Walking home from work the other day I passed very close to the road construction on Wayaki Way. The old, worn road had been grazed and the workers were shoveling hot, new tarmac onto the road from the back of a truck. I had to squint and hold my breath as I passed for those few seconds, yet the two guys shoveling had zero special equipment (other than shovels)—no eye gear, work boots, gloves or masks! All this got me thinking about the common mwananchi (roughly “citizen” in Swahili), and how stuff like this is probably typical.
Year: 2011
Kenyan Con Men Take to the Air Waves!
Some guy called me last week and told me that he had accidentally sent me money on M-PESA, and could I please send it back. I told him that no, I hadn’t noticed any text messages, but that I would look. “Tafadhali, ndugu yangu, niangalilie” (please, my brother, look for me). As I had just been on the phone before he called, I hadn’t seen that there was, in fact, an SMS confirmation of an M-PESA transaction. I gave him a call back and told him that I’d return the money to him right away.
BC8JT386 Confirmed you have received Ksh 1,230 from JAMES KORIR on6/4/11 at 5:40 pm your new M-PESA balance is Ksh2,150
Rolf’s Place
We spent the night at Rolf’s Place, a beautiful mansion and bed-and-breakfast getaway located in Nairobi National Park. It’s situated on a cliff over some sort of a gorge, and there’s this wooden bridge spanning the ravine from the parking lot to the property—quite breathtaking!
We ate a few meals in the restaurant which overlooks the gorge, and we could see giraffes wandering around munching on trees just across the way. There’s not much else to do besides eat, but you can swim, play paintball, and ride horses.