Brave new world

If there is one, construction unrelated thing that I have realised from this trip, it is that there is a whole new world out there. And this world is developing rapidly all by itself.

That might sound both obvious and naive, so let me elaborate a bit.

Living in Europe, it is easy to "do the ostrich", i.e. bury one's head in the sand. Probably because our institutions, media and even companies often do the ostrich themselves. Their focus is generally on Europe first, then North American and Japan, with minimum thought given to the rest of the world.

Though well travelled, it's been quite a long time; 10-15 years; since I've really spent an extended period outside Europe (that includes in Kenya). At that time, the world still seemed to be working on the sun and planet model which had been effectively installed by colonialism and remained thereafter; the west was the sun and the rest were the planets. For example, looking at Kenya 15 years the airport was dominated by European carriers (BA, KLM, Swissair); the cars and tyres were French (Peugeot and Michelin) while the trucks were German (Mercedes Benz); petrol stations were British or American (BP, Shell and Mobil); the biggest banks were British(Barclays and Standard and Chartered); the roads were funded by Americans; electronic items were Dutch (Philips) and restaurant chains were non-existant. In other words, the west was at the centre of the economy of Kenya and many other developing countries.

Nowadays in Kenya, a veritable mix of carriers can be found  at the airport, with Middle Eastern carriers (Turkish*, Emirates, Ethiad, Qatar) the most present after Kenya airways ; the cars are Japanese (Toyota), tyres Indonesian (GT) and trucks Indian (Tata); one of the biggest petrol station chains is Lybian; the biggest banks are Kenyan; the roads are built by the Chinese; electronics come from South Korea; and restaurant chains are South African. The west has been marginalised.

Some of these changes (such as South Korean electronics) are pretty obvious as they reflect the evolution of the wider world, and can be picked up on wherever you are. But other changes are less noticeable e.g. in Europe. The bottom line is that "the rest" are now largely cutting out the west.

Photo from Deira, the old part of Dubai. Which isn't really very old at all!

Financial centre looking like something from a sci-fi movie 

Now that is a big shopping mall!

Alina: "Inspiration for Romanian highways!"

View from the top

My flight to and from Kenya took me through a place which epitomises this new world dynamic; Dubai. A city which has literally grown out of the sand in the last 40 or so years, to become a real cosmopolitan centre for the new world.  People from all corners of Africa and Asia living in a city years ahead of most western ones. Burg Khalifa, the world's tallest building at 828m, dwarfs America's tallest (Sears Tower). The Dubai Mall makes a modern London shopping centre like Westfields look like a flea market. The infrastructure makes the whole city seem futuristic. Sure, it had the advantage of not having to update old infrastructure, as European cities tend to need to. But it still seems to have that "je ne sais quoi".

During this trip, my eyes  have been (re)opened to the new world. I won't let them close again.

* I'm putting Turkey with the middle east for simplicity, but I'm aware it's part European too!

------------------------------------------

A short break for xmas now. I'll be heading back to Kenya in the new year for a few weeks to finish off the works - as you can see from the other post, the house is better but not quite entirely ready.  And the blog will resume then!

Taking stock

With the trip, and the main phase of construction at the end, it seems like a good time to take stock - statistics and lessons learnt. After all, those who do not learn from history's mistakes are bound to repeat them (George Santayana).

The house construction in statistics

82. The number of days I have spent in Kenya. I think 81 of these were spent working some way or another!

883. The man days of work required to get the house to this state, excluding my input and that of supervisors. That's the equivalent to one man working all day every day without holiday for two and a half years! These days were spread across 11 contractors.  If you're curious how this breaks down areas, well:      Structural repairs, exterior and interior finishing 446 days

• Plumbing 89 days
• Electrics and lights 65 days
• Windows, doors and gates 152 days
• Kitchen and bathroom cabinets, wardrobes and other wood fixtures 111 days
• Guttering 20 days

108. The number of receipts I have for building materials. That means 108 individual trips to buy items, and given that shopping around was required first it probably means 300+ visits to hardware stores and shops. As receipts often contain tens of items, the number of items purchased is likely well into the thousands.

638. The estimated litres of petrol used while driving around, mainly for construction purposes. I've now taken myself of both Greenpeace and friends of the earth's Christmas card lists! Given the car's poor fuel consumption rate of about 8 km per litre, that translates to about 5,100km travelled.

1.85. The length in kilometres of the pipes, gutters and conduits used during this adventure. And there is still a bit more to add in the new year! I can't even begin to calculate the length of wiring going through the electrical conduit....

Lessons

1. Hire good people and treat them with respect. This isn't really something I learnt, but rather something which was reinforced during my time here. As per one of my first blog posts, you'll hear plenty of stories of construction nightmares in Kenya. Some workmen are downright bad to start with. However, I get the feeling that some, while not bad, get shouted at so much they stop caring. I admit I was lucky with my contractors and I have my cousin to thank for hooking me up with them. But once here I treated them with respect. Even the one time had to seriously intervene and do their work myself (the parquet saga), by taking a polite attitude, one of the culpable fundis joined me and said "I want to see how you are doing this so I can learn and do it for you". I feel that as a result of hiring good people and treating them well, the quality of the workmanship has been good.

2. Count the pennies. When doing a project on this scale, every little saving quickly adds up. By choosing wisely and always pushing for a discount, you can save a fortune; I estimate that my hustling on every little item has saved at least 5,000 euros over the whole project so far; possible even more than 10,000.

