Turkish pizzas and boats

From Russia to Turkey, eventually, after a snow storm incapacitated Istanbul and required an extra night in Moscow and an alternative flight to Ankara via Munich, in order to avoid Istanbul. When we were in the airport on the first night, we saw a Transaero flight may have still flown to Istanbul even though the airport was shut, according to Turkish Airlines. I wonder what happened to it… (we decided not to buy a ticket on that one, just in case)

Ankara and Istanbul seem to be polar opposites. Ankara is fairly flat and is a fairly new city; it is quite small, quite spacious, with wide roads, new buildings and a general feeling of organized suburbia. Istanbul is crowded, even in the suburbs and full of traffic. It has plenty of old buildings and mosques; it has numerous hills on both European and Asian sides as well as having the bridges over the Straights. It’s lively and exciting, but chaotic and maddening at the same time. Thankfully the boats across the river are predictable, so we spent much of our time taking a taxi to the ferry, taking a ferry, and then taking a taxi again the other side. It worked. In Ankara we just drove around to meetings.

I say we, as one of the consultants supporting my project was with me the whole time, and of course our local staff joined all the meetings. Over the weekend the consultant and I managed to see a fair bit of Istanbul: the shopping area around the tower, the Palace, the Aya Sophia Mosque, the Blue Mosque, the spice market and lots of restaurants and cafes. Over the 5 days we had wonderful food in Turkey. Turkish pizzas (called Pide, though more like a kebab sandwich in pizza dough) and kebabs of course; but also wonderful deserts and lots of coffee and tea.

We witnessed a small demonstration on the main shopping street (whilst we sat in a café eating Bachlava of course) and saw several of the newer palaces as well as of the expensive homes on either side of the Bosphorous. I could certainly live in Ankara, but I can get much more excited about visiting Istanbul. Though to be fair, since I was last there about 14 years ago there is now a few subway lines and more under construction to alleviate traffic somewhat. It’s a city crying out for skyscrapers and tall apartment buildings but is full of 3 and 4 story buildings which is not the best use of space.

Now it’s back to China for a few days: at least it is a nice warm 20+ degrees unlike the snow of Russia and Turkey. It is also back to the world with only a half-working internet. But it is also back to a world with a wife and two wonderful daughters.

Delays but Moscow is worth it

After a cancelled flight due to snow, being bumped off another flight due to incompetence, a third attempt to get to Moscow was finally successful. And it was well worth it. Though only there 2 days, we did get to drive around the city on our way to some meetings, and take a boat trip one evening on the river to see many of the key buildings (at least from the outside).

Things that stood out included the large amount of ski slopes dotted around the suburbs of the city (which my colleagues go to in the evenings after work sometimes); the incredibly robust and impressive buildings (many are decent looking; some like the seven sisters Stalin built are stunning); the wonderful food from across Russia and neighboring regions; and an hour at a “Banya” (a Russian “spa” so to speak that is often for male bonding) with a friend and some of his friends.

The on-the-ground impact of the current political situation was evident  in just a couple of days of business meetings.  Putin’s heavy grip on the country and the potential of whatever he says to happen; the focus on building up domestic companies (and at least on not buying from Western companies) which is similar to China at the moment; and the impact on business of the poor state of economic growth.

Taking the subway was a wonderful experience: classic modern Russian architecture that is functional and stylish, though also teeming with people at rush hour and deep below ground. Of all nationalities, I have to wonder if there are not some typical Russian stereotypes which are actually true. Whether it is the looks of the men or women, or the way the men act/drink in the evenings; it all seems true.

I left having enjoyed the short trip (and having visited the airports more times than I would have wished as my flight to Turkey was also cancelled due to snow) and thankful for the current political situation: everything was half the price it was a year ago, so now is the time to go (though the visa application form is VERY long)! I’d suggest taking BA rather than Aeroflot though after my experiences. And I’d check for weather conditions before going to the airport…

Why

After South Africa it was Egypt. I didn't see much apart from the city, desert and lots of sand. Though I saw some pyramids in the distance and some nice and varied architecture. I left thinking Cairo is a rapidly growing city, maybe out of control with immense contrast, built by a river, in a desert, and currently going through interesting times. I'm not sure if is developing, developed, somewhere in the middle, or something else altogether. You can't compare the MENA region with anyone else.

The food was fantastic, the traffic bad, the people warm, and the experience positive. I'll be back to check it out for more than 4 working days next time.

Back in the UK for a couple of days to get a visa and meet some people I also got to spend a day with my three girls. Leah is making progress with proper nap times now and getting close to sitting up on her own. Hannah's really talkative and usually asking why, why, why. Of course this is a legendary part of childhood and enjoyable...So far. She'll be great in the development world in the future trying to identify the root cause and a theory of change! She's also developed her own girly accent for her favourite words, like nyow (no) with a high pitched tone and a singing tune too!

