March 3 - Finally Settled Into Our Permanent Apartment
As I type my blog right now, I am sitting on the balcony of our permanent apartment, looking over the courtyard and pool, while the tropical breezes gently sway the palm trees and green landscape…It really is lovely. Too bad that starting at 8am—it’s now 5:30 p.m.—the sound of hammers, drills, bulldozers, etc. still continue at the next door construction site100 feet away. This is despite the departure of many of the hundreds of workmen who’d buzzed around the site all day. Looking at the construction process makes me a bit nervous because the multiple cement floor levels are being held up by what look like tree-branches instead of steel—hopefully just while the cement dries. But I don’t want to think about that. I’m just enjoying the tropical breezes.
Because we were delayed in moving in due to problems in the apartment (which are hopefully all fixed!), the complex management agreed to help me carry all the food, suitcases, etc. this morning. That way Rick wouldn’t have to do all that after a long day of flying from Jo’burg. I’ve unpacked everything so we’re finally not nomads!!! There are 3 bedrooms, 3 baths, small office, good-sized kitchen, and generous living-dining area. So lots of space for visitors!
March 2 – Rick is in Johannesburg and WW Completes 2nd Full Week at TechnoServe Kenya
Because the TNS Kenya Country Director was recovering from surgery, Rick represented him at the annual TechnoServe Africa Meeting. He, the Kenya CFO, for someone who hates acronyms, TNS KE CFO is pretty amazing and the TNS Uganda Country Director flew from Nairobi to Johannesburg, South Africa at literally dawn this past Sunday, 25 Feb. for a week. The TNS VP of Africa, Director of Entrepreneurship in Africa, and the CEO of all TechnoServe gathered with the TNS Country Directors to plan strategy for 2007. The last few days of the week were allotted for field visits to clients in northeastern South Africa to stimulate cross-country best practices’ discussions.
I experienced several firsts this week. This was the first week I’ve lived by myself in Africa. I wrote my first TechnoServe press release, distributed it via email and fax with help from the receptionist, and spoke to Kenya newspaper writers for the first time. I also drafted my first concept paper / grant proposal for TechnoServe Kenya to underwrite part of the Young Women in Enterprise program. I’ve now completed my second full week at TechnoServe Kenya on some very positive notes!
February 28 - Amazing Coincidences
As I may have mentioned previously, I took the train to Oyster Bay Cove to visit my college friends, Alice and Ted, while I was visiting Diana in NYC. Alice had grown up in Rio de Janeiro. During the summer after our freshman year at Tufts, I was very fortunate to visit her in Brazil in 1967. One of our trips was to Terazopolis in the mountains outside of Rio for a long weekend, where I met 2 of Alice’s first cousins, Deborah and Jennifer. I haven’t see either of them since but Alice told me that Deborah has been living in Nairobi for many years, so of course gave me her contact info.
I emailed Deborah when I arrived, and she invited me to the opening of her husband’s rock art photography exhibit at Alliance Francaise in downtown Nairobi on Tuesday, 27 February. I recognized her by her teenaged twin girls Alice had mentioned. We didn’t spend a lot of time together because of her obligations at the opening, but we’ll have dinner together next week. What are the odds of meeting someone briefly in Brazil then seeing them for the second time in Nairobi 40 years later????
Another coincidence was that Deborah introduced me to a very nice, chatty fellow named Zaffar, whose wife is Deborah’s Personal Assistant. As it turns out Zaffar is the brother of TechnoServe Kenya’s Office Manager, Firdos.
The next night, Wed., 28 Feb., I went to the launch of the JA Africa and Coca Cola Foundation Africa partnership at Kenya High School. I had been invited by JA Kenya’s Country Director because I had emailed him the week before (I had met him at the JA African Conference October 2006 in Nairobi). Finding the location on the campus was like taking a trip out of the country and back again, but after driving up and down some dirt roads behind the school, my intrepid taxi driver, David, found where I was supposed to be. I had suspected that the VP of Africa for JA Worldwide would attend the announcement of the US$1.5 million partnership over a 3 year period. But 2 other JA colleagues whom I had met the previous October at the conference were there, one from Nigeria and one, Linda McClure from South Africa because along with Kenya they would be the first countries to benefit from this funding. Linda and I had become good friends while I was helping set up JA Swaziland at TechnoServe in fall 2006.
These coincidences are proof that the world is really shrinking, even if it’s warming at the same time.