To give an example, for something like tiling, the difference between the "perfect" tile which is 1500ksh per square metre and the next best thing which you can find which is 1000ksh can add up to the equivalent of  100 euros over a surface area of a normal room floor. Through pushing for a discount and getting the price down to 950, it is possible to save another 10 euros. Now imagine how the savings add up over 100 receipts containing 1000s of items. Counting the pennies is key, without cutting corners... because corner cutting is always paid for later on!

One final point about discounts... no-one's going to offer them to you - you have to ask for them! And as a friend once said, there is no danger in asking.

3. Be organised and have a plan. But remain flexible! You're probably wondering how the hell I could produce those statistics at the beginning. Well, you've probably heard that 90.19% of statistics are made up :-). The ones quoted above however, fall into the 9.81%. I have kept records of works, expenditure and materials each day. And it's a good thing I did as otherwise I'd have ended up paying people twice (or three times), getting ripped off because of not knowing how much work has actually taken place, and being unable to submit anything for tax exemption. Similarly, at the end of each day I have got into the habit of planning the next day. Doing so has limited the amount of own-tail-chasing which is done. Nonetheless, as a previous post highlighted, plans will always go wrong in Kenya, so flexibility is key. Too meticulous a plan will lead to you wanting to hang yourself from your wonkily-installed second choice dining room light fitting (which you only took because the lighting shop ran out of your first choice fitting while your car was overheating in rush hour traffic; in which you found yourself stuck only because one of your contractors messed up your day's plan by being 3 hours late for a meeting with you at the site).

4. Have a big vehicle. I have never been as upset with an inanimate object as with Katie (the car - registration number KTP 833). Some of my moments with her resembled Ralph Fiennes in In Bruges. Nonetheless, I have to admit Katie has saved me a fortune in transport (as well as costing me another one in parts and mechanics). By having a 5m long car - basically a pickup truck with a boot - I have avoided a lot, and I mean a lot, of transport costs. Katie has transported tonnes of large and/or heavy objects such as tiles, cement, paint, wood and stones. If you're heavily involved in a big construction project, I highly recommend you get a big vehicle. Though preferably one which has not been sitting unused for 13 years like Katie...

5. Keep an open mind and try to enjoy. One thing I can confirm is that construction can be very stressful. If you have never been involved in a construction project, it's easy to think that you just make a few broad design decisions, such as colour schemes, and the rest magically happens. The reality is far from that; legwork, decision making, quality control and problem solving are required on a daily basis, and they cause stress. There is no way of avoiding the stress; if you give up half way through, things will turn out looking like the witch's house after Hansel and Gretel visit. But if you stress too much you might find yourself waking up at night with wonky parquet nightmares.

I've learnt that a  lot, and  I mean a lot of work is required for construction projects. But by putting that extra mile and keeping an open mind, solutions to problems will appear. If you fix yourself on just one possibility, you will go insane as it simply won't work out. The final thing I've learnt though is to  try to enjoy the process. It has been far from easy, but I've learnt a lot throughout, and  I would hope anyone involved in such a project does as well. As you can see from the photos below, it can be rewarding!

Even from the outside the house looked horrible before, and water was causing a problem

Complete facelift and waterproofing results in a new, durable look. Even the sun has come out!

The old messy veranda....

has been cleaned up to this

The old master bedroom was cramped, boxy and hosted bees

Knocking down the wall in the photo above you saw, the master has been opened up to something beautiful and spacious

Parquet was damaged in many (most) places

But with a lot of work (and glue), plus a resand and 2 coats of varnish, it looks like new

The master bathroom looked a bit groovy 70s...

But is now looking more luxurious 2000s

And has a shower cabinet.

The old dining room and lounge

Again more walls have been knocked to make it open. And LOTS of repairs.

The kitchen was a horrible cramp and damp

So more walls went and it was turned into a kind of bar

And this entirely useless looking room...

.... has been turned into a beautiful kitchen

With a "highland"

The old dining room

And the new one now the red wall has gone

What I use to refer to as the indoor swimming pool

Has been transformed to this, with funky new wardrobes

Money doesn't grow on trees

It's one of those sayings which, if you think about it, doesn't really make sense. Notes - everyone's favourite kind of money -are traditionally made from paper, which comes from trees. Ergo, money does grow on trees, kind of.

Recently, however, I've discovered another way that money grows on trees.

From this.. the jungle before...

To this... what the jungle has been turned into.

Over the years a small forest has developed at the bottom of my father's house plot. It looked more like a jungle when I first arrived (monkeys and exotic birds included), but with a few days of bush clearing, it took on a more forest like appearance. And it became clear that the trees which form the forest are fully mature. In view of this I looked into what could be done with them.

A fully mature eucalyptus from the grounds. This one was over 1m in diameter and 50m tall

Wood is a valuable commodity in Kenya. There is high demand from commercial uses, most notably from the construction and related industries. A surprisingly large number of houses in Kenya (including the one I'm staying in now, and am writing this article in) are built entirely of wood. Furthermore wood is extensively used in houses with high end finishing, for parquet flooring and general decoration.

Demand for wood is not limited to the construction industry, however. There are a range of other uses for which wood is demanded. Probably the most significant is as fuel. As previously mentioned, the proportion of households with electricity connections in Kenya is very low; supply is unreliable; and electricity itself not particularly cheap. Wood is therefore extensively used as a fuel for cooking, heating and lighting. Indeed the "heating" system in my father's old house is three fireplaces for wood fires.

