A Different Kind of Africa

Our time in Kenya comes to an end tomorrow. On Monday, Andrew will move to South Sudan to take up his new MAF posting. Meanwhile, the kids and I will be en route to Lancashire for a family visit and holiday. After a couple of weeks, Andrew will join us in England for an exciting family wedding, which we are all really looking forward to!
In August, we will eventually all travel together to Juba, if all goes to plan (which it doesn't always, so watch this space!!).

From tomorrow, we will no longer be Living in Limbo. Instead, we will be on what we hope is the final step in our journey to Juba. We will close the door on our Nairobi home and the short term life we had here for the first few months of 2014.

Living in Nairobi has given us a whole new perspective of living in Africa. What we have experienced these past few months has been a very Different Kind of Africa.

When we arrived in Nairobi in January we experienced an unexpected culture shock. Although we had moved within East Africa from neighbouring Tanzania's capital city, we were not prepared for how developed Nairobi is in comparison to Dodoma.

There are so many factors that shocked us when we landed like aliens from a semi-rural planet, BANG!, into the thriving metropolis of Nairobi! To list just a few of the differences....
* we found a city with some very new, very slick highways. We saw pavements and traffic lights, which were amazing novelties for us after Dodoma!
* we now had access to 1st world medical care, with hospitals people travel across East Africa to use and teams of doctors who are reliable and well trained.
* the major international airport being just an hour's drive away. In Tanzania, a trip to England meant a whole day's drive to Dar es Salaam before being able to get to the aeroplane! Tomorrow, it will be just an hour's drive away...if the traffic is not too heavy!
* huge, sparkling shopping centres with some familiar UK shops like "Accessorize"! There are enormous  supermarkets with shiny floors, trolleys and aisle upon aisle of choice food, wonderful packaged goods, household goods and even cat-food (poor Moshi missed out on that option, putting up with our home-made cat-food for 4 years in Dodoma!!).
I was physically unable to step forward when I saw the freezers in Nairobi's Nakumatt Supermarket with over 30 different types of ice-cream. In Dodoma, we were lucky if the man at the ice-cream parlour happened to have any containers of ice-cream in stock! The developed nature of the shops here took some getting used to after 4 years of market shopping and Dodoma's small, local shops where I never fully expected to be able to find everything on my shopping list!
* Even the more familiar "duka" stalls in Nairobi stock fruit and veg that I only dreamed about in Dodoma! This is the fruit stall on our doorstep here in Nairobi: it has every fruit or vegetable I can think of in stock!

 I was amazed when I started to shop there (I go several times a week!) and could not help complimenting the store holder on the variety of the produce...items that had been elusive in Dodoma were stocked up high in this "duka": mushrooms, broccoli, butternut, strawberries, grapes, red cabbage, leeks, courgettes, lettuce, yellow, red and orange peppers... these I only dreamt about in Dodoma! We used to buy such items as gifts for each other from far off Dar es Salaam when we went on holiday!! The store owner thought I was funny when I got so excited at the store's produce. He was very amused when I brought my camera to capture his stall in a photo, to remind me of just how different Dodoma's market is from Nairobi's corner-"duka"!
*  in Nairobi, we have had access to amazingly resourced schools. Esther and Ben finished their 2 terms at Braeburn school on Friday and despite all the teething problems in settling in, it has been so good for them and opened their eyes to a whole set of new possibilities.
* not speaking Swahili. People here are mostly fluent in English, so I am already losing my grasp on Swahili as I use it less and less. Those who do speak Swahili mix it up with English and other Kenyan dialects, so it is quite different from Tanzanian Swahili.
*Even the climate is different, with lots of rainy, overcast days and chilly mornings and cold nights at Nairobi's high elevation.
*Fashion is different in this big city from sleepy Dodoma! When I got here, I looked in vain for colourful kangas,  for the traditional East-African-style kitenge dresses and the bold, loud style of African print clothes. I was taken aback at the western dress styles and the smart fashion. My wardrobe suddeenly seemed terribly out of place. My sandals which handled the dusty paths of Dodoma now seemed like ungainly, ugly footwear. I often felt out of place in my Dodoma outfits, in my long skirts which were ideal for more conservative Dodoma but looked old fashioned in Nairobi.
* Church has been a new experience here. Like Tanzania, there are many Christians, but the choice of English-speaking services to attend is vast, unlike Dodoma. In Nairobi, we chose to attend an international fellowship located at a Nairobi American school. There are so many willing people passing through Nairobi that we have not needed to get involved, which was good for us to have a time of rest for a short while, to simply be part of the congregation, whereas in Dodoma, if  I wanted Sunday School for my kids, I had to lead it. Here, an amazing team of people have kept my kids entertained in their various age-appropriate classes for fun Sunday school sessions! We have traded the traditional cathedral in Dodoma for a modern, trendy church setting in a smart, swathe theatre, with state of the art lighting and sound system and a team of enthusiastic youthful musicians:

These are some of the main differences... However, I have found aspects here that make me feel more "at home" with what I have known of living in East Africa. The friendly nature of most Tanzanians (not all, but many!!) that I met is also evident in Kenya. In general, people are happy to chat and have time for people. I can go out with Joel for a short walk to buy some milk and be quite some time as we are greeted by so many people. Friendly smiles and welcoming handshakes are such a wonderful part of the warmth of Africa, which I always miss when I go back into a western context.
The rich, earthy smell of the rain approaching is the same here as Dodoma. There is nothing like the scent of rain in the air in Africa- my children always tell me when rain is coming, as we smell it before we see it! It is a welcome and sweet, heavy scent, bringing relief from the heat and wetness for thirsty ground. Likewise, the intense heat on a hot Nairobi day is simply African, burning into us with a scorching sensation on our skin, which is certainly not an English experience!
The deep ochre redness of the soil in parts of Tanzania is echoed here in Nairobi. Its colour is reminiscent of sunset hues, but despite its beauty, the stains it leaves on the clothes of my little boys, who love to play in it, are hard to wash out.  The mess it makes on my floors from the muddy, bare feet of my children takes real effort to clean up!
On the other hand, the shocking potholes on some of the roads here give me a different type of reminder, as they bring back my driving days in Tanzania!

There are also reminders of some of the harder issues we saw in Dodoma. I still see the poverty that bothered me in Tanzania. Nairobi is not developed for everyone. Daily, I see struggles on our doorstep, contrasting with the wealth that is portrayed from the large homes and fancy housing compounds concealed behind high walls, with security guards on patrol.
I see the ladies who wait at the bottom of our main road, sitting on the muddy banks, hoping that someone passing by will offer them a day's work and a wage to feed their families. I see the young men rifling through rubbish bags on bin-day, carefully sifting the contents for anything worth saving. I see the billboards asking us to remember the less fortunate, to assist struggling schools and provide for orphans or needy children. I see the homeless sleeping in Nairobi's open parkways, plastic bags wrapped around them as protection for the damp ground.
 I hear the stories of house-ladies whose water supply has been cut off in their street, meaning that the one tap shared by several homes in the Kibera Slum area is shut off and families are struggling to get by without basic water supplies. I see the outstretched hands at traffic light intersections, as the beggars reach out in hope of a gift from distracted motorists. I hear of people's health issues and not having enough money to pay the doctor in a system where health care means paying to receive medical attention. It is hard to know who and how to best help.

Now that we are finishing our time in Kenya, we start to look ahead to South Sudan. I know that South Sudan will have its own culture, with a very different history. It has different issues too, with the tense current situation.When we finally get to Juba, I will have so much to learn, it will be a new type of place in a new country. It will definitely be interesting to see what kind of  an Africa we are moving on to...