The new walk to work... part 2

After leaving Leah, the walk continues through the area of kilimani which is highly mixed with some bungalows used as offices, some as houses, some small apartment blocks, some newer offer buildings of several stories high, and some more construction. Most of the roads lack pavements, but occasionally they appear, particularly once we get through Kilimani. Not having pavements is a pain after it rains when the muddy sides of the roads can dirty shoes and trousers; especially outside the construction sites.

As I walk through Kilimani. I pass a Lebanese restaurant and an Italian restaurant, a petrol station, the office of the Irish foreign investment/tourism agency, a beauty parlour, a couple of local restaurants, and more kindergartens. There's also a Chinese restaurant on a side street. Outside Kilimani the next stretch is on a fairly new road with excellent pavements. On the corner, beside a roundabout, there's some people selling hand-made furniture, plants, and porcelain bathroom equipment. There's also a street-stall selling breakfast. Opposite is the office of Lavington Security, a private security company that provides many of the security guards for the buildings in the area (which soon turns into Lavington), and a massive new office block under construction.

As I turn right at the roundabout there is a very steep decline and incline in order to cross another river at the bottom of the hill. Near the bottom there are frequently a few people sitting with a noticeboard displaying some magazines, which i think are religious (christian). Along this stretch there is actually a cycle lane next to the pavement, and separated from the road, which is mostly used by the odd motorbike, though there is also the odd cyclist too (usually pushing their bike up the hill). On one part of the road are a few people washing cars; all over Nairobi there are people offering to wash cars: it is so dusty that it is a good business to be in and i pass several more men washing cars every morning, not that the water they are using (usually taken from the storm drain beside the road) is that clean to begin with!

In fact the number of people selling plants may be the only close rival to the car wash industry in terms of road-side jobs. Probably pushing second place would be food stands; and then in certain areas there's plenty of shoe shine people.

At the next roundabout, where there is always a traffic jam during rush hour, I cross over, past a new apartment building under construction, and then another that is already open. This is the enjoyable part - a good pavement and a flat road, and it is usually referred to as Kileleshwa. Past some more breakfast people and car wash people, down another steep hill to cross a river and back up the other side, to another turning.

This is off a main road, which means it is bumpy (both with more speed bumps as well as potholes), and lacking pavements again! it is also fairly posh. This is now Lavington proper, a nice area. I pass a bungalow offering gymnastics and a montessori school, as well as a high school. There are plenty of nice bungalows and town houses (more on that another time). Shortly we come to the Huawei office where there is a new mini roundabout. The other side of our office is a shopping mall (there is another one just around the corner of this one too). Shopping malls are a recurring theme.. this one has the usual with cafes, chemists, supermarkets, fast/snack food, dry cleaners, cake shops, banks, a shoe shine and more, but I'll go into that another time.

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The new walk to work...part 1

We moved to a new office around 2 months ago, which is exactly the opposite direction from the previous one, and a slightly longer walk. However the walk itself is very different to the previous one.

Since Leah is now at kindergarten, and it is kind of on my way to work, the walk starts with Leah alongside me. Usually, to save time, I take her in the buggy, but sometimes she wants to walk. If so then she walks on the very narrow pavement and carefully avoids holes and stones whilst talking about them. First we walk past a local kindergarten and a boutique hotel, then we turn left and the road makes a short dip as the road crosses a river. Here we often see a dog; possibly stray, or possibly belonging to one of the workers on the construction site by the river. In this part of town, typically all the houses were single storey bungalows with large gardens and car parks. Now, thankfully, developers have begun building apartment blocks, including the one we live in (which is 8 floors high) and the new one alongside the river.

As we walk back up the short hill, a proper pavement appears, as does speed bumps in the road. In fact Kenya makes very good use of speed bumps all over the place--in residential areas, on main roads, and even on highways, where there are sometimes pedestrian crossings and speed bumps are used to slow traffic down beforehand, even in 4 lane highways. It can make it very slow going on many of the main roads, particularly as often the speed bumps are ginormous and even occasionally scrape the bottom of cars.

