“A week old”
We have moved out of the hotel to an apartment in the Westlands area of the city. Just five minutes in the car from two of Nairobi’s biggest malls, and it seems the car is the way to go.
I walked home from the Sarit Centre today…no mean feat after a morning of unrelenting rain which had turned what passes for paths here into sneaky stone-speckled quagmires. A tricky prospect for a buggy so far only blooded on north London’s leafy, conker-strewn streets. But we made it. Not without a few strange looks.
I’ve been advised that this trekking may be a little foolhardy as bag snatchings are common in this area. I was carrying several bags with nothing more valuable than nappies (though pretty expensive nappies at 1,500 ksh for just 15 pullups – I’m thinking we will be accelerating the nightime toilet training for our four-year-old). But it was really nice to just walk. Our 21-month-old enjoyed herself too, though for once she consented to put on her socks and shoes. Even she was impressed by the mud.
And mud featured heavily in our weekend activities. We went to the Nairobi National Park on Saturday, arriving in a downpour with our kids asleep in the back of our white Landrover. We decided to have lunch to see if the rain eased and found a simple open-sided restaurant outside the main gates, up a little path to the right as you come in. No frills but the best rice and chicken I’ve eaten for a while. My husband had goat and, uncharacteristically, I tried it to. Chewy but good. Our eldest ate a big plate of rice and chicken. I could never get her to eat rice and chicken. Nuff said. By far the cheapest and best meal we have had in Nairobi to date.
The rain dried up so we decided to head into the park. While my husband went to get tickets – a tricky, time-consuming task that for some unknown reason involves credit card-like passes that need to be swiped at the entrance – the girls and I enjoyed the sight of a wedding party being entertained in the car park by Maasai warriors, or moran. The warriors danced, the wedding party jiggled their hips and women ululated – drawing an enthusiastic, ear-piercing and pretty inaccurate mimicry from our girls. Then into the park. Just metres past the gate, we happened upon a group of baboons by the road, including babies and young adults fighting and falling out of trees. Our 21-month-old began to scream “ooh oooh aaah aaah, monkey, ooh ooh aah aah, monkey” like a dervish. It was the start of a great adventure. The girls were great, spending five hours in the car with barely a complaint (and all parents of young 'uns know that this, of course, means there was some crying and whinging but it was never as bad as it could have been). But a couple of tips: always switch the car to four-wheel drive BEFORE you enter the park, particularly if you decide to do so after days of rain. Bring a tow rope. And never, ever embark on a safari, however short you plan it to be, without an inexhaustible supply of food – and by food, I obviously mean biscuits – for the children. We saw zebras, ostriches, many, many types of deer, buffalo, giraffes, and wonder of wonders, a black rhino lurking in the bushes, looking slightly annoyed by the attention but too big to let it really get to him.
The park seemed vast, stretching off to the horizon which was marked on one side by the tall buildings of Nairobi’s central business district, rising reassuringly in the distance. It was a beautiful day, fluffy clouds piled on top of each other in a sky that seemed to stretch to the stars. It was all going so well, until we decided to make our way back.
As we barrelled down a muddy track, knowing that if we stopped we were in trouble, we came face-to-face with a sedan, sunk low in the mud as it attempted to go where no sedan should ever go. Behind it was a Landrover which was trying to pull the sedan backwards out of the muddy ruts. The cars blocked the road and so we ground to a halt, and watched with grim fascination as the Landrover’s wheels spun madly. The driver was a master, but even he could do little to help the over-ambitious sedan. The sun was setting and oblivious to the many warnings posted around the park, the Landrover driver got out to take a closer look at the sticky problem. By now, the two cars were on the same side of the road so he urged us to “go for it, mate”.
My husband gamely began to coax our Landrover forward, but by now we were neatly ensconced in two ruts. The girls wondered what was going on, my husband revved, backwards and forwards, the Landrover growled but nothing. It took about 10 minutes until finally my husband, displaying skills I had not seen before in 8 years of marriage, managed to trundle the car onto the middle of the road. We glided, slid and slipped past the two parked cars and were free. Well, still ice-skating but the ground was getting firmer.
We passed another four-by-four and then a truck of frankly grumpy-looking park attendants, clearly called to rescue the sedan. As we finally approached the main gates again, our eldest plaintively called from the back seat: “the beginning was fun, but the end was not.” Children! There’s no pleasing them. The full extent of the muddification only became apparent when we parked again in the city centre. The steps to mount the car were covered with four-inches of gooey stuff, there was a big gob of the stuff on the bonnet, standing upright proudly like an Elvis quiff and needless to say, everything else was red-brown. I’m sure it’ll be cleaned one of these days. We stumbled into the hotel lobby, muddy, shabby and high on adrenaline. I think we have arrived.