Hello! Once again a rough and rushed collection of words. Two full days have gone by since my initial impressions of Nairobi and there are so many thoughts I wish to share, but so little time…
Yesterday (Saturday) morning the three of us, Tim, Stefan and I, met at the hotel’s restaurant called “The Terrace” at 8am for the buffet breakfast which is completely amazing to a devoted breakfast fan like me! Actually we have done that all three mornings so far and I have no complaints. My to-do list was a little more demanding than I prefer on a Saturday morning – I had to get nine different posters designed and have them ready for printing before 3pm when “Copycat Ltd” closes. I decided to just work at the hotel where electricity and internet are close at hand. Playing it safe I had the design work done at about 1pm. Being no stranger to the dark art of printing I expected a couple of hiccups to arise, after all, this is Africa! Posters on flash-disk, Tim and I jumped in a taxi and made our way to the city center only to find that that Copycat only prints in black and white, and certainly does not print to our desired size – A0.
By a stroke of luck we found a company called “Touchy Creations” two floors up from Copycat, who prints large posters in colour. Touchy is situated in a seriously tiny office space, just big enough to contain a desk and a very impressive HP Designjet Z3200 Photo Printer. To make a long story short, the young man working there (who was hoping to knock off at 2pm) stayed until after 7pm to complete our printing. I felt really bad, but he was an absolute hero and we gave him 1000 Kenyan Shillings extra for his efforts. The people here are so relaxed and accommodating, always willing to go the extra mile, even without any promise of reward.
Touchy Creations
During the time the printing took (it was really slow), we walked into the city and visited the traveling Masai Market. Wow, what an experience! Let me explain… The market itself is an average curio and crafts market similar to any you would find in South Africa, but the interaction with the vendors is 100 times more intense than anything I have ever experienced before. Anyone with a white skin is “Mzungu”, a white man, a tourist. And they will go to any length to separate you from your Shillings. The moment you set foot in the market you are targeted by two or three men known as brokers. They offer to act as your market guide negotiating “better” prices for you and it is practically impossible to get rid of them. Of course the prices they “negotiate” are well above what you should be paying and they get their cut. They are very friendly of course and once they had established I was from South Africa they said “Oh, you are Africana (Afrikaner)! We are brothers!”.
Masai treasure
If you are a nice guy like me, you are completely out of luck because every curio vendor has perfected the art of emotionally manipulating you into believing that you owe it to them to buy their stuff. Five minutes in there is exhausting. It is also quite difficult to find anything authentic in the market because a lot of what you see there may very well be mass produced in China. However, among the Obama sarongs and tourist trash, there is hidden treasure to be found, and if you manage to ditch the brokers and work your bargaining magic with the actual stall owners, you could walk away with some great Kenyan keepsakes. The sense of community is astounding. A stall owner will not hesitate to promote and sell their neighbour’s wares and when it comes to giving you change, someone with a money-pouch will be called from five stalls away to aid the transaction. It is as though there are very few barriers here when it comes to dealing with money – pay now, pay later, pay me pay my friend, it’s all the same! It makes me feel a little guilty when I think of how conservative and jealous we are over our money.
A funny little observation about the locals’ speech – they give you “leceipts” and “lap” your fragile curious in paper.
The racial barriers here are also very different from South Africa. Sure, the locals try to charge us whites Mzungu-prices making as much money as they can from the tourists, but that’s where it seems to end. Even in the crowded market with people surrounding me and tugging at my arm I did not feel threatened. It is very easy to sense that the diffence here is “local vs foreign” – NOT “white vs black”. It is refreshing. People are open and unguarded in their approach.
After picking the posters up at about 7:30pm, we walked over to an Italian Trattoria where I had a pizza pie and some red wine for supper. When we got back to the hotel, Neil and Jason had just arrived from Cape Town to complete our party of five. They were eager to investigate the Nairobi nightlife, so the five of us bundled into a taxi and we made our way, tyres scraping the wheel arches, to a popular bar called Gipsy. Joshua, our Kenyan colleague, and his girlfriend Tara joined us there.
I mentioned the delicious pineapple drink, Alvaro, in my first post about Nairobi. Alvaro is made by East African Breweries, the same guys who bring us Tusker Lager, but it was sometime during Saturday evening that I realised a rival pineapple drink from the Coca-Cola Company, called Novida exists. Kenya is basically split into two factions: Novida drinkers and Alvaro drinkers, both equally passionate about their beverage of choice. Joshua attempted to convert me to Novida, but it’s true what Cat Stevens says, the first cut is the deepest. As Joseph, the construction-foreman at our show stand describes Alvaro: “It is so good”.
We spent the majority of Sunday morning at the fairgrounds overseeing the preparation of our Mocality stand. It was really starting to look like something! I posted a few photos earlier, but I hope to add more once the actual fair is in progress.
I was determined to see some of the Kenyan landscape, so after a grilled chicken sandwich at the hotel for lunch, I hit the road to a well known lookout point over the vast and beautiful Great Rift Valley, 45 minutes from Nairobi. Fortunately it was a clear day and the view was amazing. Unfortunately the lookout point is inhabited by curio vendors promoting their wares just as aggressively as their Masai Market counterparts. Well not quite as bad as the Masai Market, but they still managed to cash in on my Mzungu money. “Hakuna matata, hakuna matata!” They deliberately use as many recognisable Swahili phrases from The Lion King as possible. Now that’s one trick I didn’t fall for - replying to “asante sana” (thank you very much) with “squash banana”.
A very roughly stitched together panoramic view of The Great Rift Valley. Click to see the large version!
For Sunday supper we visited a(nother Italian!) well known restaurant called Osteria in Kilimani, Nairobi. We sat outdoors near a fire and the atmosphere was really nice. The five of us took a bet on how many businesses Mocality we would be able to sign up to our directory during the next week of the Nairobi International Trade fair. My guess was the most modest of all the numbers. We will have to see…
wow those colours are pretty!
They are nice hey!