This high demand for wood has led to a fast rate of deforestation. In the 50 years since independence (which incidentally were celebrated last Thursday), Kenya's forest cover has fallen from 10% to around 1.6%. The future trend does not look good either, given the rate of increase in Kenya's population; it is expected to over double from 44m to 100m by 2050. The larger population will demand more firewood, and the emerging middle class will want more wood for high end finishing. Deforestation appears to be a trend heading in only one direction.

Back to the mini forest at the bottom of the house plot, you can probably see where all of this is going. I've taken myself off the Christmas card list of yet another environmental NGO by selling the trees to a sawmill, who in turn (sure enough) will sell it to the construction industry and general public.  So effectively I've become part of the problem, not the solution.

In reality, it wasn't an ethically easy decision to make, but it was a no-brainer. Fully mature trees on a plot 6,000 miles away from my day to day job, and hence half out of my control. An expensive renovation of a house I'm not going to live in for some years (not the recommend way to start married life). Selling the trees killed several birds with one stone. To present a football (soccer) analogy, it was an Arsene Wenger move. Wenger is renowned for selling players near their peak (about the only player who he hasn't sold at his peak is Robin Van Persie*). And he sells them before other clubs pick them up for free at the end of their contracts so that he can reinvest in new players with better potential. This is a bit what I was doing here; selling an asset at its peak, before someone sells it for me (a very real possibility in Kenya when you are not around), in order to invest funds in something I hope has potential!

So after lots of research (such as how to measure the volume of wood in a tree - there is a formula for this) and running around talking to prospective buyers, another bit of chaos has been added to the trip-mix. While construction is ongoing inside the house, outside the house there are guys with chainshaws and heavy trucks are now passing through daily in order to cut the trees and transport the wood. As it turns out there is a lot, and I mean a lot, of wood. About 50,000 board feet... though quite a lot of it is proving tough to access.

This is what those beautiful trees are becoming. Feel my guilt!

Seeing the wood through the trees.

As for my contribution deforestation problem, the buyer I chose to work with is a reasonable man, and we are talking about planting seedlings when he finishes. They will probably never grow as big as the fully mature trees which are being cut now; that would require most of my remaining life; however, it will be a small contribution towards Kenya's fight against deforestation.

* Football fans could argue Nasri, Clichy, Song, Fabregas etc weren't sold at their peak. On one hand they have gone to clubs which win (more) trophies. On the other hand, they spend more time getting splinters in their rear ends than playing. Come to your own conclusions!

When cash isn't king...

Dealing with money in Kenya is an awkward issue. The highest denomination note is 1,000 shillings; that is about 9 euros. This creates challenges when you have to pay for more expensive items as you have to carry around stacks of notes. Now this might make you feel a bit gangster, as you pull out your fat wallet (see pic) and additional envelopes of money. However it also creates security issues as it becomes tough to conceal your wealth ("Is that a bundle of 1,000 ksh notes in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?!") Take my earlier post where I went to the shanty part of Kariobangi with my cousin to buy a car engine. We had to somehow conceal 90,000 shillings from curious loiterers in a poor area of town. In a country where 90,000 shillings roughly equals the annual minimum wage,  the temptation to mug us, had we not been careful, would have been great.

Most days for the last two months, my wallet has looked something like this. At least at the beginning of the day. End of the day is a different matter....

Faced with such limitations, naturally you would expect some kind of alternative to hard currency to emerge. The first place you'd expect such a solution would be the banking sector. Incredibly, Kenya has forty four (44) different commercial banks; that is about one banking chain for every million people in the population...  though in reality there are only around 16m bank accounts in Kenya in total (so on average each bank has 300,000 accounts). You'd imagine with such an overcrowded sector, competitiveness would breed excellence. Sadly this is not the case based on my experience. Banks are expensive and slow. Cheques are still widely used and internet banking is closed for maintenance more often than the London Underground.

Thankfully though there is a hugely popular alternative payment system in place in Kenya. It is called Mpesa. It allows you to send money through your mobile phone to another mobile phone.  The system has been in use in Kenya since 2005, and indeed 17m accounts have been registered so far. Indeed Kenya was the country that invented telephone payments - the rest of the world is years behind. As well as being innovative, Mpesa is reliable, cheap and effective. After over two months here, I finally got round to setting up Mpesa on my phone this week, and I can say it is a joy.

As you can imagine, repairing a house is not a cheap affair anywhere, and Kenya can be included in this. I spent a large part of October and November trying to get my (and my wife's) savings out of Europe to Kenya to pay for the works. Most of this period was lost fighting with Western Union. Before I came on this trip, I'd always associated Western Union with stew cooking Jamaican mamas sending money "buck ome". However,  it emerged as one of the most cost efficient ways of sending money to Kenya and I hence decided to set up an account. Following this, during the course of October, my perception of Western Union changed to one of a unresponsive company which makes Belgian communes appear customer friendly. So when it came to phase two of sending money from Europe to Kenya, I was pleasantly surprised to discover the responsive South African company Mukuru which allows you to send money from the UK straight to a phone in Kenya via Mpesa. I have in turn moved away from unreliable internet banking and started paying my contractors directly with Mpesa.

In summary, Mpesa is a revelation, and a sign of how a developing country like Kenya can leapfrog the whole developed world in an area. The only downside of Mpesa I have noticed so far is that you have to pay even more attention than ever to your phone!