February 26 - WW’s First Field Trip Helps Contrast Kenya and Swaziland
STATISTICS: Kenya has over 30 times the number of people, probably 30 times the landmass, and definitely many times the scale of financial and health problems as Swaziland. Nairobi alone has over 3 million residents vs. 1 million Swazis in total. In Swaziland we could traveled 2 hours in any direction and we’d cross a border—hence the need to add more passport pages before we flew to Kenya. Kenya is vast by comparison: almost 585,000 sq. km. Talk about token, less than 1% of Kenyans are non-African ethnicities. 80% of the more than 32 million Kenyans live in rural areas—over 50% are officially below poverty level. Though Kenya has a more consistently temperate climate, flatter land, and generally higher altitude than southern Africa, only 20% of the land can be productively cultivated.
NAIROBI TO EMBU: My first trip outside of Nairobi was to Embu, about 100 km northeast of Nairobi, to visit 2 clients participating in what’s called the TechnoServe Upscaling Pilot. The concept in brief is that funding of micro-enterprises has become popular throughout the world, but by and large these businesses stay at or just above subsistence level. The Upscaling Pilot is funded to find and test a model of helping micro-enterprises to develop the capability to employ more people, increase revenues, and sell products into a larger distribution chain and market.
Rick and I joined Alice and Amos from the Upscaling Pilot (who are part of the Entrepreneurship Team that I’m helping) on the 2.5 hour drive to visit Canan Honey and Aspen Orchards Yogurt. We traveled on Kenya’s network of mostly 2-lane roads, past many villages and near the city of Thika. We passed (as often as we could) many slow, pollution-spewing trucks. Several noticeable differences from southern Africa were: more homes from mud and stone, many small children walking along the busy highway, women in public with their hair covered, lots of bicycles, and a number of donkey- or even ox-driven carts on the roads alongside the crazy cars passing when they feel like it.
AND BACK TO NAIROBI: After being in the beautifully rolling country-side scattered with villages, it was almost a shock hitting Nairobi’s rush hour with smog hanging above the roads. Also shocking were the slums on Nairobi’s outskirts. One of these slums was featured in the “Constant Gardner” which is as it was filmed: a sea of garbage, mud, filthy water, and tin-roofed and side hovels that stretched to the horizon. Then we passed through some nice almost sub-urban areas before we reached our Westlands office.
As with many African cities, huge gaps in income and architecture are the norm. Nairobi has high rises, museums, good restaurants. Mercedes and BMWs are common (maybe as many as in all of Swaziland). But most streets have dirt sidewalks. Many of its 3 million inhabitants cannot afford daily meals. HIV/AIDS is pandemic though the percentage of infected population is not nearly as high as Swaziland. Yet the landscape is lush and tropical, there’s lot of construction, and most people are reasonably well-dressed in western clothing.
February 23 - Eerie Warnings and Other Early Observations
We have registered with the U.S. Embassy as recommended strongly throughout Africa. They can then locate us in emergencies, which is heartening but… The Embassy also emails its database to warn us of recent or upcoming events. The 1st warning told us to take extra precautions due to 2 women whose spouses worked for the Embassy who had been hijacked and murdered on the outskirts of Nairobi. We then were emailed about a “town hall” meeting for U.S. citizens to discuss security concerns with the Embassy Staff. Subsequent to the meeting, the only tangible results announced were that as a result of all the complaints about lack of adequate Embassy parking provided, henceforth U.S. Embassy visitors would not be able to use their car-park but would have to find something on the nearby streets. What a Pres. Bush-like solution!!
Rick and I will not rent a car due both to security concerns and convenience of taxis outside the apartment complex and at the office. We live and work in the Westlands section of Nairobi, which is considered upscale since many ex-pats live and work here. Although we are a couple of miles from the office, it still takes us 15 to 20 minutes to reach it due to the traffic and despite our knowledgeable drivers weaving in and our of back streets, driveways, etc., Rick has felt comfortable walking a bit around the neighborhood and we’ve walked together to restaurants near the office. However, I will definitely stick to taxis. I do not feel safe enough to go anywhere by myself.
Both of us anticipated that we’d been spoiled by Swaziland. My biggest concern walking around downtown Mbabane was being run over by crazy kombi drivers. At our cottage, the naughty monkeys were our main threat. We thought that living in Swaziland and visiting South Africa and Mozambique had given us a good perspective on Africa. The Kenya I’ve seen so far is not as upscale as parts of South Africa and the slums are even worse. Virtually every Nairobi home or building, just like Johannesburg, is surrounded by 8-foot high walls topped by barbed wire rings or glass shards with guards at every gate which are closed by iron-bar doors. We are not in Swaziland any more…
February 19 - TechnoServe Kenya (TNS KE) is 3 Times the Size of TechnoServe Swaziland
After spending 2 days elevating my ankle and trying to get over jet lag, I went to the office for the first time on Feb. 16th but I consider February 19th being my first official day to sort out my work projects. Rick is already productive being a mentor to TechnoServe’s new Kenya and Uganda Country Managers, as well as providing the benefit of his long experience to the client business advisors. TechnoServe Kenya is clearly going to be very different from TechnoServe Swaziland in many ways. The least of which difference is that it was hard to get lost in the 3 office rooms in Mbabane vs. the maze of hallways and spaces housing 40 people in Nairobi. In TNS KE there are several Europeans and two other Americans (one of who’s lived in Africa for a few years) other than Rick and me. All the people are very nice, though I have only gotten to know about a dozen people.
