Mission accomplished?

"After fighting everything else in your life has the volume turned down. You could deal with anything."

That quote comes from the bible for modern living that is Fight Club.

I'm writing this from a coffee shop in Koeln, where I've been facing first world problems all week since landing from Kenya on Monday. The very reason I'm here in Koeln is a first world problem; should we or should we not put a label on meat telling consumers if/how the animal was stunned before slaughter? And to add to that since Monday I've been facing the further problems of sorting out last minute meetings while following hierarchical procedure, preparing dull materials in German and making travel arrangements which will ensure I spend as little time in the dump that is Bonn. If you've never been, it's a village with two roads heading out from the centre which are lined with soulless industrial parks of government offices, four-person-office lobbying associations for strange products such as Ergaenzungsmitteln (vitamin and mineral supplements) and random international organisations. As a friend pointed out on Tuesday night, the UN organisation for bats is in Bonn. Seriously. For bats.*

But like our narrator in fight club, after what I've just been though in Kenya, these problems don't even seem like real problems. I'm finding myself just gliding through them. Their volume is turned down.

And with that bizarre introduction out the way, I thought I'd make a final post to talk about what I will and won't miss about Kenya now that I am (theoretically) back for good.

What I'll miss

1. Workmen and the house

I was warned by a cousin early in the process that the house will take your heart and soul. And she was right. Every day for 5 months I've slaved over that place. Suddenly it's finished and there is a void.

But just as much as I miss the house, I miss the people who worked there. The majority of them are honest, hardworking guys; it's heart-warming to find such people in a place and profession where many will just try to make a quick buck. Plus we had some pretty nice experiences together, me and the workmen. Such as eating nyama choma (roasted meat) and drinking beer together on the 50th anniversary of Kenya's independence.

2. Family                                                        

One of the greatest things about spending so much time in Kenya was having family so close. Even though I never got to spend enough time with them. But then again, when you're family is as big as my Kenyan one you'll never have enough time (my father had six direct siblings as well as a further 14 or so half brothers and sisters; and each of his direct sibilings has an average of six children; most of these children have in turn had children, about an average of two or three each; and then those children have also had children in a couple of cases. So how many cousins do I have? Take a guess at the bottom of the page...)

Still, we had some great times together, that is when I found the time to visit them. Which I know wasn't enough.

Hope you don't mind Nancy!

3. Food

Advocados . Tusker. Mangoes. Nyama choma. Matoke chips. Snack of champions (see below).

Plus it all tastes so much better after 10 continuous hours of physical labour and driving.

Snack. of. champions. Matoke chips and freshly made guacamole. My staple for several weeks.

4. Adventure

My wife thought she had tamed me. Even I thought, in the words of Danny Glover "I'm too old for this s..t". How wrong we all are. A leopard can't change its spots. Not completely.

Speeding through Nairobi traffic on a boda boda; hunting through Nairobi's dirty industrial area for random materials; spending time with my dukale guys; rally driving down a road through some beautiful countryside or cycling through hell's gate park.  All strange, but unique and (in different ways) exhilarating experiences.

5. The car

Katy might be a whimsical drama queen, but she's been my trusty companion through the whole experience. Except the days she refused to work. Which is actually about half of them.

Anyhow, I'll still miss driving her around. As well as the admiration she draws from bystanders. And the daily amusement of trying to fit increasing complex and large building materials in her.

Damn I love this photo.

All in all she did me well, even if she did force me to do stupidly dangerous things like drive 30km with only a handbrake because the normal brakes failed. Plus we had some fun together. I'll miss her.

What I wont' miss

1. The car

Pribbling-idle-head-giggletting useless rustbucket.

Surprise! I've broken down again....

2.Matatus

You just can't win with matatus. It's like that U2 song "with or without you.... I can't live with or without you". Except in the case of matatus, it's "inside or out of you.... I can't live inside or out of you". On a bad day, which is about half of them, inside you may feel like you're in a sardine tin death trap with a ghetto blaster. Outside, when you're driving your car you spend half of the time trying to predict what the matatu in front will do next. After all, matatus don't believe in using indicators. Or road rules in general for that matter.

3. Police. Maybe I'm too westernised as I'm used to a police who's primary role is to protect, and secondary role is to cause a nuisance (whether it be through inflexible adherence to stupid laws, ego trips, or occasionally hints of bribery). My impression of the police here in Kenya is that their primary role is to line their pockets, and secondary role is to do a bit of law enforcing.