* If you are curious... there is a UK company called Monetise which is trying to roll out mobile phone payments in the UK and indeed the rest of the world. However, given you may have never made a payment by mobile phone so far, it is fair to say that Monetise is lagging Mpesa by many years

What do you need?

During a strong self actualisation phase at university, we studied something called "Maslow's hierarchy of needs". For those of you who are not familiar with it, American psychologist Abraham Maslow identified five levels of human needs; physiological, safety, love, esteem and self actualisation. The broad idea is that once a person fulfils needs at a lower level they can focus on needs at the next level. Kind of makes sense; if you're day to day existence includes serious safety threats, you're probably not going to worry too much about love, esteem and realising your dreams. Only once your personal security is assured will you begin to think about them.

Maslow's hierarchy (from Wikipedia)

Why am I talking about Maslow's hierarchy? Two reasons connected to the last week, one related to Kenya in general and one related more to experiences from the week.

I would argue that basically all people in European and north American societies fill the first two levels and therefore spend the rest of their lives worrying about levels 3-5. I'd even go as far as to say most people in e.g. the UK focus on trying to fulfil level 5 (self actualisation).  For anyone who disagrees, I have three words for you: Britain's got Talent. Actually I'm using the UK as an example, but you could replace it with any European or north American country. Likewise you could replace Britain's got Talent with a host of self-actualisation/instant fame reality TV shows which exist across the western world, stretching from X-factor to Big Brother. A more menial, less fabulous example of this focus on self-actualisation would be the reliance of most western countries on imported labour to do their dirty jobs because the native population consider themselves above these jobs;  regardless of how suitable parts of the native population may be for higher level jobs. In the UK this form of self actualisation has manifested itself through 40% of eighteen years olds going to university. If 40% of the population go to university and subsequently expect a self-actualising job in line with their studies, where are the future tradesmen, drivers, shopkeepers, factory workers and so forth going to come from? Debate for another day (or the comments box at the bottom of the page).

Back on to Kenya. Driving around in the last week I have been surprised by the range of non-self actualising ways people make money here. Peddling goods in traffic jams. Carrying things to people's cars. Queuing for other people in government offices. Hunting through rubbish dump for things to sell. Or livestock farming on the same rubbish dump. Just a handful of the not-particularly-attractive "career options" I've encountered.  And that's before entering into the darker side of economic activities, of which there are plenty here.

Interestingly, the lack of self-actualisation does not seem to be limited to the poorer part of society. I've also noticed that some of the richer people appear unhappy with their lives as they are forced into the family business. Many of the stores I buy building materials from are family owned operations with an enthusiastic father and unhappy looking son(s) behind the counter. There is no doubt the families which run these stores are pretty well off. But the son(s) often look like they would much rather be doing something else with their lives.

I'm therefore pretty grateful that, like yourself, I've had the chance to have a fair go at self actualisation. Indeed, this trip in itself has to an extent been a form of self actualisation. However, as you might have picked up from previous posts, during this trip there have been challenges at the lower levels of  Maslow's pyramid as well. This week contained a certain amount of cascading through the levels of the pyramid. I won't go into details of all the incidents; just suffice to say that dealing with public administration in Kenya can make you end up feeling completely useless (there goes level 3: esteem). I will however highlight one particular event  which provided another wake up call.

However bad you think queuing in the commune in Brussels is, it's paradise compared to government offices here. No indication of where to go, no clear queuing system, no-one to ask. No photo can quite do it justice. This one isn't even mine.... I was too caught up trying to navigate this hell with absolutely no positive outcome.

Friday was a busy day and a horrible, horrible traffic day in Nairobi. As ever I had a long list of things to do, and so I was driving around all day. By the time I finished at 530p.m. on the other side of town, I had a car loaded up with building materials including 20 boxes of tiles. In order to get home on Friday night rather than the early hours of Saturday morning I decided to try and go round Nairobi rather than through it.

As it turned out, traffic was truly awful going round Nairobi as well. After two and a half hours, I was past the traffic on an empty road in the open country, still about 40km from home, when there was a pop. Burst tyre.

Kenya after dark can be a scary place. It's night time when most bad things happen. By bad things I mean really bad things, and as you can imagine from an earlier post, the police do a limited amount prevent these things from happening. By way of example, it is estimated that there are 10 car jackings per day in Nairobi. I couldn't tell you how many armed robberies and abductions there are.  Unsurprising then that many people driving alone at night try to keep on driving if they get a flat tyre rather than stop and change it.

Aware of the fact that this is not a good situation, and conscious that I wouldn't be getting very far on three tyres with my car load of tiles, I proceeded try and change the tyre as quickly as possible. What happened next was a sequence of disasters which led to me still being stranded there over two hours later. In short, the jack wouldn't raise the car high enough to change the tyre. I tried various things before deciding the only solution was to take all 300+ kilograms of tiles out of the car and try again. Which I promptly did. Only for the jack to break under the new lighter vehicle weight with burst tyre already off the car.

That was an "oh 5*!7" moment. Night, alone, long way from home on a dark road a kilometer or two from the nearest town. No way of moving the car. 20 boxes of tiles worth a few hundred euros sitting by the roadside. No small amount of cash in my pocket. However, suddenly concern number one didn't become the tiles, money or even my rumbling stomach which hadn't had any food since 10am. It was security. Guys had been periodically walking past and staring. I expect most of them were just on their way for a Friday night out, but at night on a relatively isolated unlit road it is difficult to see what people are carrying or to gauge their true intentions. This was not a great situation to be in. All thoughts related to levels 3, 4 and 5 of the pyramid were off the agenda;  the whole focus was level 2. I was even considering abandoning the car and walking to the town before it got too late.