Each morning we are picked up for the office at 8:00 a.m. and eventually driven back to home about 5:00 p.m. by pre-arranged taxi service, along with one or two other volunteers who live near by. For those who know me well, I would not choose to arrive and depart at these early hours. I’m just going along with Rick’s and the office’s patterns.
Both Rick and I are optimistic that TechnoServe has and will continue to make a very positive impact in Kenya. And we hope to help them make a difference as well.
February 17 & 18 – WW’s First Outings in Nairobi Include Food, Of Course
FOOD SHOPPING: On Saturday, Rick and I went to the Sarit Centre (modestly calling itself a City within a City) which is truly a large urban mall. We went out to lunch at a nearby Japanese Restaurant, which was quite good. After wandering around the mall, we did our food shopping at the Uchumi Supermarket, which is very similar to SPAR in Swaziland. We bought most of our groceries at Uchumi then went to a nearby butcher for our meat and cheese. Our taxi came back to pick us up at the lower level car-park which itself was a total traffic jam. Apparently, the only time Sarit’s parking is not a mess is weekday late mornings and early afternoons.
Maybe at a future date we can try shopping at Nakumatt, which I have the impression is like a Wal-Mart with a touch of Sam’s Club.
One sadness in my moving to Kenya is apparently we foreigners should not eat raw veggies, un-peeled fruit, or salads (the latter I normally eat daily). This is due to the use of pesticides and fertilizers (my father used to refer to “night soil”). We have to boil our veggies, which eliminates taste and nutrients. So far, I’ve not been impressed at all by the quality of meat that we have bought or are served from lunch-time restaurants. For example, the TechnoServe office “tea boy” takes everyone’s lunch orders, but I believe he delivers virtually the same exact meal to everyone. Typically we buy a plastic container of rice with cooked cabbage, carrots, green beans, and/or lentils and a foil-wrapped meat to accompany. The chicken, beef, and lamb that we order is interchangeable in stringy texture. I never know what meat I actually have received until I cut into it and guess by the tiny middle layer of color between 2 sides of dark brown. The good news about all this meat being over-cooked is that bacteria are certainly nuked. Though I have been peeling carrots and cucumbers and eating them raw, I still really miss actual salads.
NAIROBI NATIONAL PARK: On Sunday, Feb. 18, Rick and I hired Simon, a taxi driver, to take us around Nairobi National Park for the afternoon. The first thing that struck me was the main gate with a plaque noting its donation by Ker & Downey Safari Company. Edie Ker was Florence/Mom’s best and longest friend from childhood who in her late thirties visited Kenya on safari and ended up married to Don Ker—the great white hunter image probably doesn’t exactly apply. To me the most amazing aspect of Nairobi National Park is not the animals but the fact that over the heads of the giraffes, hippos, impala, etc. the Nairobi skyline is clearly visible. That is when I truly felt I was back in Africa, full of contrasts.
GOOD INDIAN RESTAURANT: That night, Rick and I went to Haandi which is supposed to be one of the best Indian Restaurants in Nairobi. We arrived at 6:45 but only the bar was open before 7:00 p.m. By the time we left after 8:30, the dining room was jammed with a great mix of people: African, White, Indian, and Asian. Haandi is definitely my favorite meal so far.
February 14 – My 1:00 a.m. Valentines Day’s Arrival in Nairobi
Mary Jo graciously got up at the crack of dawn on Feb. 12th to drive me again to SFO—with about 150 lbs. of luggage. When I had to switch planes at O’Hare, I was forced to run with 50 lbs. of carry-ons to barely make the flight to Brussels. However, I was rewarded with a Business Class upgrade so I could nurse my now very sore ankle with free wine and more legroom. But by the time I reached Nairobi, I had requested a wheelchair because I knew I was not going to be able to walk to baggage claim, go through customs, and retrieve the 150 lbs. of luggage on my injured ankle. Rick was definitely surprised to see me being wheeled toward him. It was wonderful seeing him after 3 weeks on different continents. Having spent almost 30 hours in flights or layovers (door to door) and it being 1:30 a.m. by the time we got to our apartment, I only felt relief to not be in motion. I barely registered that I was in Nairobi.