4. Traffic. Picture this. 3pm in the afternoon, 33 degrees outside, stuck in the rust bucket which doesn't have air-conditioning meaning its closer to 40 inside. Four lanes of traffic as far as your eye can see on a road which officially only has two lanes with everyone blocking basically everyone. You need to pee and your engine gauge is in the red zone telling you the car could overheat at any time. You queue for 1 hour only to find out that the last hour of traffic and the fact you are now using your left foot for the accelerator and right for the clutch was all caused by nothing other than impatient drivers who would instead of waiting, tried to overtake causing gridlock in both directions. Welcome to Nairobi traffic.

5. Stress. I think these three months are the most hectic I've ever had, and I've had some pretty mad times. Working days have been 12+ hours long without breaks by the time you add on the administration and prep work for the next day. As my wife found out when she came to visit, it can get so busy that you can find yourself going without food or drink from when you leave the house in the morning till when you get back at night. Plus it's a seven day a week job. In short, construction is extremely stressful. If you've never tried you might think you just have to make a few nice decisions about colours while everything else just happens. The reality is far from that, it involves huge amounts of buying useless materials, going to the bank, trying to solve really annoying small things, going to the bank, making tough decisions, going to the bank, and cleaning. More cleaning than you can imagine. Did I mention yet that you also have to go to the bank? As if construction wasn't enough, the car and the trees added to the stress.

And my body is telling me now how stressful it was. Apart from gliding through problems the last few days, the other thing I've been doing is catching up with sleep. I've gone from sleeping 6 hours or less hours per night to sleeping at every possible opportunity.  Ahh, first world problems!

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But the house is rented! So finally the next trips to Kenya may be more enjoyable.

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* sorry Elaine. I still can't stand the place.

The gates of hell are nicer than you think

When you think about the gates of hell, you probably have an image from Dante's inferno of starved bodies being tortured by the devil's  helpers. In my case those helpers include Janet Street Porter, John Terry and Nick Griffin, who are talking, beating people and lecturing (respectively) while screens in the background show the moment Chelsea won the Champions league in a constant, uninterrupted loop to the sound of Backstreet Boys best (worst) hits. Ok, my vision of hell is maybe a bit strange.... *

What you probably don't imagine is this:

Those aren't the Devil's helpers. It's my brother and our self appointed guide Dominic.

Neither are those zebras the devils helpers.

Hell's gate is also a national park . It's one of Kenya's best kept secrets and where I spent Sunday.

After the last three weeks, some R and R was in order. By Saturday, I'd been working all day every day for 20 consecutive days, starting on 17 February with discussions in Madrid about sacrificio ritual sin aturdimiento (ritual slaughter without stunning) and ending with scraping paint off bathroom tiles yesterday afternoon. Even with the prize of a rented house in sight with the house being handed over next Tuesday, motivation had unsurprisingly been sagging.  Mentally it felt like I wasn't too far from the gates of hell.

So Sunday I hooked up with my brother and we cycled around Hell's gate national game park.

"Cycle"? I hear you say. Yes! While the best known of Kenya's 40+ game parks are Masai Mara, Tsavo, Amboseli and Nakuru due to the animals you can see, in my opinion the best is Hell's gate. It is (as far as I know) the only national park which you can enter on foot or by bike.  As a result it does not contain big cats i.e. lions, cheetahs or leopards. However it actually provides you with an even more amazing experience than waking up at 5am to spend the next 2 hours hunting for yellow/spotty things through a pair of binoculars from behind a car window while crossing your legs tightly because you desperately need to pee due to all the coffee you drank to make you semi conscious at such a stupid hour (and in most cases this is how big cat viewing occurs in e.g. Nakuru or Amboseli game parks). The amazing experience that Hell's gate can provide is getting close enough to zebras to almost touch them, sneaking past buffalo and trying to keep up with a galloping gazelle while on your bike.

This is the joy of Hell's gate - getting close to nature.

Incredibly close in some cases.

Even dangerously close in the case of bufallo!

Baby monkey! Just because....

And as if the joy of cycling is not enough, there is also the most amazing gorge with hot springs (which is where I believe the park's name comes from). You have to cycle through the whole park to get there but it's well worth it - a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

The pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.... the canyon

You wouldn't guess the canyon was quite that spectacular from the top though.

A room with a view - there is even a campsite, and you can wake up to see this:

If you ever come to Kenya, go to Hell's gate. You won't regret it!

As for me - it's back to work for the very final push. Two more days of house, three days of admin. Then it's back to Europe. To talk about religiose Riten/Schlactung ohne Betaeubung in Bonn. That's slaughter without stunning again. Bit of a different world from the game parks of Kenya...

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* You might have correctly identified a Chelsea theme in my version of hell!

