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.
Nairobi
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.
Umbrella Season
Something that boggles my mind is people getting caught in the rain without an umbrella. I’ve seen it a lot in the past week now that the Kenyan summer is over and the rainy season has finally arrived. What stumps me is that the “long rains” in Kenya happen EVERY year in March/April—it’s not a surprise, people, it happens every year at almost exactly the same time!