How did I get out of this situation? With the help of two good Samaritans, one who I knew and one who I didn't.

Firstly I called a cousin to see if he could come and help, which he could. Secondly, one of the staring passers-by offered to lend a hand. Now the old saying "be careful of strangers bearing gifts" came to mind. But after sizing up the guy and seeing he wasn't hiding any weapons I concluded he was relatively harmless, and that I was better off with a companion than without. After all, single would-be attackers will likely think twice when they see two guys rather than one. In the end it was a wise decision, as it took my cousin two and a half hours to make the 15km journey. Traffic in Nairobi can indeed be that bad, even at 9pm at night.

It was an uncomfortable enough wait with a companion; without one it could have been even worse.

All's well that ends well though, and finally my cousin made it with a friend and with some strange combination of multiple jacks and stones we got the car moving. It took me until the early hours of Saturday morning to get home. But after a matoke chip feast, at least levels one and two of the pyramid were fulfilled again.

Go west... there are people there

It's funny how the word west is associated with rich and fashionable, while east is thought of as poor. In the UK, several fancy shopping malls have "west" in the name; Westfields, West One, West Quay to name a few. The only shopping mall with "east" in the name which springs to mind is East Kilbride shopping centre. How exotic....

The east side of cities in the UK are generally associated with poverty; east London and east Glasgow for example bring such images into the mind. There is actually a reason for this - the wind generally runs from west to east in the UK. As a result, industry was built on the east of British cities to avoid the resulting smoke blowing back over the city centre. Workers then chose to live close to their jobs, i.e. on the east side.

This positive aura surrounding the world "west" has transferred its way to Kenya as well. The main eastern part of Nairobi, Eastleigh, is a predominantly poor, Somali inhabited neighbourhood. It borders other poorer neighbourhoods such as Kariobangi, which I have mentioned in aprevious entry. By contrast, the western areas are generally pretty nice areas to live. Upper hill, Lavington and Kileleshwa are all affluent areas to the west of the centre. That said, there are some slum areas to the west as well, including Kenya's (and many say Africa's) largest slum Kibera.

But the hub of Nairobi's shopping and entertainment can be found in an area to the north west of the centre appropriately called Westlands. And at the heart of Westlands, stood (and still kind of stands) a shopping

centre you might have heard of called Westgate.

Westgate nowadays... strange to think what happen here just a few months ago

Westgate has been pretty present in my life the last few days. I drove past properly for the first time during this trip Friday morning before last.  It was a bit spooky to imagine what had happened there just a few months earlier.  The same night, I met the a survivor of the mall attack who had escaped with the help of waiting staff. Sadly I didn't get to talk to her nearly as much as I would have liked to. I did however get to speak extensively to an interesting, but strange French guy who, based on his experience with Al Shabbab through his job, reckoned they weren't responsible for the  attacks. We  had a long philosophical conversation. While essentially on the same page, we differed a bit on the Westgate issue; he believed that if you treat people nicely and with respect, you won't run into problems, including on the day of the Westgate attacks. While I fundamentally agreed, I felt that it didn't matter how you acted that day; that was one situation where however nice you were, if you found yourself in the wrong part of the building, it was curtains.

Every time one goes to anywhere fancy in Kenya, one is reminded of the left over impacts of the Westgate attacks. I'm currently writing this in a shopping centre called Village Market. After a long week with very little contact to civilisation beyond negotiating material prices and fighting over the direction of parquet laying, I felt the need to indulge a bit, so I came here. Just to get in however, I had to pass through three security checks (two vehicle one body search). Even now I'm in thought there are armed police and/or army on every entrance. Still, it's a bit more lax than the first time I came here during my second week in Kenya (and less than 3 weeks after the attacks); that time I sat with my coffee to my left and an armed police officer lurking to the right.  

Westgate was a sad reminder of the instability which, ironically, lies to the east of Kenya in Somalia. Like the attacks which on the embassies which preceded it about 15 years earlier, it's left a lasting impression on the country. But the country has fought, and is still fighting to overcome the event.

As for the east-west issue, the global balance of power shifting, and it shows in Kenya. Ten years ago you'd struggle to find a South East Asian in Kenya; nowadays there are plenty of them. While China is still associated by many Kenyans with low quality products, other places to the east of Kenya such as South Korea, Malaysia, Japan, Indonesia and most notably the Arab countries are associated with high quality. With perceptions changing, maybe in a few years someone will open a shopping centre with east in the name.

The thin line between stupidity and success

"Success is going from one failure to another without the loss of enthusiasm" - Winston Churchill.

"Stupidity (insanity) is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results" - Albert Einstein.

Currently I feel like I'm walking the thin line between stupidity and success. Days are feeling like groundhog day - pretty similar problems every day, resulting in an early start, lots of running round to solve the problems, a late finish and a longer list of problems to tackle the next day. Some days I can understand why Bill Murray sat in the bath and dropped the toaster....

As I'm learning, the devil in construction is in the details. And there are a lot of pribbling-idle-head-giggletting  details when you're doing a renovation on this scale.