You can't polish a turd

If you don't know this saying, basically it means however much you try to make poopoo look nice, it's still poopoo.

This is basically the case with my father's old banged out Peugeout, Katy (Perry). So named due to the licence plate KTP 833, with the Perry part being reinforced by certain other similarities, such as the large number of admirers it draws though you can't understand why, and it's demanding nature.

My relationship with Katy has been like that of a badly-matched arranged marriage. It started with a lot of fighting, continued with some time apart (I cheated on her with matatus because she refused to move) before reaching a stage where we somehow just tolerate each other. Nowadays she has her fit every three days or so, and I take her to the dukale. We have our understanding.

Take her to the do-what? The dukale*.

My main dukale guy twiddling some things under the hood again. Katy's engine tantrums are now a bi-weekly thing. 

The dukale are Kenya's handymen jim'll fix its. The ones for cars can be found in every major town in a rubbish-littered yard near the main matatu stage. The yard consists of a bumpy field filled with tens of cars (or vans or trucks) in various states of repair, with only one or two ways in or out; and rows of small iron shacks around the field selling car parts which block all other points of entry. The dukale (people) will lounge around  waiting for business by the iron shacks or the tyres which have been randomly half dug into the middle of the field. When a new car turns in off the road, a group of dukale will jump up and offer to repair a range of things, which may or may not include the actual problems that the vehicle is suffering!

errr... it's really difficult to capture the atmosphere of a dukale yard without arising suspicion. Not the kind of place you whip out your camera....

Now these dukale yards can look pretty daunting from the outside, but are quite fascinating once you are inside. The first time you go there you'll be harassed a bit, and if you're not careful you'll be ripped off. But if you get to know a good dukale, the door opens. You can use him to meet other dukale and as a result you will be able to fix almost any problem with your vehicle for between 200 and 1,000 shillings (1.80 - 8.50 euros; yes you read that correctly; and outside Nairobi it will be even cheaper!) Imagine trying to get a whole car wing filled, repaired and resprayed for anywhere near 10 euros in Europe; or a cracked exhaust pipe fixed for 3 euros (as I have managed to here)!

This fella spent three hours hammering, filling and repainting the rear wing along with his crew of two. Total bill? 1200 shillings (about 10 euros). 

As you can imagine, Katy has had a wide range of problems. As a result, I've developed a list of dukale contacts for just about every problem you can encounter in a car; I've got a traditional mechanic, an electrics guy, a welder, a doors and windows guy, a locksmith and a bodyworks fella.

Yet despite the tens of trips to the dukale yard, Katy just keeps developing problems. Ok, some of them are caused by misuse (see below), I'll give you that. Most of the other problems are a hangover from her sitting idle for 13 years.

No, really, I treat Katy very well. Don't overwork her at all.

She's developed a custom made roofrack.

Yes it is possible to drive like this. I managed a whole 10km like this but hit one of the pipes on a tree at the last bend.

So the next time decided the roof is a better option....

... also for wood.

lots of wood

As I near the end of the Kenya journey, I'm closing in on the moment in time where I have to sell (divorce) Katy. And I find myself looking at how to get the best settlement, i.e. how to make Katy as attractive as possible. Hence I've found myself fixing those annoying problems with the car during the last week that I had learnt to live with. Like having to climb out the driver side window because the door won't open. Or replacing the weatherstrips (water seals) on the window because every time it rains outside the car, a lake develops inside.  Or the boot (trunk) which requires a piece of wood to hold it open as the hydraulic lifts have broken, so if you don't put something to hold it up it falls on your head. I can't tell you how many braincells I've lost from that damn thing falling on my head.

But I am wondering if it's actually worth it. After all, as the title says, you can't polish a turd!

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*I've actually probably spelt this wrong as I've never had to write it previously. Plus the majority of Kenyans have a log of difficulty differentiating between letters "l" and "r". As well as "i", "a" and "e" to a lesser extent. So there is every chance it is written "dukeri" for example!

The cost of living

Do you ever wonder what other people have to do in order that you can live your life the way you want?

There are two ways of seeing this issue of "the price" others must pay for your way of living. The first way is that by consuming more, you create more jobs for others and hence have positive impacts on them. The real wolf of wall street, Jordan Belfort, effectively promoted this view in the context of Ferrari consumption in an interview .

"A lot of people had to die for me to be me" - Frank Costello.

The second way of looking at this issue is that for one person to live well, others have to pay a price. The classic example of course being for you to wear those nice but affordable trainers , someone has had to slave in a sweatshop. That is if you still want them to be affordable.

