New in Nairobi

So here we are in Nairobi.

And here is a view of our new home and the gated street in which we are living...
The Yellow House- our Nairobi town-house home:

The MAF compound view from our front door. Our door opens onto a sea of concrete with a distant vista of the heavy locked gate at the end of the mini-street, barbed wire, electricity wires and tall buildings!

Out the back, we have a little yard with a shady patio...

 ...and a tall banana tree which was laden with almost-ripe bananas until last Saturday, when Andrew decided to harvest them. Here are the harvesting action shots...

Down come the bananas, crashing through the leaves and creating a heavy hazard as they pick up speed on their ground-ward flight...

Having some bananas from the tree in our garden made me feel a little bit like we are still living in Africa. Other aspects of life here do not feel anything like the Africa we came to know and love in Tanzania. Nairobi is a well developed, cosmopolitan city with a high crime threat and with an easy availability of goods we only dreamed about when we lived in Dodoma. In many ways, it is the opposite of Dodoma! It is a tough adjustment for us to a very different type of African living.

There are other obvious differences too- look at the beds in our house:

 It was startling to come into a house where beds DO NOT HAVE MOSQUITO- NETS!!! Apparently, there is very little malaria in Nairobi, partly because of its high altitude. This is very different from Dodoma, where a mosquito net is a necessity and becomes a part of the whole bed-time routine.

However, having said that, there are still mosquitoes! Their midnight whining is incredibly frustrating as they fly low over sleepy ears. I am getting a bit fed up with their rude awakenings in the wee small hours! First there is the sound of the low whine... then the lights go on, bursting into my consciousness. Next, Andrew's mozzie-chase begins, which starts by Andrew flapping about the room brandishing a cloth to swat the little monsters, jumping over the bed, muttering as they escape the swatting implement... and then finally, "victory!" as they are duly caught and squashed! Peaceful darkness resumes and sleep seems so wonderfully close again... until... bzzzzzz- it all starts over again!! I have to say that I am sitting in Nairobi wishing that I had packed our mozzie net in our suitcase!! Instead, it is sitting in one of our boxes in Dodoma, all packed up for Juba!! I may just have to drive down to one of Nairobi's many shopping centres and invest in a new net- but driving in Nairobi is a whole new challenge for me and not one that I am relishing! I think I will write more about that new challenge on my next blog entry...