Many of the details are semi-predictable design based decisions, even if you couldn't foresee them all. What tiles would you like in the kitchen? Bathrooms? How would you like them laid? Colour of the grouting to go with that? Shade of woodstain for the cabinets? What about granite - colour and precise measurements? And the handles? Which light do you want here? And there? What about the sinks and toilets? And where exactly would you like them? What taps for the basins? Curtain rods? Window stays?

The problem is that every decision requires you to research (read: run between shops) and choose models before going into the details of fixing. Unfortunately money is limited, so budget has to be respected too; my workmen have been given chapter and verse on recycling existing materials on site. After choosing it's necessary to go and actually buy the materials; whether they be new materials or parts to renovate old objects. So every day includes an obligatory material run. Often for the more interesting aesthetic materials, but also for more mundane items like cement and plaster. One thing I've learnt is that during construction, you can never have enough cement. I've transported over a tonne of the stuff to the site in the last week alone.

Then there are the practical, often unpredictable details. For example, with so many changes, suddenly the way doors open, or even the presence of some doors doesn't always make sense. Others are things that no one really thought about earlier. For example my gutter guy put up the gutters this week, but hadn't thought about where to you send rainwater once it's in the gutters. So a couple of hours were sent talking through the possibilities, which inevitably resulted in additional work with additional costs.

Finally there are the actual workmanship based details. Wednesday I walked in to find the workmen haphazardly repairing parquet. The result looked like similar to that of a two year old trying to decorate her mother's birthday cake; i.e. points for effort but a horrible final job. To be fair it is the first time in 7 weeks that I've actually had to stop work, rip it up and show exactly what is needed by doing it myself. Bottom line is parquet was not the specialty of these guys (and given I spent most of Saturday doing the same thing, I think we conclude it's still not their specialty) .

The parquet is the most extreme example, but every day requires the supervision of little details. Workmen aren't psychic, so unless you specify that this light should be connected to these switches, or this kitchen cabinet should have this many shelves/drawers and open to the left, they won't know. And even if you tell them once they might forget. Understandable when handling works on a large scale. You could argue no one will notice a bit of wonky parquet, or a door which opens the wrong way. I believe that within a limit, this is true; one door opening the wrong way, or a couple of bits of wonky parquet won't be noticed. But if half a dozen doors open impractically, the basin blocks the bathroom entry, you smack your head on the showerhead because is too low, seven light switches don't do what you'd expect and the whole living room floor looks wonky, then everyone will notice. The only way to deal with this is to focus on the details on a day by day basis. Incredibly I'm not a details person by nature (ISTP/INTP for those who've done Myers Briggs). But focus on day to day details is a necessary evil.

Days therefore flip-flop between stupidity and success. Most days this week I've arrived home late and feeling on the side of stupidity; a feeling that has followed through to 630 the following morning when I get awoken by the light and have to drag myself up to go through the same routine. But taking a step back, maybe I'm just about keeping on the side of success. Judge for yourself (though the photos are 1 week old as I haven't had time to take any this week).

We chose Brussels beige grouting...in case you wondered...

When in doubt, go with white. The opposite of what Wesley said: "always bet on black". But hey, bathrooms are a different context.

Island! Or "highland" as the workmen (and 90% of Kenyans) write it.

Windows almost done. Actually the door has been done now too. I just haven't had time to take another photo.

I've concluded that the line between success and stupidity is indeed thin. It's a lesson I'll be taking back to my everyday life after these three months!

Blacking out

I remember growing up, power cuts were so rare they were exciting. Back down sarf Lahndan we shared the grid with a hospital, so power cuts almost never happened. In turn making them fascinating but spooky things when they did occur. Nowadays power cuts in the western world are almost unheard of. In five years of living in Belgium we have only lost power twice, once at work and once at home.

Bit of a contrast to the last week in Kenya then, where rains have caused all sorts of havoc with the power. The first power cut was on Saturday night. As Sunday's the only day I don't have to be up by 7,  Saturday night has become entertainment night; movie, net catch up etc. But last Saturday power went out at 7pm, meaning Saturday night looked something like this:

Very romantic Saturday night... except I was alone "und nichts war so klar"

It's interesting how much we have come to rely, directly or indirectly, on electricity for just about any form of entertainment. By 930pm, with efforts to read by candlelight having induced sleep rather than imparted knowledge, boredom and tiredness consigned me to bed.

Sunday was similarly interrupted by sporadic power cuts, which resulted in the weekly wash being done by hand. It's been a few years since I've done a hand wash quite as big!

Then Monday I came to the worksite to find 10 guys sitting down smoking a cigarette. No it wasn't a labour revolt. Yet another power cut meant that the carpenters and welders could do pribbling-idle-headed-giglet all, so were sitting around smoking and talking about football. I joined them to contribute to the latter part without doing the former. Thankfully full power was returned to the site on Tuesday otherwise it could have turned into a major time and money waster.

So three major cuts in three days. But why is this? The answer is not to be straighforwards. Let's look at three issues of power; supply, transmission and demand in Kenya.

In terms of supply, Kenya faces serious challenges. Most western countries use coal, gas or nuclear fired plants with renewable to top it up. In Kenya, this relationship is, surprisingly enough, reversed. Renewable energy sources make up the bulk of energy supply (hydroelectric alone accounts for well over half of energy generation with geothermal and wind also providing a significant contribution, and solar is emerging as a further option). Combustibles are then used to top up the renewable supply. The problem is that there is very little in the way of suitable fuel for power stations in Kenya, making combustibles an unattractive option in general. Petrol generators are often introduced in times of shortage as the emergency backup, but the cost of running them is constrictive so they are used sparingly. Power supply is therefore very dependent on environmental factors linked to renewable, and hence climate cycles.