I guess in the end it's a facet of the whole capitalism versus socialism argument.

Now in the western world, it is quite easy to overlook the subject of your economic impact on other peoples' lives. The west is full of opportunity, and the majority of people determine their own fate to a pretty high extent, whether it be more intentional/consciously or unintentional/unconsciously.

However in a country like Kenya you are confronted with a different reality. As I've mentioned before, there is rich and poor and very little in-between. But in such countries of limited aggregate means, if the rich are to stay rich, surely they have to exploit the poor to some extent. Exploit how?

One example. Like in many countries south of the equator and/or east of the Greenwich meridian, it is normal for people with a certain amount of money to have full time house servants in Kenya. They can be treated badly or well, but are rarely paid well. My father had one in his house. The guy has been there for 36 years. A whole life dedicated to serving one person. He effectively came with the house. I won't tell you what he's paid, but let's just say it's tripled in the last two years yet I still feel guilty about it. As someone who grew up doing a lot of his own housework and working part time jobs as a teenager, the whole thing is still bizarre for me, but that's another story....*

Now if you're not shocked enough by the idea of a servant, how does the idea of multiple servants hit you? During the efforts to rent the house, I've had prospective tenants come and ask about where they can house their army of servants, gardeners, handymen, security guards and other labourers. There are plenty of people who employ three, four or even more full time live-in employees as well as some part time ones.

Now comes the question. Are these servants paying a price so that the richer can maintain their standard of living? Or are they benefiting? Just imagine for one moment dedicating your entire life to one person, doing everything for them for little reward (and please don't make comparisons to god or marriage :-)... I mean working for one person, watching them enjoy luxury while you live in basic conditions). But at the same time receiving employment and security in return which you might not otherwise have. I guess the reality is that the people who are servants are both benefiting and paying a price at the same time.

The servants example is possibly the most "in your face" example in Kenya. But on a daily basis here you can be easily reminded about this kind of moral dilemma. What do others have to suffer for us to be us, and do they just suffer or benefit as well? I don't fully know the answer or the solution... but maybe you do, in which case use that box below.

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* The housework was mum's way of educating me. She made me do it from a young age and I'm glad she did! There's your blog mention mum :-)

End game?

It's often said the last mile is the hardest mile. That is definitely how it feels in the case of construction. If you saw the house when arrived at the beginning of January and then saw it again now, you'd struggle to notice any difference. Actually, lets perform a little experiment. There are a series of photos below. One is from end December/beginning January, and one is from today. Which is which? Answers at the bottom of the page....

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

So having seen that you probably think I've been sitting around with the workmen just enjoying the Kenyan summer for the last four weeks. Wrong! Actually a hell of a lot of work has happened in that time. But they have been minor things; but the kind of thing that if it isn't done, you will notice at some point. Examples? Repair and varnishing of skirting, curtain boxes, doors, door frames and wardrobe fronts; painting of windows and gates; repair and painting of wardrobe interiors; cleaning up of fireplaces; installation of mirrors and doorstops; straightening of lights; fixing of cupboard handles; putting up towel rails and toilet roll holders; and so on. They may sound minor and quick jobs, but they are actually fiddly and take a lot longer than you'd expect.

But the end is in sight in more ways than one. We are hoping to finish the interior before I leave on Sunday, which will just leave some exterior works to do. And most importantly, the end game is being reached; there is a seriously interested tenant who wants to move in March.

A house is meant to be lived in by a happy family. And so the end game has always been to have a happy family rent the place. Look after it and allow us to recoup the investment. It appears that we are closing in on that goal. 

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Answers: if the floor is shiny, it is from late December / early January, if it is dirty looking it is from today! And the bathroom one should be pretty obvious - painted walls. So that is 1, 4, 5 7 and 9 that are from today. Bet the shiny floor tricked you at least once! Secret is to look past it and at the little things; painted walls, repaired skirting, curtain boxes, painted windows etc. Should also say that some of the late December / Early January pics were carefully taken with a funky wide-angle lens and used in the advertisement for marketing the property. As photos are everything when marketing properties - think about which ads you replied to last time you moved flat/house!

Do the Nairobi Shake

It's like the Harlem shake. But Nairobi style.

As you can imagine, car drivers in Nairobi don't stop for pedestrians.  This leads to a strange situation where pedestrians start to cross the road, cars accelerate towards them, and the pedestrian does what I can only describe as the Nairobi shake to avoid the cars. How to describe the Nairobi shake? Well, it's both waddling and bouncing at the same time; the rear end propels the whole body forwards while arms dangle at the side.