We managed to get her to walk 3 miles to and from the park, with some help from Cocoa the dog. She enjoyed trying on bridesmaids dresses and shoes. She's obsessed with playdough and she's a lot of fun all around. Can't wait to see her, Leah and incredible Andrea (who thanks to mum babysitting I actually got to spend a Valentine's dinner with alone) again in 9 days.

Robots in South Africa

Johannesburg is a strange city; half English and half African. Much of the countryside looks like English countryside, and I was seeing the countryside whilst driving up the M1 Motorway here to Pretoria! In the nice suburbs of Johannesburg you could be any nice part of London – with very good quality street infrastructure (driving on the left of course), very nice houses and Western food. There is a slight difference with the many electric fences on top of the spiked fences around many of the houses and compounds! I spent 5 days working in these areas with lots of meetings in our office and in fancy office buildings around town. And not much walking, as South Africa seems really to be a country for driving, if you can afford it.

Then of course there is the poorer parts of Johannesburg; I spent this morning on a bike tour of SOWETO, the famous part of Johannesburg which was the hub of the anti-apartheid protests and where Mandela lived (for a while, though he spent much of his time undercover or in prison or living in a nicer place as President!) It is a strange area, with some real slum parts but also some areas that are very posh. What is strange is that most of the poorer people don’t live in the slums but in areas that looks like middle class housing – not big, mostly bungalows, but decent condition, made of brick and with gardens. Now they might not have many jobs, but it is I suppose a difference between South Africa and other parts of Africa: there has been some progress. On the tour we saw some memorial sites from apartheid-era protests as well as Mandela’s former house.

It is a strange city/country though. The local food is less “African” than in Kenya, though they have bap (similar to ugali in Kenya) and some stews, but they tend to prefer eating lots of BBQ meat. Some of the public transport is very nice but much of it is pretty poor and not safe. Of course since last year the country has been stuck in a massive power crisis; with regular “load shedding” (i.e. planned power cuts affecting different areas to manage the limited capacity). In our office we had part of a day without power (and internet, shock horror), though one of our buildings has a power generator so everyone can pile in there to work.

I don’t know how dangerous the city is, but it does feel dangerous: a combination of the high security fences around the nice areas; the reputation of the city; and probably just being white in a country of black people (that has high ethnic tensions). In the afternoon I went to the Apartheid Museum that is very well done with an incredible amount of information well delivered in various forms. If anything there is just too much information and sometimes it is hard to see the real themes, or see the bigger picture. But it is highly recommended, and I ended up spending more than 2 hours there. It does drive home the incredible efforts that were made to segregate the blacks from the whites; but it also showed how much violence there was to keep it that way and it was depressing how violent the four-year period was after Mandela was released and whilst the various parties sorted out a constitution and prepared for an election.

At the end of the afternoon I spent an hour walking around downtown Johannesburg. There are some old colonial buildings and a business district, but most of the companies have their shiny buildings out in the suburbs not down town. So downtown is fairly run down, though it is lively with markets and street sellers, whereas the suburbs are fairly barren and just like London suburbs with high streets and shopping malls, but not a lot of life on the streets. Pretoria, as a newer city, seemed less variable: less fancy areas but also less run-down areas. Though it still had some fancy shopping malls, of course.

And the robots? That's what South Africa's call traffic lights. As strange as the many local African languages and the strange accents of the white south Africans too!

Kibera

I spent three hours at Kibera slum with a local as a tour guide. I suppose the main difference from the equivalent in China is the size. Somewhere close to a million people live in Kibera, many have been there for two or three generations. With a place this big (and it's big because everyone is only in single storey painted mud huts) there are countless high streets and markets, hundreds of churches, and a lot of rubbish!

Most people there get by it seems, some with jobs outside the slum cleaning or in construction. Most just do business within the slum, a massive economy in itself. In this way money comes in and circulates around enough for people to get by. The government and aid agencies fund several years of free primary school and try to improve infrastructure like toilet blocks. There's only a couple of high schools, but plenty of childcare and kindergarten options, all of which charge (kindergarten is about 15 USD a month).

Life is certainly lively there with cinemas, pubs and hotels as well the usual restaurants and all sorts of shops. Though of course all of the above are in mud huts with corrugated metal roofs with few widows so quite a different atmosphere. There's workshops making handicrafts too. It lacks for little. In practice of course incomes are unpredictable, living conditions are very cramp and poor, opportunities and hope are both limited.