Then we pass a serviced apartment complex and at the junction with a main road do a quick right and left to cross over it. On the corner is a man with a small cart selling eggs under an umbrella; next to him is a bus (also known as a matatu) stop. Matatus stop very frequently and often drive badly, but in town at least they tend to use the bus stops which enables them to pull in from the road and let traffic past. On the other corner we often see a Boda Boda (i.e. motorbike taxi) driver, wearing their luminous (and sponsored with advertising) yellow top. We then continue past the trendy hotel, which used to be a Best Western and is now a brand of Sheraton. As with all hotels there are a couple of security guards at the gate which check cars before they can go in (there is also an airport style x-ray machine at the hotel entrance). The security guards often greet Leah, and she often greets them back. I like to think it brightens up their day a tiny bit!

Next we go over a couple more speed bumps which Leah often decides to run over, a part of the road with many broken bricks which Leah likes to slowly walk over one-by-one, past a lady cooking and selling corn-on-the-cobs on a stove under her umbrella, past another construction site (this one for a large office building i think) and to another junction.

Here we turn left, past another many with a cart selling eggs and sausages, past the local police station and then arrive at the gate to Leah's kindergarten - manned by a security guard who Leah rarely greets, possibly because it is at this point that it is time to enter "distraction mode" to prevent Leah crying as she says "no school". The distractions usually include looking at the playground or the rabbits, or the toys, or the teacher, or something else. After leaving Leah at the kindergarten (10 minutes after leaving home if Leah is in the buggy, or 20 minutes if she is walking) it is time for part 2...

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Kenya's parks

In March when my dad was here, we took a day trip out to Hell's Gate and Naivasha Lake; I had been before on my own, but this time we went as a family: first taking a boat out on the lake, then having lunch at one of the resorts by the lake, and then cycling in the National Park.

The kids enjoyed the lake; there are many different places where someone will take you around the lake in a speedboat and there's not national park fee or anything. It's an enjoyable hour or so and the kids like spotting hippos as well as the many birds. The guide's party trick, or throwing a dead fish into the water for an eagle to fly down from a tree and grab in its mouth always goes down well. Alongside the lake are many different resorts or campsites; where we took our boat from is one of the colonial legacy ones, where a famous conservationist once lived. We had lunch at a different one, which also had horse riding and always keeps Hannah entertained. They also have a playground, pool, bar and other things that might entice back for an overnight stay.

Hell's Gate is famed for its spectacular gorge which has only recently been formed and is getting deeper all the time from erosion, and also famed for its cliffs which inspired the scene in the Lion King where Simba's father gets caught in a stampede and cannot climb out. It's one of the only National Parks with large animals but which you can walk and cycle in as it lacks most dangerous animals (there are Buffalo, but otherwise, mostly Giraffe, Zebra and smaller animals). As with most National Parks there is a steep entrance fee for tourists, and a much cheaper entrance fee for locals, and also a cheaper fee for foreigners who are residents in Kenya.

The kids sat on the back of the bikes, as we cycled, and enjoyed spotting animals. The main cycling route is kind of a figure D, and most people just go up and down the main straight I, but there are a couple of shortcuts across the C part which is what we did, as doing the whole D with kids on the back would have taken too long. Actually most of the animals are also along the I or near it, so it is not that useful for animal spotting to do the much extra and harder distance on the D. The route has the odd signpost and it is also possible to hire bikes at the entrance, or from locals nearby the Park (as I did last time I came alone). Some of the roads are even tarmac to allow for access to the geothermal plants there which generate major amounts of renewable electricity for the country, but are generally quite well concealed and don't disturb the view or animals much.

