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!

If the price is right....

"Price is what you pay, value is what you get". The world's greatest investor, Warren Buffet said that in relation to stocks and shares. However, it is relevance in most areas where money is concerned. I've been doing a fair amount of negotiating since arriving and subsequently have some musing over the relationship in a Kenyan context. 

Let's examine the two aspects, price and value in order, starting with with price. In Kenya (like most places outside Western Europe and North America) price is a very relative concept. Effectively there are no fixed prices, only the price you can negotiate. There are only a handful of places such as supermarkets with non-negotiable prices; and even that won't stop many Kenyans from trying nonetheless ("Uh! You want 70 shillings for the milk! That's very expensive. What's your best price?!"). Therefore you will generally have to negotiate your price. Food, building materials, transport, car parts and repair, building contractors, even matatus... some of the things I've been negotiating since my arrival.

"So how much does this cost? How much does anything here cost?!" (not my photo)

Now negotiating prices is a bit of an art form. As I've previously mentioned in another post, there are two starting scenarios during a negotiation; the crazy/Mzungu price starting point, and the "normal" price starting point.

I've generally been lucky with the starting point in most negotiations (but then again you make your own luck). The contractors I've negotiated with know the situation and know that I know what is fair, so have (with a few exceptions) provided reasonable quotes to start with which only require minor negotiation. Negotiating merchandise has been somewhat different as there are always people willing to rip you off, so the secret is to get a whole series of prices from different sellers first to establish what the rough starting price is, then make further negotiations with a couple of them. This has indeed been my practice. It takes time, but it pays off.

Now I could bang on about the price negotiating thing for a while, but instead I thought I'd give you a couple of the sales lines I've encountered during the last month and my personal ways of dealing with them. I should prefix that they are all from sellers starting from crazily inflated prices, hence the sharp replies!

Seller: "Normally the price is 700 but for you my friend, the price is 500".

Reply: "Normally I'd only pay 50 but cos I like you I'll pay 100".

Porter: "I'll carry that to your car for 150".

Reply : (as I take it out his hands) "That's ok I'll carry myself, buy some water the other end and keep the change"

Prospective (eventually rejected) contractor: (after quoting 250,000 and being  told to come up with another, more realistic quote and email it to me) "Why can't we agree on this today?"

Reply: "Because you have put a 2 on the front of your quote which shouldn't be there. Take the 2 off and we have a deal today, otherwise go away and come up with another quote if you're interested"

Tyre changer: "That will be 150".

Reply: "Tyre change costs about 70 bob"

Tyre changer: "It was a hard to change and took a lot of work"

Reply: "It's a brand new tyre. You get paid for the result you do and not for how much of a mess you make of it".

The replies in the examples may sound harsh; price negotiations are not always so rough; most have been very friendly! 

The three main rules I adhere to while negotiating are:

1. during negotiations, delay revealing your budget or how much you want to pay as long as possible; 

2. drop in references to possible repeat business "if our first deal is satisfactory" and 

3. always take your time over the final decision and if you're not happy walk away; it's surprising how much the price can drop when you do.

But after haggling over price you come on to the value side of the equation. The value is easy to ascertain if you have two different objects with the same price; the one with the lower price obviously provides the better value. However, often the two objects are not the same and there is a price-quality trade off which will determine the value side. 

A particularly interesting set of negotiations, from a value point of view, that I've had to deal with while here is that of building contractors. While the natural inclination might be squeeze building contractors to the limit and take the lowest offer, I believe (from limited experience) that it is not the best idea. Sure you can save a few bob only to have a shoddy job and hence receive poor value. Even a good contractor might be tempted to do bad work if squeezed too much in terms of price. Contractor negotiations have probably been the most interesting, as you are walking a fine line of cutting down prices without doing it to the extent that the guy on the other side of the table resents you and become unresponsive to your subsequent requests.

As a closing thought, it is easy to think that it is mean for someone like me (who while far from rich is  generally coming from a much better position compared to those I negotiate with) to push as hard as I do when negotiating. Surely it doesn't matter if I pay closer to the Mzungu price, it spreads the wealth to people who need it more? Or does it?

The funny thing is that I find this a very idealistic argument. My experience of people who ask the Mzungu price and stand firmly by it is that they are with few exceptions, greedy people who won't truly appreciate the extra they earn; they literally grab the money out of your hand and put on a mischievous ear to ear grin as soon as they have it in their hands.

It sounds judgmental. Hell it is judgmental. But the majority of people I have eventually transacted with after tough negotiations have provided high quality goods/services. I find it much more fitting to negotiate hard the price first, complete the business and acknowledge any "good value" received after the event; not only by explicitly stating satisfaction, but also by (if suitable) tipping or promising repeat custom. And maybe during any repeat custom I won't' be as demanding in the negotiations!

When it rains...

When it rains in Kenya, it pours. Literally and metaphorically.

November is traditionally the rainy season in Kenya. No surprise then that I got awoken at 2am on Friday with the sound of a torrential downpour, which on and off lasted the whole night.

However, this was not the only thing which kept me awake on Friday night.

The week has once again been a tough one, not least due to more car problems which have had me using matatus most of the week again. On Friday alone I took a total of eight matatus while on a building material hunt passing through various fascinating areas of Nairobi such as Industrial Area.

Having walked past places like this in Industrial area, there is an air of inevitability about the whole illness incident. Other side of the street from this, there is a fancy looking kitchen show-room...