To add to this, generation capacity is low. To put Kenya's generation capacity in proportion; the country has a population greater than that of California (45m versus California's 40m), yet it's has 1/40 of the generation  capacity .

Then comes the problem of transmission. More specifically, transmission requires wires and transformers, and these are made out of metal. Metal which has a value, and consequently often mysteriously disappears. So one day you may find your electricity not working as part of the transmission network has grown legs and gone somewhere else. The Kenyan government has introduced a ban on the sale of scrap metal for recycling in order to tackle this and other problems, but the scrap metal business continues, just with a different price structure to reflect the risk. (Incidentally, the boom of mobile phones in Kenya and various parts of Africa is, in my opinion, due at least partly to the chance to bypass the costly, wired transmission network  in a country which covers an area 2.5 times greater than the UK).

Finally comes the demand problem. Penetration of electricity in Kenyan homes is pretty low; according to some estimates, as few as only 20% of Kenyans live in homes with electricity. Now this figures is a bit distorted as in areas such as Nairobi the proportion is probably a lot higher, and in remote areas a lot lower; on balance I reckon 20% is too low, it's probably closer to 40%, but that's a personal guesstimate and it is still a minority. Nonetheless (and almost unsurprisingly, giving the growing middle class) it is estimated that demand in Kenya for power is growing at about 8% per year, consequently putting further strain on the limited generation capacity.

So limited generation capacity (and options) +  transmission problems + increasing demand = high likelihood of power cuts, like last week. But it's just part of life here. It makes one realise how reliant on electricity we have become, and in a world of decreasing resources, that we should not take electricity for granted.

Half century

The world has changed a lot in 50 years. Man has gone to the moon, communism has ended, we've had a female prime minister and a black president. Plus various other unlikely things have occurred (such as England winning the world cup and Germany avoiding wars :-D)

From a more African viewpoint, 21 countries have gained independence and a further two have managed to end apartheid. Kenya itself celebrates 50 years of independence on 10th December this year.

Last Sunday, a different, and surprisingly rare 50th anniversary was celebrated. That of fifty years of marriage, more specifically between my uncle and my aunt.

I find it quite a remarkable achievement. We live in an age where something like  half of marriages in Europe end in divorce. There is an increasing trend towards divorces in Kenya as well; in the 1970s there were only 10 divorce cases per year, while now there are thousands.

I was therefore quite honoured and humbled to be asked to celebrate my uncle and aunts 50th wedding anniversary with them, and in the presence of their close family, on Sunday. And it was great to see them grinning cheek to cheek, enjoying their moment and looking pretty darn youthful if I may say so.

As someone starting married life I can only hope me and my wife are around in 50 years to celebrate ours! 

Uncle and aunt, 50 years on and still happy

As my Aunt wisely said during her speech on Sunday "Marriage is a long journey. It's not smooth, there are lots of ups and downs. But it is a beautiful thing."

Feeding the world

Agricultural land is in increasing demand. Around 40% of the earth's surface is already used for agriculture, and this limited land space is being put under increasing strain. Growing populations already putting stretch the available farmland, and changing eating habits arising from increased wealth is further accentuating the problem. For example, people in developing countries get richer and (deservedly) start to buy more meat; but it takes 7kg of grain to produce 1kg of beef, so the strain on resources is further accentuated. You have to wonder how (and what) we will eat in a few years time.*

After the number of times I was asked to buy someone lunch this week, I can conclude that Kenya is a key victim of this food shortage!

Let me back up a bit for those of you who haven't spent time in Kenya. When someone asks you to buy them lunch, they basically are after a bit of money (read bribe). Previously I'd largely managed to glide past this problem, but this last week has been the tipping point where it seems that I'm being asked for "lunch" twice a day, culminating in a rather unsavoury incident I'll get to later. It's a clear-fire sign I'm well into stage 2 of the culture shock theory.

Now why exactly would you buy people "lunch"? Either to keep things running smoothly or to extricate yourself from a bad situation. Let's give some examples.

By last Tuesday I'd already  been asked for "lunch" by half a dozen guys, and bought it for two. Firstly some guys carrying tiles to the car (to ensure they got there in one piece), and secondly a private parking lot security guard who'd caught me sneaking back into the parking lot with shopping bags (wise to make sure I can use the parking place again, as I will need to). But these were just a few shillings, and the mother of all lunches was still to come on Wednesday morning.

It was a typically busy morning for me during which I had to make four stops before midday for materials. I was rolling into Nairobi, right by the UN (the UN Environmental Programme is based in Nairobi in case you did not know), stuck in typical morning traffic which was being hindered... ahem.... controlled by a disinterested looking police officer. As his handywork brought the whole road to a halt, he paced up and down inspecting vehicles. "Rental car, nothing to worry about", I thought. Wrong.

Next thing - knock, knock - "your tyre is worn out. let me in, you have to go to court".

It was clear pretty quickly where this was going but did my best to get out of it. We pulled over by a petrol station at the back of the UN and an argument ensued during which I stuck to the point it's an emergency rental car I've had 3 days, and he held his line of "I don't care, you're driving it" interspersed with grunts, all while looking at pictures of naked women on his new large screen Samsung Galaxy phone. This went on for about twenty minutes; during which our cop started asking all kinds of ridiculous questions like "does that plastic cup contain whisky" (when it had coffee) and "is your driving licence valid internationally"? In other words, second rate intimidation. Eventually I talked to the gent I was renting the car from by phone, we settled on me buying the our rotund controller a gourmet lunch (ultimately all he wanted) and deducting it from the rental charge. The mysterious Mzungu effect had finally run out.