It's a lot easier to watch than for me to describe, so checkout this video (the best examples are where it starts at 1:20 - this link - but there are plenty of Nairobi shakes in there before and after that. Plus  a narration about pedestrians flouting traffic laws and the threat of them being arrested for attempted suicide. If you are wondering WTF, just watch it all!)

You know you've been around too long when you find yourself doing the Nairobi shake as I did today. So if you see some guy crossing the road like this in Matonge next week, likelihood is it's yours truly!

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Matatu of the week

Look, I'm not going to be able to top the Hitler matatu this week. I'm not sure anything will ever top the Hitler matatu. But I've run into this one quite a few times this week and it makes me laugh. I think it's meant to be latin themed with a dyslexic person trying to write "Marco Polo" along the bottom. 

Magopollo or Marco Polo? you decide...

Imekataa

Swahili for "it has refused". Something that is commonly heard on building sites in Kenya. Basically the person who says this is trying to tell you that an inanimate object (brick, cement, basin, pipe whatever) is responsible for the situation you are facing. Now I'm all for free will, but when it comes to inanimate objects making choices, well....

Admission of responsibility seems in many cases to be a fairly alien concept in Kenya. I have found that there is often a sad habit of pushing blame onto just about anyone or anything; more so than anywhere else I have lived. This is quite against my personal belief that responsibility for problems is normally a shared thing. No one person is fully responsible for a problem, and if you find yourself stuck in a mess you should probably acknowledge a bit of responsibility for it - even if it's only a small part.

Last week has been spent dealing with various issues of responsibility. While the majority of my guys (most notably my main contractor) have been good, I had also previously encountered  a couple of cases of responsibility dodging. One of the more amusing ones was where the guys came to lay the kitchen granite but only brought one grinding piece with them to smooth about 20 linear meters of very dense rock. Unsurprisingly enough it broke halfway through, and so they came to inform me that "this piece has let us down" so they would have to come back the next day with a new one. That was pretty minor though compared to the responsibility dodging of the last week.

Last Wednesday the guy buying the trees came to me to inform me that he's making a loss and he won't be able to make the final payment of the last installment. Now given this was a flat sales agreement with no performance related clause, and he proposed the sales figure of his own free will, I told him he would have to pay. Thankfully the sale is backed up by a signed agreement that reads like a short European Union legal document (implementing regulation!), and the threat of legal action should take care of that one. While he's enumerated all his problems at length in an attempt to get me to let him off the hook, there has been very little admission of responsibility from his side for his poor result, and yet a wish for someone else (me) to pay for it.

Then on Thursday it seemed like the nightmare of the solar installation was coming to an end. They had delivered the tank and solar tubes on Monday. How many tubes out of 24 do you think made it in one piece? Whatever number you have in mind, divide it by two and you might be close. Seven arrived in one piece. Out of twenty four. The solar installers were meant to come on Thursday to do the installation along with a replacement 17 tubes. So came the call, and the inevitable price negotiation which it is fair to say did not go particularly well. The guy I've been dealing with is a weasel of a man, and halfway through our negotiation, hung up and turned off his phone. Only when I called him back on the other line five minutes later did I discover he'd sent the installation guys out for delivery only as he deemed that him hanging up meant that we could not agree a price. And claimed he didn't hang up but that the battery died (yet didn't bother to call me back). Plus added that I should be charged for delivery as they are making so many trips. To which I politely told him where to place his delivery charge.

Then throughout the last three weeks I've been fighting with minor finishing issues. Leaking basins, inadequate water pressure to take a shower, gaps around windows etc. Mistakes happen, yet there is a lack of will to correct them in many cases, as if the mistake was not the person's fault. The plumber has been back about ten times to fix those basins, is complaining these trips are expensive, yet we still have four leaks. The window gaps are being dealt with, albiet grudgingly.

So where does my responsibility lie in all of this? I have to shoulder some of it. For the trees, I effectively performed a closed auction and took the highest bid. All bidders knew this was what was happening. So there was always a fair chance that the winner would end up with winner's curse. And in view of that, I should have been stricter on the timing of payments to avoid this situation. For the solar, I should have walked away and dealt with someone else. Though that is easier said than done given there are only three companies in Kenya doing reasonable quality solar water heaters; the others are hard to get to; and having already made a small payment for the survey I wanted to get it back (good money after bad). For the finishing, it's a harsh reminder that you have to be checking all the time. Both issues I had identified and talked to the contractors in question about. But talking once or twice is not enough in every case. You have to keep checking and checking, and if it's not being done right, keep reminding.

On the bright side, at least I'll learn some lessons for the case I ever do this again....