mzungu' :) They do speak keswahili in Rwanda but main languages are Kinyarwandan and Frence - so learnt a couple of new words and got tp speak French which was cool.
On the way to Mesanze:
Up in Mesanza we pottered into town to find dinner. I tried to take us to some dodgy club with an armed guard but the guys were having none of it so round the block we found a little restaurant. A few of us shared something call 'Grandma's Pot' which frankly just had to be ordered. It took ages but was worth it - basically a big pot of scrummy chicken stew. We whiled away the wait anyway playing shithead and drinking an excellent Rwandan beer called Mutzing - my new best friend and also comes in massive bottles bigger than my head. Also it turned out the the restaurant we were in was actually attached to the dodgy club i tried to take us to.
Dinner:
Our ride home:
Next day was a really early start (particularly as i'd messed up with the whole time change so my alarm went off at 3am instead of 5 - oops). I was mega excited and far too chirpy for everyone! we were off diane fossey style to go chill with some gorillas. We trekked for maybe 2 hours which was cool anyway as it was good scenery and felt quite like an intrepid explorer type actvity. We then had to dump our bags in the jungle and head through the bush before we came accross our first gorilla. The rest were not far and we spent the next hour chilling with the Ugende family - 14 in all - 2 silverbacks, 4 adult femails i think plus a load of younguns (was hard not to steal one). It was an amazing experience being so close to them and they were just so chilled out munching away on leaves androlling around having a scratch. Apparently the daddy is around 200kg - not sure how that's possible on a diet of leaves!!
Had a bit of a surreal moment in the jungle as well. Our guide, felix, had told us just to be quiet and given us a quick lesson in gorillas then in the middle of our peaceful observing he walks up to me and is like 'is that a Flip?' whilst i'm doing videoing. We then had this weird conversation about how he can get photos form a flip to his laptop which culminated in me having to write instructions down for him which i'm fairly sure won't really help. One of the girls with us, Lindsay, couldn't contain her amusement. Think it was when i heard myself say 'do you know the My Computer folder?' when i really knew i was in trouble.
After gorillas we visited a cutlural village which was way better than the maasai village but still a bit awkward and cringy. We made the best of it. Trang and Mickey got crowned king and queen, we met a 'medicine man' who apparently has a solution to all sight issues which surely needs to be shared with the rest of the world, i did some 'grinding' of something into a sort of flour. Apprently this is women's work which did not impress me whilst the guys got to do target practice. Luckily i kicked up enough of a fuss that i also got to do target practice - my little contribution to gender equality. There was then much dacing and merriment led by a crazy little pigmy man who will haunt my memories as long as i live and yet in some strange waywas kind of endearing.
I'm getting a bit bored of typing now and it is friday night and i have wine in the fridge so think it may be time for a bit of pre-game before heading out so will leave the rest of Rwanda plus the antics this week until Sunday. Tutuonana!!
Friday, 18 March 2011
Maasai
This somewhat scary maasai lady was amongst a group at the entrance to the Masai Mara park that were selling jewellery and crafts:
Check out my moves:
Maasai men seem to do a lot of jumping when they dance:
Actually not bad for a mzungo:
Check out my moves:
Maasai men seem to do a lot of jumping when they dance:
Actually not bad for a mzungo:
And the rest...
So other stuff that has happened....
Work is pretty crazy busy. Workshops have started which was weird experience. ‘Madame Director’ opened with a prayer (??!!) and made us all do coconut where we had to stand up and spell out coconut YMCA style getting faster until we were falling about laughing , 2 truths and a lie and ali baba and the forty thieves (i’d have to demonstrate that one) – all aimed at encouraging participation and energising the room.
Culturally it’s very interesting. Nothing seems to start on time which was half expected. There’s a pedantry about vocabulary which leads to a lot of confusion. Email is really there for show – no one seems to use it. Meetings have to be set up through a series of memos which have to be signed by just about everybody then physically given to people to request attendance. Everyone is super friendly and we've had lots of recommendations of where to go/what to do while in Kenya.
There’s a lot of excitement generally about what we are doing at the moment from our more senior stakeholders but think the user base is still unclear what’s going on but that should start to change over the next few weeks as we ramp up workshops. Interestingly our most senior stakeholder is being called to the Hague on a charge of war crimes.
Had my first Keswahili lesson this week so am now able to introduce myself properly at the start of my workshops :)
The rain has started here and is pretty bloody impressive. It just suddenly opens up and buckets down for a couple of hours in the afternoon/evening and everything literally grinds to a halt. The traffic is shocking anyway but when it rains you can’t get anywhere. We got a taxi back from lunch today – about a 10 minute walk – but in the pissing rain it took half an hour in the car. Last night we thought we wanted to go into town and our trusty driver, Peter, was just like “No”. Took me a while to get my head around the idea that we just couldn’t go because of the rain!!! Very funny scenes though, particularly a truck crammed full of people because all the matatus (little buses) were too full.
