On the road in Kenya

Since Cape Town I spent a few weeks not going anywhere as i renewed my visa and prepared to launch a report. But by the end of November, I was in Kenya, London, Geneva and Brussels. After a short rest back in Shenzhen, I am now back in Kenya as i try to finalize a project we're launching there.

It is a shame to travel so much and leave the family behind, especially at such interesting times in their lives, but when work takes you to a country you can sometimes get to understand a country better; though just as often the opposite happens! Thankfully my work normally entails me learning more about a country through meeting colleagues, customers and other partners.

Occasionally I end up spending weekends in these countries since my trip takes more than a week. It's not ideal, but I have used this chance to get out of Nairobi. On Saturday I climbed Mt Longonot, a volcano that most recently erupted 150 years or so ago. The view of the crater at the top was great, and so was the view of the neighboring lake and countryside. There was also another crater which was formed during the recent eruption and you can see where all the lava flowed because there is dense forests on top of the fertile lava. After lunch in the town I was on a boat on the lake checking out hippos playing in the water, birds living their lives on the water, and some animals (giraffes, zebras and the like) living alongside the water. A wonderful little boat trip - and interesting too to see the locals enjoying the national holiday on the public beach alongside the lake.

On Sunday, instead of taking a driver around, i took the public transport system, which mostly is a system of private minibuses. Common across the developing world, it can work quite well if you don't wait a long time for the minibus to fill up, and you don't keep stopping en-route to pick people up and drop others off. They can be a touch hairy at times due to the speed they drive at, but their a fairly efficient form of transport, cheap and very well used. The largest problem they cause is the chaos at the bus stations with all the minibuses competing with each other for customers and an immense amount of hooting going on. I also think there are just too many of these things on the road clogging up the roads in many places! 

The minibuses are usually highly personalized by the owners/drivers with decoration internally and externally, customized soundtracks blaring out inside, and all sorts of lights and luxuries. I'm not sure if it is to help them stand out and attract customers, because drivers just like it, or if there are other cultural reasons (i.e. as a form of self-expression). It is a great way to meet local people of course as everyone gets packed inside, though hard to communciate with them due to the loud music!

I had to take two minibuses to get to my destination: Hell's Gate National Park, actually next to the volcano and lake of the previous day. It is the only National Park where you can freely walk around to see the animals instead of having to stay in cars, this is because there are no dangerous animals like lions or buffalo. But on the strensous 18km bike ride we did see a lof ot zebras, giraffe, deer, monkeys, baboons, and other animals. It was great to get so close to them and wonderfully peaceful and serene. It was also very scenic. I did some mountain climbing as well as a couple hours hiking through a gorge.

In face the gorge is one of the most specatacular i've seen. It is quite small; only about 20-40m high, and at its narrowest, just a metre or two, but the different layers you can seek in the rock as the water has eroded it are fascinating and really impressive. A highly recommended trip.

Back on the road, you see what may be "typical Africa"; large expanses of countryside that is seemingly un-used; some smallhold farms; dusty and chaotic towns alongside noisy roads; animals just wondering around (either with their owners, or without); people just sitting around (either at their shops, or just watching the world go by); and of course the interesting style of shops and roadside businessess, often colored in one of the main mobile phone companies' branding as they sell airtime or mobile money services.

A while ago I basically stopped bargaining when i was travelling. If i know a price, I'll set it from the outset; if a price is ridiculous I'll walk away, but I'm usually fairly relaxed about paying a bit more than I should as the kind of people that are benefitting are certainly poorer than me and can do with the money. It also means you can get better service and extra help if you need it. I wasn't very well prepared for this weekend's excursions so I had to buy a small backpack, raincoat (thankfully that was not used), and a cap (though after I had already got a bit burnt).

Hannah's friends

My interaction with Hannah's friends starts with their parents. And that requires online commnication: a highly active wechat (like what's app) group. On this wechat group they organize activities, debate what the homework request is and how to fulfill it, share the latest online e-commerce deals with each other, and share parenting techniques. It's hard to work out what matters and what does not or what they are actually up to due to the ongoing stream of messages in Chinese. I think half the class skipped off on friday to go to Disney Land Hong Kong because of a special offer they found online!