We are living in a one-bedroom apartment in a nice apartment complex in the Westlands section, not too far from the office. We are supposed to move into a 3-bedroom apartment in the same complex soon, so I am still living out of suitcases like a nomad. The building and our living space is fine, just not the “cute and cozy cottage” we had in Swaziland.
February 11 - Two Months as Nomads at Home and on the East Coast
It’s hard to believe that 2 months in the U.S. are over. It seemed as though we were in motion from December 13th when our good friends Mary Jo and Bill picked us up at the airport until they dropped me back at SFO on February 12th. Our house-sitters kindly left the house to us for 2 weeks while they visited their families in Bakersfield. Within 4 days, we cut a fresh Christmas tree and decorated it and the house for Christmas and Hanukkah. We attended multiple holiday parties and dinners that next week. Then Diana, Adrian and Scooter arrived December 22nd and left December 30th about the same time from 2 different airports. It was so great to have us all together. We saw lots of friends throughout the week with the kids as well as Rick’s sister Leslie and nephew Daniel who arrived Christmas evening and left New Year’s Eve. Very hectic and absolutely wonderful. It’s a good thing that like good red wine, we have mellowed as we have aged.
On January 4, 2007, Rick and I flew to Washington D.C. to spend a lot of time with his mother and sisters, Linda and Wendy, and their families. No sightseeing and minimal traveling. We did drive to Southern Maryland’s Chesapeake Shore to see one set of cousins (Robin, June, Geoffrey, and new baby Benjamin) and spent an afternoon with another cousin, Cathy. These 12 days were the most relaxing since arriving in the U.S. Truly, truly enjoyable.
Next we flew up to Boston to spend time with Adrian. We visited Aunt Ruth, Uncle Sonny and their daughter/my cousin Amy and family. We walked a lot, saw Adrian’s new condo (after helping him resolve some financing), took in some movies, and had dinner with family friends Devette and Bob, and college friends Susan, Stanley, and Maxine. We stayed downtown at the Omni Parker House so we’d hop on the T Green Line at Park Street or Adrian would pick us up in his car. Rick flew back to California on January 21st for a few frenetic days to prepare for his flight to Nairobi on Jan. 25th while I stayed in Boston until the 23rd having great one-on-one time with Adrian (and extra time to play with my grandpuppy, Scooter). While I was taking the train to NYC on the 23rd, Adrian text-messaged me that he accepted a position as an attorney with Tri-CAP a nonprofit based in Malden, outside of Boston. He will be focused of housing issues, in which he’s built up quite a bit of experience in Boston and during his volunteering in New Orleans during October 2006. So now both the Walleigh men have paid jobs!
Diana picked me up at Penn Station in Manhattan after completing a residency interview on Long Island. She lugged my computer up the stairs to her 4th floor apartment, then we had a cozy dinner at Uptown cafe in her neighborhood. I met Kathy, a college friend, for lunch on Wednesday, then after running some errands, had dinner with Diana and her college friend Beth at the Asian-fusion Spice Market restaurant in the trendy meat-packing district. Since it was part of New York’s Restaurant Weeks, the usually-expensive restaurant had wonderful prix fixe 3-course dinners for $35 per person (my glass of wine was an additional $14!!!). On Thursday, Diana flew to New Orleans for another residency interview and I took the train to outside of Philadelphia to spend a fun couple of days with my college room-mate, Patti, and her family. On Sunday I met another college friend, Sandi, at the Whitney Museum where we saw the Picasso exhibit and had lunch. The 2 of us met Kathy and went back to her Westside apartment to gab. Then the 3 families (8 of us) had a great dinner at Shun Lee West. It was so nice seeing the “kids” (youngest is 22) together—3 of them had been at lunch with us at least 10 years ago. It was a lot of fun chatting with them as adults!
During my last week on the East Coast in NYC, I helped Diana and her room-mate deal with nasty issues at their apartment building: no heat, sometimes no hot water, and break-ins (thank God not their apt.) by a group of teenaged boys. In between, I took a train to Oyster Bay Cove on Long Island to see another college friend Alice, had lunch again with Kathy, met Diana for lunch at Brooklyn Hospital, and generally tried to spend as much time with Diana as possible given her hectic schedule.
On Friday, Feb. 2nd, I flew back to the Bay Area. Mary Jo and Bill once again picked me up and took me to dinner. Some time, somewhere in Boston, I either sprained or banged my right ankle. I don’t remember any incident, but my ignoring it during the remainder of my trip has not improved my ankle. In fact it is getting worse. My final 10 days in the U.S. were full of meals with friends, errands, doctor visits, and recovering from a cold as well as the sprained ankle. During the forced down time to regain my health, I was able to muse on how busy we’d been for 2 months solid, what a terrific family we have, how supportive our many friends are, and ironically that I looked forward to stop being a nomad by going to Africa!