Have had a couple of good nights out, dinner at fogo gaucho (or frodo graucho) which is basically a churrascaria. Carnivore is the better known restaurant like that in Nairobi but apparently Fogos is better. A bit of No Woman No Cry Karaoke last week at Black Diamond (they didn’t have any Mr Cash), Kengeles for Paddy's Day last night which had a good band and AMAZING HEAVENLY meatballs and a couple of poker nights – sadly unsuccessful so far.
Taking it fairly quiet in Nairobi this weekend. Pool lounging tomorrow before the rugby, then Sunday think we’re headed to the national park before somewhere called bomas or something which was recommended to us for food and ‘cultural’ (?) dancing.
Next weekend is another big one – off to Rwanda on Friday with a few other folk to go GORILLA trekking!
T.I.A
Well quite a lot has happened since my last blog so just gonna start with last weekend when I went to Maasai Mara Safariing. Animals were awesome – the pics speak for themselves if i can get the bloody things uploaded on my royal mail calibre internet. The journey itself was pretty epic. We set off early last Friday morning, 6 of us in a van with a guy named Ben who described himself as a ‘modern masaai’. He was very knowledgeable and talked a lot which was good and bad. Everyone fell asleep in the car except for me so had to keep talking to him and he had a tendency to just stop mid sentence and just pause for effect before finishing which made it hard to stop trying to finish his sentences for him. A lot of people here do that – i think they must teach it in school. Anyhoo it was all good as he seemed to know his shit so that kept me entertained.
The scenery was pretty awesome, changing from green, the dusty, back to green again, hilly, to flat etc. We passed Longuenot which is a dormant/extinct (one of those) volcano that you can go climb so put that on the list of things to do. We stopped at a gas station in Karok about 2 hours into hour roughly 4 hour journey to get fuel for the van and for ourselves when we had flat tyre Numero Uno.
No. 1
Front left tyre literally just deflated before our eyes whilst parked. Very odd. Though if we were gonna get a flat it was a good place to get one. So we popped for a coffee and a little later we were off again.
We continued on our journey with much chat about how lucky we were that our flat had happened there yada yada when i peered out my window only to notice a rather unhealthy looking front right tyre. Ben, clearly an optimist, assured me it was fine but within half an hour we were struck by flat tyre number 2. I’d just like to say at this point that although we had previously stopped at a ‘town’ we were basically in the middle of nowhere and by this time it was pretty much dirt track, potholes and a whole lot of nothing.
No. 2
Fortunately there appears to be some sort of mara version of twitter where by within minutes of anything happening you are surrounded by maasai and the potential for help. Also, given the vulnerability of anyone broken down in the middle of nowhere passersby always stop to check you’re ok. We stopped several times for people broken down/flat tyres/overheated engines etc.
Flat tyre number 2 was slightly more problematic given our location however thanks to the maasai twitter a moped showed up and we were able to send for a new tyre. Whilst we were waiting for Ben to sort everything out we were entertained by a scary maasai lady with a machete (who had clearly never seen a packet of crisps before given her struggle to open them until she resorted to her deadly weapon) and a load of kids who were awesome fun.
Whilst we were waiting there was a saloon car which came speeding past us then pulled back and stopped to check we were ok before shooting off again (this is important for the next bit of this story). Once we were up and running again, about 2 hours delayed by this point, our spirits were high as surely that was our bad luck done for the day. Sadly, this was not to be. Some way further down the road we came across the saloon car again and it was not in a good shape at all. To start it was the wrong way up. As we approached we saw a girl peering in to it and we were worried there was someone trapped in there but when we stopped we found that by some miracle everyone had had to crawl out and seemed to be physically unscathed but in considerable shock. It was 3 Finnish girls and their driver who had basically just been driving too fast showing off. We rolled the car back over which was actually quite fun and hung around a bit to check they were ok before heading off again even more delayed, and very hungry.
Ben then made the fatal error or jinxing our tyre situation and suddenly there were some crunching popping noises and we came to stop thanks to flat tyre number 3. This was the worst one – the tyre was literally torn to shreds. I’ve never seen anything like it.
No. 3:
Anyhoo – was definitely an adventure and we did finally make it and had an amazing weekend full of good food, lions, elephants, cheetah, rhino, warthog, zebra, giraffes, hippos, hyenas, baboons, eagles, vultures, cobras, buffalo and more.