The kids here are in all sorts of after-school activities (though mostly related to sport, art or dance at this age). So we try to join in sometimes, and we try to organize things sometimes. Last month we organized a picnic which became very complicated: no-one quite knew what food they should bring to a (western) picnic, some wanted to share with each other; and then the chaos of making sure everyone could meet in the right spot in the park, after they had all sorted out their parking. . Last week we invited some of them to a christmas party held at an international school; I think these are the kind of events they want from us!

I don't really know which child is who, or which adult is the parent of which child, so it's always a surprise to see who actually turns up!

None-the-less Hannah is usually happy and seems to have 3-4 good friends there in addition to her few foreign friends through my colleagues at work. This is important as she has decided her parents are no longer entertaining enough and she wants to play with her friends more at weekends.

As all parents know, the child's friends' parents become your friends; and thus you no longer get to choose your own friends! Some of Hannah's friends' parents are fine, but most speak little English which is tough, and we don't get on that well with some of them, but we try to make things work: ideally in groups!

Coming up to 4 generally everything is wonderful with Hannah. Problems mostly arise around  chocolate, sweets and ice cream; something that she is often asking for (and its hard to avoid if in shops or on the street) and won't take no for an answer. The short fuse is often on show at other times too when it involves sharing with friends, or trying to get friends to do what she wants them to do.

As kids change so often, we need to keep learning new ways of managing them. At a very young age you can rely on them forgetting quickly, then you focus more on distraction, at other times it calls for a combination of incentives or threats, sometimes you need more presuasion and sometimes you just need to ignore the child (especially if there is a tantrum) and remain firm.

There's been more than a few times when Hannah has ended up screaming or sitting down and refusing to leave a fairground whilst others look on in amazement! Eventually we'll work something out with her, but i feel most Chinese parents are either very soft or very hard (i.e. shouting) whereas we are somewhere in the middle. Of course the hardest thing of all is when kids are together, because then you have to fall to the lowest common denominator and let Hannah do whatever her friends do.

Leah's friends

There has been quite a few changes since i last wrote, 2 months ago.

It began with a phone call from the landlord and his wife; the landlord giving us 1 month notice and his wife saying we should stay, and that as she is the legal owner of the apartment we should listen to her. Preferring not to move out, I decided to pick her sides and see what would happen. A number of tense phone calls and text messages later, with both sides, and it ended up with both of them coming over, meeting me downstairs and the wife giving me the message that she was in agreement with her husband and we were to move out. The husband was 10m away and refusing to speak to me - but making sure his wife delivered the message.

So we moved, thankfully to another fantastic place, though a duplex with stairs between the two floors (not great with a recently begun walking child). We did get luck since we managed to bargain the new landlady down very easily by 15%. And it turns out the apartment comes with plenty of friends for Leah, solving the problem I last wrote about. It seems all of our neighbors have kids her age, and one of the neighbors even runs a daycare center of sorts!

Unlike most apartments where you come our of an elevator in the centre of a tower with apartments on all sides of you; our block has elevators on two ends and 10 appartments in a rown between the ends, with the walkway connecting them all on the outside; this means that all these young kids walk around between everyone's apartments and play together on the walkway, particularly outside our door where the walkway is particularly wide. The result is random kids coming into our apartment, our kid wondering into other apartments, and all the kids playing together in front of our front door half the day (we've even put some playmats out for everyone to play on).

Leah's always on the move now; it has been two months of non-stop walking and she'll soon work out how to run and stay with her sister (rather than trying to chase her and falling over) when they play together. She's usually got a coloring pen in her hand too, which is particularly dangerous with the nice walls, and our blackboard/whiteboard combo is covered in all kinds of colors on the wood and the actual boards!

Leah is also very noisy - talking all the time, though nothing understandable yet. She has clear opnions and voices them often, backing them up with her fingers in terms of what she wants or does not want; and is learning what an attitude is. This usually involves food - since she just eats and eats and eats, and then when you take the food away she expresses her opinion very strongly!

Now that Leah's walking and has an attitude, she is very much into playing and that makes life lots of fun, whether it is in the playroom, or in a shopping mall. From throwing balls into skittles to holding dolls. Though she hasn't yet got a favorite doll, we've already had multiple cases when Hannah and Leah both want to play with the same toys, and we've had to defuse things.

Her cough has cleared up thanks to some good old modern medicine and she seems incredibly smart as she decides what to do and then does it, but then I can't remember what Hannah was doing at that age, so it is hard to compare!