It's funny because the western side of me, like the western side of most of us, while used to using money to smooth things over, never really expected to buy a police officer "lunch". Then again, the second part of me acknowledges I've been on a pretty good run to get so far through life without doing the dirty; most notably having talked my way out of a couple of pretty hairy situations with the police during my year and a half in Mexico, and  a few more here as well in recent years. Luck has finally run out.

But what's more worrying about this whole situation is the idea of a person like this working quite high up in the police force. From his uniform it was clear his rank was quite high, and he was probably nominating himself for traffic control duty only to line his pockets. There is good and bad everywhere, and the bravery of some of the police during the Westgate siege showed there are plenty of good police in Kenya. But unfortunately there are quite a lot of bad ones too. My encounter is a drop in the sea and rather minor compared to some of the things I've heard which go on here. Since arriving, I've heard stories which make this guy seem like a pussy cat:

If you've seen Training Day you'll know who this is...

Cross the police here at your peril...

* You'd never guess I work in this field. Spend long enough studying the problem and you might even convince yourself that companies like Monsanto (while far from angelic) aren't quite as bad as they get made out to be!

That Friday Feeling

There is a moment in the completely implausible, yet somehow intriguing horror flick the Mist, when you think "it's going to be ok after all". To give you the plot if you haven't seen it, a group of people have barricaded themselves in a supermarket to escape a multi-headed snake thing which appeared shortly after a mist descended on the whole town. Chaos ensues as people firstly disagree as to whether or not this snake thing exists; then do believe it exists after all seeing some tentacles but disagree as to how dangerous it is; then agree it's dangerous after they hear it kill the group of people who concluded it wasn't dangerous and decided to wonder out for a fateful stroll, but disagree how to handle the situation. Before long some wacko women has formed a doomsday cult preaching salvation through worship of the snake thing, which more specifically means human sacrifices with victims selected by the aforementioned loon with compliance enforced by her nazi police force armed with the supermarket's cooking knives. By this point as a viewer you wonder (a) why am I still watching this film and (b) how much worse can it get? Which is just when our film's protagonist decides it is time to leave this chaos, and escapes to a car with a group of like minded people, about 2/3 of which survive the snake thing, and they drive off not into the sunset, but rather into the mist. "It's going to be alright after all" you think. And then their car runs out of fuel....

Now why am I telling you all this? Well, firstly to avoid sounding like a broken record and starting this weekend's post with those words "The week wasn't easy" yet again. And secondly because on Friday I had the same feeling. "It's going to be alright after all". And then it wasn't.

As you can imagine the start to the week wasn't the easiest after illness. It inevitably got worse as the rust bucket broke down yet again, making it another matatu week. Given how many things I had to do across town, this actually resulted in me barely being at the house to oversee works as I took the matatu just about everywhere else but the house. 

Roll on Thursday.  A side-project I'm working on (and will talk about another time) began to take off and I got the car back. This felt like the leaving the supermarket moment in the Mist. It continued into Friday, when I was out buying materials for the first half of the day, enjoying non-matatu life. The car was being temperamental, but it was going forwards and backwards ok. Let's not be picky, what more can you ask for from a car? I got back to the house and for the first time in the whole week, I took a proper, relaxed and complete look at the works. Sure I'd been looking at the house all week (when I was around), but more at things like "how straight is are the window frames", "are the kitchen cabinets arranged correctly" and "are all the lights correctly wired to the right switches". In other words, details. On Friday afternoon, I took a step back and just looked around in general. It looked good. Ceiling up, walls plastered, skeleton kitchen cabinets on the wall, glass going in the windows and plumbing working. For the first time the end was in sight. Not close, but in sight.

Kitchen cabinets in place

Glass going in the windows

Ceilings all up

What progress looks like:

Signs of progress; from this starting point...

Through this chaos....

To here

Then I got in the car to go home. And it wouldn't start. Not even a chug; just completely dead. And my heart sank.

It's hard for anyone who's not been to somewhere like Kenya to understand just how frustrating being car-less here is. In Europe I'm a huge advocate of alternative means of transport. I've never owned a car in my life; I walk, cycle or take public transport pretty much everywhere and always have done. But here, doing what I'm trying to do, being car-less equates to trying to play football (soccer) with your shoelaces tied together.

On the 1 hour, 17km trip home which spanned the normal three means of transport (boda boda, matatu and walking) and during which I carried by bags of shopping (the type you only buy when a car is available), I  grudgingly gave in. It's back to hiring a car, even if there is no way I can afford it. At some point you have to say "enough is enough".

As for the film the Mist, if you haven't seen it and want to then stop reading <here>.  But in short, it gets worse. After the car breaks down, there's a rumbling sound like the snake thing. Knowing there is no escape from this monster, our protagonist takes a gun out of the glove box only to find there are four bullets for the five people in the car. He decides he'll kill the others (including his daughter) and face death through the monster himself. Having shot the other four he gets out of the car and holds his hands in the air, ready to face his destiny. Only for a US Army tank to appear through the mist. With the realisation of what the sound was, and what he's done, he falls to his knees.

Let's just hope that things here don't follow the same downwards spiral!