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.