Okei Wapi ?: In Top Gear (not.)

13^th - 23^rd March – Days 165-175 – Nairobi and Ngong, Kenya

We made it in the end, as we always do. This time the trip could even be described as uneventful on our scale. Never mind that T nearly got fined Tsh 50 000 at Moshi bus station for throwing a cigarette butt onto the ground (but talked his way out of this desperate milking attempt by the local council worker with support from other locals around us) and I got horrendously taken to the kebab kiosk (as we say in Finland) on the Kenyan side of the border when charged Ksh 400 (nearly 4 €) for three oranges and a bag of popcorn. I reacted to this in my usual way, i.e. by abusing the whole of Kenya out loud on the bus and responding to a question posed on my well-being by some guy on the street by yelling back «I'm rather shit actually! » from the bus window. Yup, another one of those proud moments. Should know better than to let my blood sugar level drop too much. We arrived at Nairobi at 2am instead of the estimated, or even promised, 8.30pm.

T takes inspiration from the old man (on the right). CITES' tuna proposal was sadly rejected.

Our week in Nairobi was even more uneventful and consisted mainly of about 20 episodes of the O.C., 10 episodes of Top Gear, lots of football, a few movies and hours and hours of Al-Jazeera, during which we also managed to spot our eager commentator Old Dave (T's dad to whose who haven't heard of this celebrity) at work in the CITES conference in Doha. We also paid another visit to the Aga Khan hospital after T got his lip inflated by an attack of some green monster bacteria who decided to make a nest inside it and hence caused T to become a sweaty, feverish blob of uselessness.

Men of the world - want to be attractive to women? Follow my lead and you will never be lonely again...

While he was growing roots into the sofa, I was left to play the role of a desperate housewife cooking and cleaning and doing the laundry for the better part of the week. Thank you again Tom for letting us stay and Natascha for providing the much needed human company to keep us with it! And Clarkson, Hammond and May for the entertainment – now I know that someone has been mad enough to drive to the North Pole with a can of Spam as their celebratory meal for when they get there. Too bad Clarkson actually blew up May's cherished tin before they reached their destination.

One of the fine days in Nairobi we did actually manage to contribute to the greater good. We took a bus to Ngong to visit yet another one of the 1% projects, this time it was a Maasai Women's Group that makes beaded jewellery. Two of the women in the group met us in Ngong and accompanied us to the working compound a few miles off in the Rift Valley. We spent a nice afternoon at the compound, making an investigation into the running of the scheme and admiring the bead work they are doing. In good spirit we also participated in the task of dividing the newly bought beads into batches which would then be made into certain types of key rings, bracelets and so on.

Maasai women hard at work.

Finnish woman hard at work.

There was nothing that spectacular about this project as such, but it was still yet another window into the local way of doing things around here and into the Maasai community in particular. There just is something truly overwhelming about how the Maasai greet you and wish you well when saying goodbye. I never quite know whether to just stand there and take it in when they are singing their lovely songs or to at least join in to the swaying dance they do at the same time. The only thing I'm capable of is just smiling warmly and wishing that it communicates my respect and good wishes back to them. We're becoming very good friends with these people at this rate. Plus, I got to purchase a nice beaded bracelet for myself.