The problem is though, as previously mentioned, trying to do more than one thing a day with matatus is difficult as you lose lots of time; waiting for matatus, during the stop-start journey itself, and walking between matatus and destinations. Not to mention that quite often matatus will just decide to finish their route prematurely, so you'll be dumped off in the middle of nowhere. And as you may have guessed the rides are not generally relaxing. Earlier in the week the record for number of people on a matatu was blown out the water; previously we'd touched 24 people in a 14 seat vehicle; one vehicle I took on Wednesday had 29 people (or at least that is the number of people I count from my cramped corner; it's possible there were a couple more out of my view). Admittedly about half of these were schoolkids, but still, 29 people in an already crammed 14 seater vehicle is some feat.

Add to that other problems with banks (it's easy to get used to all banking systems working 24/7 in Europe; not something which is always the case here and can lead to wasted trips to the bank and an inability to use internet banking) and some hiccups with the building works and it's fair to say that once again it had not been an easy week.

Shortly after the first downpour of rain on Friday night, there was a grumbling sound which did not come from the sky but rather from my stomach. Which signaled the beginning of the worst bout of gastroenteritis that I'd had for a very long time.

In retrospect though, it's not surprising. Having only been here for a month, my resistance to bugs is hardly high. Then what I'm likely to have come into contact with through overcrowded matatus and walking through some dirty areas of town, add to this the busy schedule I've been keeping and the fact that finding somewhere to wash hands properly has been difficult, there is an air of inevitability about the whole episode.

While Saturday was a far from pleasant day given I had no choice but to be at the construction site with a raging fever and the need for an hourly trip to the toilet (which currently is just a squat hole in the ground), it's also a timely reminder of the things we take for granted without realising; not just proper toilets but also easy access to medication in such circumstances (something I didn't have yesterday). What doesn't kill you makes you stronger...

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Following on from the sickness episode, social systems are another of those things which are taken for granted in countries where they exist. In Kenya, where government social systems are near to non-existent, more often than not the family is the social system.

One of the outstanding memories from the days after my father passed away is how the family pulled together. Within just two days there was a funeral-organising committee, and donations from family members to cover the bulk of funeral costs. Family pulling together in such a way is quite normal here, and indeed a side plot of the past week has been the coming together of the family in a similar way to provide support and help with hospital bills when faced with the serious illness of a cousin's father-in-law.  Family - creating a social system where there is not one.

The Mzungu effect

Ever seen those adverts for Lynx deodorant (Axe in Continental Europe) where a guy walks into a room and all the girls are instantly attracted to him? It's attributed to the Lynx (Axe) effect.

Mzungu is the swahili word which has traditionally been used to describe Europeans. Officially it means "aimless wanderer" and is used to describe anyone who looks out of place; starting with all white people and continuing even with the arabs and chinese.

Being identified as an Mzungu has its own unique effects, a bit like the mystical ones of the Lynx/Axe in the adverts.

 

Stage 1: Mzungu spotted. Stage 2: Mzungu hassled (not my photos)

On one hand, Mzungus get away with all kinds of stuff. Take police checkpoints for example; I have never yet seen an Mzungu detained at a police check point. Police have their own favourite vehicles to stop and try to extract money from; matatus and pick-ups being top of the list with rustbuckets in third place. Now while there are no Mzungu matatu drivers that I know of, there are plenty of Mzungu pickup drivers and they'll be waved by checkpoints with no hassle.

On the other hand, Mzungus can generally be seen coming miles off, so they get hassled by sellers immediately and any prices tend to instantly triple or quadruple. While prices for black Kenyans will start at 150 and the haggling challenge will be to reduce it to 120 or 100, the price for an Mzungu will start around 500 and if the Mzungu gets anywhere near 150 they should be estatic!

You might guess by the way that I'm writing, I have some experience with the Mzungu effect.

More often than not, Kenyans will struggle to place someone like me. On first sight, I'll get taken for  a pure Kenyan. While my skin is a bit on the light side by Nairobi standards,  my tone would look quite at home by the coast (where black africans, indians and arabs have mixed for years to create an average complexion not too far from my own). What's more it's even possible to find pure Africans of my tone; women primarily, but also some men from the Kikuyu tribe (the majority heritage of my father incidentally) are known for having light complexions.

But then I open my mouth and everyone's face drops. Very limited (but improving) swahili and however much I do the Steven Mclaren/JoeyBarton to remove the "sarf Lahndan" from the accent, it still sounds Mzungu.

So visual and audio do not go together. But this can be used to its own advantage. When stopped by the cops, I pull out a mzungu driving licence (UK) and tone down the accent moderation, and all minor discrepancies disappear, even if I'm driving a beaten up rust bucket (which tends to be the case). On the other hand, I blend in almost seamlessly when navigating Nairobi. Notably if I adopt the right demeanour and use of words when haggling then the prices will, in most cases, start at the right levels.

But there is still one group of Kenyans who can tell the truth better than any other. Children. The truth is I'm a Kenyan born, half ethnically Kenyan who has grown up in the UK and spent subsequent years living in various countries. Which officially speaking makes me Mzungu. And the children, notably those in small villages, pick up on it almost immediately.

Mzungu - "aimless wanderer". Maybe the kids who call shout that as I walk villages are more perceptive than you'd have given them credit for!