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Published: March 21st 2007
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Giraffe
Isn't she/he cute! A week ago I was in Palau, then I spent a couple of days in Fiji before flying back to the UK because I had some work to do in Nairobi, Kenya. Of course to get to Nairobi I had to come all way back from Fiji to the UK and then a couple of days later fly from London to Nairobi. That's a lot of flying hours, the air miles are certainly piling up and I am getting suicidally bored of hanging around in airports. The security procedures are also starting to grate on my nerves...but I guess the bonus was that I got a chance to catch up with my parents and drop into the UK office to say hi to my long-lost colleagues, which was kinda nice.
Anyway, I've been working on a project called
ENABLE (in case you are interested) which aims at building human and institutional capacity for renewable energy development in East Africa for two years now, so although I have moved to a project in Fiji, this is the one project I want to see through to the end and so it's the only one I haven't handed over to a colleague in
Zebras
There were lots and lots fo zebras and they were not shy the UK. So, that's how I ended up back in Africa. The idea is to run a 2 day workshop on two energy assessment tools my company have developed, combined with some consultative development of a project document for taking forward energy planning at the district level in Kenya (and Uganda and Tanzania). Blah blah blah - work stuff.
To cut a long story short the first workshop here in Nairobi went well but of course there was no time to visit anywhere outside Nairobi. The only time I peeked my head out the hotel door was to go have dinner on Monday night and dinner and a couple of drinks on Tuesday once the workshop was safely over. We have to do the same workshop in Uganda tomorrow, so we are flying out to Entebbe and then driving to Kampala this afternoon. It's a bit of a whirlwind work trip, with 3 days in Nairobi, then 3 days in Uganda, then flying back to the UK and two days later to Fiji. The rest of the team are going to go on to Tanzania but I won't be able to make that because I have to get back to
Fiji for my other project. It's a bit annoying but at least I'm around for the workshops in nairobi and Kampala.
So as I said I really didn't have much time to look round Nairobi, but then again it's not much of a loss as I just don't like the look of Nairobi so much. It's such a big city, with most of the downsides and not many of the upsides of a big city. The main problem being the crime rate. You just can't walk around the city, not even during the day really and certainly not at night. You just have to get in a taxi and go from point to point. That's not my idea of fun or of a normal place. I mean we did go out to quick a nice outdoor bar and watch a very cool African dance, and there are some good restaurants (like the Carnivore that serves only game meat) but, for me, it's not the kind of city where you can really relax. Still it was interesting to see something different, as it always is and to observe the good and bad things. One more good thing I have to mention
Nairobi
In this photo you can see Nairobi in the distnace, which shows how clso the park was to the city is the delicious ostrich kebab I had one evening (yummy!).
Below are a few photos of Nairobi city centre but I've mainly attached some of the best photos from my previous trip to Nairobi in 2005. Although that was also for work, we had the chance to go to a small National Park which is right next to Nairobi (only about an hour drive out of the city). We got up at 5am to be there at 6am when the light and temperature would be best for seeing the animals and we were duly rewarded with the chance to see giraffes, wilderbeast, a rhino and a lion (both from afar), and lots and lots of zebras. We drove round the park for around 2 hours before heading back into Nairobi for some more work. It was a short break but it was definitely worth it, as I think the pictures show.
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