Planes, trains and automobiles

Europe is blessed with cheap flights and extensive train (and bus) network which can take you just about anywhere you want to go. In contrast, flights in Kenya are expensive (it's twice the price to buy a return from Nairobi as it is to buy one to Nairobi); trains are to all extents and purposes non-existent, and buses (and minibuses - called Matatus) while always amusing but not wonderfully practical unless you only have to go one place a day and don't mind walking a few kilometres each end (we'll talk about matatus in more detail another time!)

A car is therefore essential. So essential that there were 1.6m vehicles on Nairobi roads in 2011 (according to the government itself). That's in a city of 3.3m inhabitants, located in a country which is still classed as developing by most measures!

Since arriving I've been renting a car. It's a good short-term solution, and while the price is very reasonable (3,000ksh/day; about 28 euros), over a period of 3 months it will add up to some wedge. A longer term solution is therefore needed.

Cue the latest crazy plan. As if fixing a house is not problem enough, we are now onto fixing a car; my father's old late 70s' Peugout 504. Unfortunately it has one or two minor problems. Like the engine not working, for example (and it has no battery, flat tyres, bit of rust and a few dents). So today's excursion, kindly set up and negotiated by my cousin Kaibi, took me to a shanty area called Kariobangi, where I bought an engine.

Entrance to the car graveyard

One way in, one way out..

Who knows what you'll find behind those walls

Kariobangi was originally a low income estate which has since sprawled into a shanty with all kinds of entrepeneuring types recycling and building just about anything. This makes it the perfect place to find an engine to fit a car which hasn't been produced for 30 years. However it also makes it the perfect place to get mugged if you stand out. "Be alert all the time, and don't take anything out of your pockets, certainly not your phone" my cousin warned me. We left my rented car at the petrol station by the narrow, and only entrance to the shanty and changed to his less conspicuous looking pickup.  A short drive later we hit what looks like a car graveyard, but is actually the most comprehensive scrapyard I think I've seen yet. Entirely empty chassis lining the narrow mud road,  with all the parts carefully catalogued and stored in a cast iron shack. Quick test of the engine and we hand over 90,000 shillings (850 euros) and leave with a 300kg piece of metal which requires 4 people to move. Now just to mount the thing.

I know what you're thinking "850 euros? You can buy a car for that!" Not here you can't....