I also learnt a knew phrase at work in the week running up to our masai trip which i think is pretty fitting. Sam, this guy in the office helped me sort some things out so i wouldn’t have to pay the muzunga price and in conversation he said “T.I.A”. I was like – TIA? What does that stand for? He just smiled and laughed before answering “This Is Africa. Anything can happen” :)
The scenery was pretty awesome, changing from green, the dusty, back to green again, hilly, to flat etc. We passed Longuenot which is a dormant/extinct (one of those) volcano that you can go climb so put that on the list of things to do. We stopped at a gas station in Karok about 2 hours into hour roughly 4 hour journey to get fuel for the van and for ourselves when we had flat tyre Numero Uno.
No. 1
Front left tyre literally just deflated before our eyes whilst parked. Very odd. Though if we were gonna get a flat it was a good place to get one. So we popped for a coffee and a little later we were off again.
We continued on our journey with much chat about how lucky we were that our flat had happened there yada yada when i peered out my window only to notice a rather unhealthy looking front right tyre. Ben, clearly an optimist, assured me it was fine but within half an hour we were struck by flat tyre number 2. I’d just like to say at this point that although we had previously stopped at a ‘town’ we were basically in the middle of nowhere and by this time it was pretty much dirt track, potholes and a whole lot of nothing.
No. 2
Fortunately there appears to be some sort of mara version of twitter where by within minutes of anything happening you are surrounded by maasai and the potential for help. Also, given the vulnerability of anyone broken down in the middle of nowhere passersby always stop to check you’re ok. We stopped several times for people broken down/flat tyres/overheated engines etc.
Flat tyre number 2 was slightly more problematic given our location however thanks to the maasai twitter a moped showed up and we were able to send for a new tyre. Whilst we were waiting for Ben to sort everything out we were entertained by a scary maasai lady with a machete (who had clearly never seen a packet of crisps before given her struggle to open them until she resorted to her deadly weapon) and a load of kids who were awesome fun.
Whilst we were waiting there was a saloon car which came speeding past us then pulled back and stopped to check we were ok before shooting off again (this is important for the next bit of this story). Once we were up and running again, about 2 hours delayed by this point, our spirits were high as surely that was our bad luck done for the day. Sadly, this was not to be. Some way further down the road we came across the saloon car again and it was not in a good shape at all. To start it was the wrong way up. As we approached we saw a girl peering in to it and we were worried there was someone trapped in there but when we stopped we found that by some miracle everyone had had to crawl out and seemed to be physically unscathed but in considerable shock. It was 3 Finnish girls and their driver who had basically just been driving too fast showing off. We rolled the car back over which was actually quite fun and hung around a bit to check they were ok before heading off again even more delayed, and very hungry.
Ben then made the fatal error or jinxing our tyre situation and suddenly there were some crunching popping noises and we came to stop thanks to flat tyre number 3. This was the worst one – the tyre was literally torn to shreds. I’ve never seen anything like it.
No. 3:
Anyhoo – was definitely an adventure and we did finally make it and had an amazing weekend full of good food, lions, elephants, cheetah, rhino, warthog, zebra, giraffes, hippos, hyenas, baboons, eagles, vultures, cobras, buffalo and more.
I also learnt a knew phrase at work in the week running up to our masai trip which i think is pretty fitting. Sam, this guy in the office helped me sort some things out so i wouldn’t have to pay the muzunga price and in conversation he said “T.I.A”. I was like – TIA? What does that stand for? He just smiled and laughed before answering “This Is Africa. Anything can happen” :)
Monday, 7 March 2011
Hash
Ran about 10k today with a Nairobi Hash. For those of you who don't know this is the history: Hash House Harriers - British colonial officials and expatriates who would meet to follow a paper trail started the Hash originally in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in 1938. A “hare” was given a lead and had to run ahead dropping a paper trail, trying to create false trails to confuse the “harriers” who were chasing behind. Only the hare knew where he was going. Apart from the excitement of the chase, the runners were rewarded at the end of their run with a tub of iced beer.
Sounds fine in principle but in reality it's completely looney. As far as I can tell it's like a kind of freshers week for old people who live in a weird expat bubble, have terrible crude jokes and act a bit like a cult. Needless to say I won't be going back but who knew i'd be able to manage 10k in the nairobi sun after a days work? Somebody stop me!
Sounds fine in principle but in reality it's completely looney. As far as I can tell it's like a kind of freshers week for old people who live in a weird expat bubble, have terrible crude jokes and act a bit like a cult. Needless to say I won't be going back but who knew i'd be able to manage 10k in the nairobi sun after a days work? Somebody stop me!
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