| Some impressions of Kenya |
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Well, Africa was less eventful this time. Here's a brief and somewhat curmudgeonly first take on the Kenyan section of the trip. I'll come back to this theme with more sunlight and grace after I've recovered from jet lag and a huge backlog of email and MS reviews. The conference at Maasai-Mara (organized by Natural Events) went well, and the wildebeest and zebra migrated from the Serengeti plains to Maasai-Mara on schedule. Visiting Kenya was, well, interesting. The general impression is of a parallel universe with some things recognizable and others deeply strange. This isn't just an Africa thing; I was born and grew up in Africa. Rather, Kenya appears to have a national pastime of perfecting the dysfunctional. Of course, dysfunctionality is a matter of perspective... Kenya shillings trade officially at about 60 to the dollar. This reminds me of Zimbabwe dollars, which, when Robbin and I visited Victoria Falls a few years ago, were also trading at that rate. We held back, knowing we'd get more on the black market (we got 250 to the dollar from our hotel manager that same day). A day after that we traded Zim dollars in the street at 350 to the dollar, and a day later we got 500. Nowadays AFAIK the figure is in the tens of billions. The true value of the Kenyan shilling in mid-2008 is probably closer to 250 to the dollar, as a sign of which, absolutely no-one in the foreign exchange business was willing to turn our left-over Kenyan shillings into any form of negotiable currency at the end of our trip. This also happened to us with our Zim dollars years ago, and is usually a sign that the street-legal and black-market currency values have lost touch with each other. Because the shilling-dollar rates were as realistic as flying hippopotami, this meant that everything in Kenya sold for five-star prices. One hotel (owned by Moammar Qaddafi - Hi, Mo!) charged USD300 a night; the would-be stodgy Stanley, the ex-colonialist standby with checkered marble floors, was better value at USD250, though they charged ten dollars for a glass of indifferent South African wine that costs USD3 a bottle in Cape Town. Then again, maybe I'm a skinflint when it comes to travel expenses. Knowing that some of this money was trickling down to the locals would have made it feel better, but that wasn't the case. Here comes a travel hint: Should you find yourself in the Nairobi Stanley, and rebelling against high food and drink prices, cross the road to the Nakumatt store, ignore the kilogram bags of MSG they sell (I am not making this up), and buy essentials there. Expect to be politely but persistently accosted every few minutes when walking on the streets. Nairobi is nightmarish. The roads are mostly locked into intricate traffic jams that only barely fail to be three-dimensional. All rules of the road except impromptu negotiation and playing chicken are ignored, if they were ever known in the first place. There appears to be a universal distaste for breathable air, so the vehicles compete to see which can belch the foulest gouts of black smoke. The few green spaces are dominated by monuments of inspiring ugliness that thankfully are disintegrating from neglect. The shortest road trip is a low-tech Star Wars ride, except smokier, noisier and scarier. At some of the traffic roundabouts marabou storks peer out from the limbs of stunted trees, watching the crazy traffic like unsuccessful undertakers pining for a fresh bereavement. The road between Nairobi and the Maasia Mara is at that peculiar stage where, having spent decades being abused and neglected, it is now compelled to exert a sadistic vengeance on anyone foolish enough to try using it. Patches of relict tarmac survive at the crown of the road, decorated by snarling potholes hungry for new tires to shred. Elsewhere a leprous patchwork of mud, sand and disintegrating asphalt stitched together by yet more omnivorous potholes makes every meter of forward movement a bone-jarring "African Massage", as our Kenyan driver described it. Passing other vehicles, such as trucks moving at walking place, is usually very difficult and always life-threatening. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Police checkpoints, emphasized by rusty tire-shredders angled across the road to encourage compliance, impose cash fines for imaginary offences every few kilometers, helping Kenya's society move forward at its accustomed rate. In the Mara, the animals were magnificent and the conference was excellent. As usual, the inflated shilling led to five-star prices for discretionary items. But, the beasts and the excellent conference made up for all that, especially after we talked the game camp management out of playing "jambo - hakuna matata" at every possible opportunity. (If I hear that song again I shall spit). More later... |
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| Last Updated ( Saturday, 09 August 2008 16:48 ) |