It was striking how bustling life there is. How happy most people seem, especially the kids. Always the kids. It's all they known, all they do know and all they could hope for. It's tough for those who get sick, which is likely with poor hygiene, have to find the money for rent and children, or who may have personal tragedies, like deaths, affecting them. We met one old lady with AIDS who runs a small sewing cooperative to create income and self esteem for her and 15 other even with AIDS.

My tour guide (the tour company was set up by a foreign volunteer to create jobs and income for people like my guide) has 9 sisters and brothers with only 2 having regular work. This earns him some money every now and again but he's also busy helping other charitable projects and volunteering in the community. It's a very worthwhile few hours.

China's slums are actually similar, just much smaller and generally made of very simple brick buildings due to the harsher weather, and probably related to the abundance of building materials on one hand, and the Kenyan traditional mud buildings from the countryside where the residents come from on the other hand.

After Kibera I wasted time at a crocodile farm, enjoyed the giraffe center a lot thanks to the informative "educator", and visited Bombas of Kenya. A 2 hour show of different traditional Kenyan dances and outside the theater, replicas of all the different tribes' traditional houses. A good day overall.

Kenya!

2015 began with three days in Beijing, my last stay in an apartment that we'd rented for over 5 years. Then I had a crazy week at work launching my internal research project and a wonderful weekend in Guangzhou with the girls and my dad. Shortly after that I was on the plane to the UK for 10 days, the first country on my global tour for work. Always nice to see friends and family; it was also a hugely successful trip work wise spending time with colleagues and talking to customers and other really interesting groups.

From the UK I flew via Abu Dhabi to Nairobi.Etihad is a very nice airline and the views were fantastic: very strange seeing the habitats in the sparse UAE desert from the plane, and then changing scenery as we flew over desert Saudi Arabia, the barren parts of Ethiopia and then green Kenya.

In my mind Kenya sounds like green, safari savannahs, and blue skies, but Nairobi sounds like dangerous, dirty and chaotic. In reality of course Nairobi seems nice. Yes the roads are not great and the traffic makes Beijing look good (strangely there are almost no bikes or motorbikes here, just cars), but the food is nice and also cheap. Despite being one of the more developed cities in (east) Africa and with a reputation for being a bit of a tech hub, there are less tall buildings than I expected, and it's less commercial than I'd thought.

I'm obviously always comparing everything to China where some poor and dumpy peri-urban and rural towns contrast with insanely developed, advanced and shiny coastal cities. A poorish country as a whole, the cities and government in china are wealthy and now I can see the infrastructure difference compared to Africa. I walked to the office this morning to avoid the Nairobi traffic, though I got some dusty shoes- it's the dry season, and a present 26 degrees with blue skies. A taxi back to the office from a meeting across town was like a cross country adventure as we took all kinds of back roads to avoid traffic (as were many others) and ended up going through back gardens and construction sites!

The food is simple and nice (often meat/fish in sauce served with rice or ugali which soaks up the sauce); the bus system apparently effective though tricky for foreigners to navigate (i made it the short trip back to my hotel from CBD); the local lingo is a mixture of English and Swahili. I'm reminded by my wife to stay safe, though I realise that might be because China is so safe it's easy to forget (even when in London, I need to make a conscious effort particularly to avoid pick pocketing).

I spent a morning doing a safari, and at first it felt like hunting with several cars all working together to find a lion. One was spotted fairly early on though not that close up. After that my car was mostly alone and we saw hundreds of different wildebeest, zebras and giraffe. We also saw a few buffalos, a rhino and a couple of warthogs (aka pumbaa from the lion king). It was expensive getting one of the special open top cars but worth it and seemed fairly comparable to a safari further afield. A very enjoyable morning and convenient too, as Nairobi national park is only half an hour from downtown without traffic early in the morning. It's the smallest national park but still sizable; we were driving (not fast) for three hours non-stop.

In the afternoon I walked downtown and saw the park that was saved by an environmentalist with kids' rides in and a pretty lake. I also saw some markets and a craft shop. Lunch at a very local place was followed by a visit to the railway museum, where I learned about the challenges building the East Africa Railway from Mombassa to Lake Victoria where hundreds of Indian workers died building it and some were eaten by lions. The old photos and old trains were interesting and there was also a customized bike that could ride on the tracks.

In the afternoon I went to the National Museum with a lot of good exhibits on Kenyan history, culture, ancestry, wildlife and more. A quote in the museum explained that "any country can make a railway but in Kenya, a railway made a country". An entire stay of standing up in cars and museums as well as walking across Nairobi ended on the 7th floor balcony bar of a hotel with nice views and stimulating conversation with an Ashoka fellow who is using IT to make the countries' clinics and health system more efficient.