Hannah also walked along the gorge and enjoyed the entrance, which is particularly tricky and fun to descend down (we had to carry Leah as it was too tough for her), and as usual she befriended our guide and enjoyed talking to him. She won't usually walk far if only with her parents, but if she's with a friend (a child or an adult), she'll walk forever! There's a small shop at the entrance to the gorge, and some local women have a small Masai Market too, but generally National Parks in Kenya are barebone: just natural, with a map at the entrance, not too many signs, few shops or toilets (most parks with animals you can't get out the car anyway), and generally fairly few people around. They are enjoyable experiences for a few hours, though for some people, spending longer may only be enjoyable in the parks with cycling and walking (usually the ones without many animals, like Mount Kenya) rather than spending a lot of time in a vehicle.

Over the Easter weekend we went to Nakuru, another National Park and Lake further out West, past Naivasha. Here the attraction is the land around the lake, where there are rare White Rhinos (which we saw) amongst other animals. We went in our own car, though hired a guide, who took us on one or two off-road paths, and we got stuck for a while in the mud. Even with our 4 x 4, but we managed to escape without getting mauled and continued on the circular trip around the lake, finally glancing a sleeping lion near the end. Nakuru is actually the most expensive National Park in the country (along with one other) whilst other National Parks are lower down on a sliding scale. It might be because Nakuru is fairly small compared to other parks, and it is easy and quick to see many different animals, but I may have to ask around to find out if there is a more scientific reason!

Nakuru, like some of the larger Parks have accommodation inside them, usually quite expensive and quite nice. We had a look at one as we contemplated having lunch there (though decided not to in the end as the lunch menu was very limited). It was a fairly typical place, often called a "camp", though the tents are permanent tents, on concrete, with a concrete bathroom at the back with toilets/showers ensuring each tent is en-suite, and you sleep in a regular bed inside the tent... the only thing that makes it a tent is that most of the covering over the room is indeed canvas, but it's not camping as we're used to back home! The camp also had a swimming pool. The camp is in the National Park so is surrounded by a fence of course to keep out any animals, though Nakuru also has some more traditional campsites, i.e. some land where you can pitch your own tent, and these don't have any fences around them; I read that the staff may light a fire to keep animals away. I'm not sure we'll be doing that with Andrea and the kids though anytime soon.

Nearby Nakuru we also visited the Menengai Crater, which also has a small entrance fee, though is not an official National Park. It is one of the largest craters in the World, and there are some spectacular views from the top, which you can actually drive up to. No-one was actually living inside the crater (though there was a lot of vegetation and some new geothermal plants being dug), but many people live along the sides and nearby the crater, presumably with fertile soils from previous eruptions. It's certainly worth the short trip from the National Park.

As the Kenya Wildlife Service website explains, 8% of the Kenya's land mass is protected area for wildlife conservation. The protected areas comprise of 23 terrestrial National Parks, 28 terrestrial National Reserves, 4 marine National Parks, 6 marine National Reserves and 4 national sanctuaries. Protected areas in Kenya are categorized either as parks or reserves. The distinction between the two categories is: in parks there is complete protection of natural resources and the only activities allowed are tourism and research. On the other hand in reserves, human activities are allowed under specific conditions. These activities are for instance fishing in marine reserves or firewood collection in terrestrial reserves. 

A lot of Kenya's wildlife lives outside Protected Areas, this is because most of the protected areas are not fully fenced, and hence wildlife moves in and out of these areas in search of pasture and water during certain periods within the year. When they move out of the protected areas, they interact with people on private and community land causing human wildlife conflict. This therefore requires that KWS embraces a strategic partnership with communities living in wildlife areas.

The Wildlife Conservation and Management Act categorizes the country's species of wildlife into four classes: critically endangered species; vulnerable species; nearly threatened species; and protected species. Harming endangered or threatened species can lead to life imprisonment and/or a fine of US$230,000. Though interestingly until the law was updated recently, the fine was only $400 and ten years in prison. The main species protected in these categories are elephant, leopard, lion, rhinoceros, giraffes, and some specific monkeys, zebra and so on.

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