Nairobi.

June 3rd, 10:58 PM

Left Toronto yesterday at 5.45
Flight to Amsterdam was OK.
I slept for most of the flight. Fitfully, but at least I got some winks.

Schippol Airport by the way, Fabulous.
Every type of store – but literal highway robbery, obviously.
They have these reclining leather seats that you can rest up on, which I did. I took a self-portrait so everyone could share my joy.

The flight from Amsterdam to Nairobi, was great. Daytime flight. I slept for the first couple hours and woke to an offering of food. Tasty, not bad at all food.

The map on the TV screen said we were just flying over the Mediterranean and the north coast of Africa to the Sahara desert. I had a window seat and it was a clear day. Sure enough I saw the aquamarine water and the red-orange earth meeting and going back as far as was visible. As we flew south I saw the desert open out beneath me. First what I thought were rivers (in a desert? Well I only thought that for a moment, ok). Cracks in the earth, dry clay, huge wiggly lines splitting off one another like veins on the back of a leaf. Black on sand colour.


Farther and farther we went, and let me tell you that is a big desert.

It wasn’t lines anymore, just sand colour. After a couple hours then I could see dunes, just like the desert in the movies. Wouldn’t want to crash into that.

Later, I looked out the window and saw the ground was covered with trees. Old old mountains, worn down by thousands and thousands of years of weather. Lumpy ground covered with trees, like a green rug thrown over everything. Dark curving lines of rivers here and there.
After a while the trees became more sparse again. What looked like an enormous river was off in the distance, (running north-south, and east of our path) was it the Nile? I don’t know my geography well enough to tell. Big though, as in if not a river then a great lake. And off of it more tributaries, splitting off and splitting off again like the cracks in the dried up desert. More and more and more lines cutting through the land. The water was light coloured reflecting the sky, but the rivers looked like they were outlined in black because of the trees that lined the banks.

Africa is HUGE.

Slept, woke up, food, tea, water orange juice.
I was sitting next to a couple of nice young women, Borna, a public health masters student from Chicago going on an internship to evaluate HIV clinics, explained the plot of the on flight movie to me as we both watched “Mall Cop” with no sound.
Finally we were making our descent. The sun was down in an instant and Nairobi sparkled with the lights of major traffic jams.

The airport had been a concern in my mind, but when I arrived it wasn't half as scary as the descriptions I had received. Bought my visa, changed a little money, got my baggage, went through customs and searched for my driver, Samuel.

Samuel was friendly, and we chatted easily as we drove – yes on the left hand side of the street – to the Aero Club, the aviation hotel at Wilson airport in down town Nairobi. Their kitchen was closed but he got them to make me chips and went on his way, home to his two kids and wife, after a late night pick up.

I tasted my first Kenyan beer, Tusker, 4.2%. The bartender explained a tradition of the club bar to me, where mobile phones are prohibited inside, so if your cell rings and you answer someone can ring this big bell hanging behind the bar and the culprit has to buy everyone else a drink of their choice. He said at that point most people go from drinking beer to the more expensive stuff, of course. You also have to buy everyone a drink if it’s your birthday, or if a pilot just passed his exam, and various other events that involve the ringing of the big bell.

Well now I am lying under my mosquito net, eyes closing, about to sleep. The crickets are a chirping outside, and I am in Nairobi Kenya, signing off.