Sarit Centre & a day in the life of a Nairobian!

Saturday 22.01.11

I woke up early this morning which wasn’t surprising considering I slept so much last night.  I certainly feeling better, but very drained.  I headed upstairs, pretty excited to eat breakfast for the first time.  And of course, it was an hour late and by the time it came I was so tired I could hardly eat it!

After breakfast I had a one hour snooze and sorted out my photos, 200 so far after deleting all the ones I don’t want!  I also managed to get in some relaxing reading before heading to Sarit Centre for the afternoon.  It is one of the few indoor shopping malls in Nairobi and it is quite nice.  We went to the supermarket and found a whole heap of bargains for the orphanage, which is great as in Mombasa everything will be much more expensive to cater to the higher class and tourists there.  On the downside we now have to take the 20 baby bowls, sipper cups, spoons, jugs etc with us to Mombasa.

That was pretty much the extent of our day so I thought I would take the opportunity to paint a bit of a picture of what life is like in Nairobi:

“If you are visiting the hospital you want to try to do it in the middle of the day as any other time it is flat out.  There are about 12 floors in the hospital but everyone knows not to use the elevators as they can’t be trusted.  Even the dying, injured, and gravely ill patients use the stairs.  The stairway is an experience in itself!  The people file up and down in one constant stream but there is no expectation to stay on one side of the stairway or the other so it’s a constant battle of trying to read everybody else’s actions and trying not to crash into them.  Then you have to watch for the doctors and nurses that are running and need to try to overtake the slow people but can’t as the space is too narrow.  And after all this you have to avoid the sick people from falling into you, especially the ones with open and weeping sores!

Then leaving the hospital you either take a matatu, a taxi or a tuk tuk.  Tuk Tuks are by far the funnest, most cramped, quickest, but scariest!  They are basically a motorbike with a bench seat stuck on the back and a vinyl roof.  They weave through the traffic without slowing down and squeeze through the smallest of gaps.  It is perfectly acceptable to scrape rear view mirrors and hit pedestrians.  The aim of hitting pedestrians is to get them on the upper leg where it won’t hurt so much, nor unbalance them.  

Pedestrians are a different story altogether!  There are no pedestrian crossings or lights so it is a bit of free for all and a mad dash.  There is never a break in the traffic so all you can do is wait for a slow-looking vehicle to come along and madly dash in front of it.  Then you have to wait in the next lane for another slow vehicle and dart in front of that one and keep progressing along the 3 or 4 unofficial lanes of traffic to the other side.  But all the time keeping in mind that the lanes change and merge and veer constantly and without warning so you may think you are waiting between two lanes of traffic when suddenly you find you are stuck in the middle of one, and in the path of an oncoming bus.  Then it’s a mad sprint for the other side hoping that everyone will stop for you, or at least only hit you on the leg.

Then of course there are taxis, which are not too bad but the most expensive option.  Mind you, this is still only about $7 for a trip to most areas of Nairobi and only $20 to the airport which is a good half hour!  The only problem with taxis is that the drivers try and charge you twice as much from the start and it takes ten minutes of bargaining, refusing, and walking away to actually get a decent price!

Finally there is the matatu, a standard-sized van with up to 20 seats in it.  Even the aisles have fold up seats to maximise capacity.  The only problem being for the person sitting in one of these seats they have to sit up, fold away their seat to let a person pass then resume their seat and do it all over again.  At around 30c per trip they are by far the cheapest form of transport in Kenya!  There are so many matatus as it is the most common transport mode.  Rarely do they have their route number written on them so you have to run along beside one as they don’t stop to let people on or off, only slow down to ensure they don’t lose their place in the traffic.  While running you have to ask if they are going to where you want, and usually they say yes even if they aren’t so they can get your money!  If you believe that it is, you jump on board one at a time and hope that you can all get on before it speeds up again, or you fall over some roadside obstacle or into one of the giant fire pits that are along the length of the roads.”