I usually set off from Nairobi for Nyeri before the light of day has manifested itself even an iota when only mad dogs, thugs and the matatu crew…….and off course yours truly and a few other hardy souls are the only ones astir. But I have noticed that while I am going against the flow of traffic i.e Thika bound the Nairobi bound side of the super highway has heavy traffic flow, a moving wall of headlights upon headlights not standing still caught up in a traffic jam but in an unbroken line of traffic. Could it be that these are the clever ones out to beat the Nairobi traffic or is it the opposite?
I truly do not miss Nairobi’s madhouse and world class traffic jam one bit something that I will continue rubbing into the raw wounds of my Nairobi brethren until the cows come home to roost! Or have I just mixed up my metaphors? It takes me 2 hours to drive the 160 kilometers to Nyeri on a Monday morning and it would probably take longer for someone from Ongata Rongai or Kitengela to get to Nairobi on a Monday morning a mere 24 kilometers or so away.
Coupled with the scenic drive, the quiet of the car and my own thoughts, it seems more like an hour’s drive. I can’t however help noticing the number of school children walking to school along the road in groups or in singles many of them thumbing rides from passing motorists between Makutano and Sagana town. Are they all really school children or could they be thugs dressed up in school uniform looking to ambush the unwary Samaritan who may stop to give one a ride to their school and find out that they intended to get a ride to somewhere else when a gun is pulled on them? Some of them certainly look older than someone of school going age but I digress! But why only in this section of the Nairobi to Nyeri highway (or what would it be called?) are there so many school children at that time of the morning seeing that it is just getting to 7.00 am? Don’t other children from other areas not go to school as well or is it that my journey coincides with when the kids on this stretch of the road are all enroute to school?
That aside, why do people stop to pick up school kids and give them a lift whether in school uniform or not? Do you know just how much trouble you could find yourself in if the last vehicle that that child was seen boarding was yours and then something happened to that child either on the way or after you dropped them off at their destination? This may seem callous and self-centered but you better give an adult a lift and leave the child to walk to wherever they are going. That is my unsolicited advice because you will have no defense if anything happened to that child because good faith or not that is a minor and you are going to be held solely responsible if anything were to happen to them while in your custody.
Now where was I? Oh yes, sometimes the great mountain is not shy and as the sun rises she peaks out in all her glory her misty outline silhouetted against the rays of the rising sun and visible from miles away gradually taking a more distinct shape the closer you get to her and that is a definite bonus to us early risers as we are shepherded into Nyeri two hours later by her majestic snowcapped peaks.
In case you were wondering why I don’t leave for Nyeri the previous evening, wonder no more for that is the reason I prefer travelling in the early morning just to catch a possible glimpse of Mt. Kenya’s peaks as I make my way to work.
Monday 24 February 2014
Friday 21 February 2014
Sawdust scatter and other musings of an immigrant:
In Nyeri it rained on Monday and on Tuesday and drizzled a little on Wednesday. The thick cloying dust has now settled but with the rains comes the mud, the puddles (thanks to the woebegone state of the roads in the interior of the town) and the cold. Everywhere you turn it is muddy swathes of tarmac where people have tried to scrape of their muddy shoes only resulting in no discernible differences between the road and the unpaved road shoulder. This is what must be happening in hundreds of towns across Kenya unfortunate enough to boast slivers of tarmac lined with muddy unpaved footpaths!
Call me daft if you want that it has taken me this long to find this out and I will just say Duuuhh! After all I was born and brought up in the city and it is only now that I have taken the plunge to reside in small town Kenya that I am realizing that the dirty sawdust on the floor on visits to my grandfather’s restaurant actually had a practical purpose!
Since the onset of the rains (weatherman says it a passing cloud though) everyone who walks into the bank treks in with some mud on their shoes and then proceeds to deposit half of it in the bank probably enough at the end of the day for a kitchen garden, quality herbs and all, try as they might to scrape it off before they enter the door. This goes for staff as well and so the poor cleaning lady is constantly mopping up muddy shoe prints or sweeping dried muddy detritus off the floor.
Many establishments, restaurants, butcheries, supermarkets, MPesa shops, barber shops etc have chosen to have a heap of saw dust at the entrance to their shops sometimes even scattered on the floor itself. While I have seen this many times over the years, I have never really stopped to think why. That stuff is actually very healthy. Through many rainy seasons and years of muddy shoes, not many people stop to even scrape of some of the excess mud off their shoes as they enter into an establishment. They just saunter in oblivious to the muck and the mud they shall drag into your shop!
Sawdust sprinkled on the floor or at the entrance to a shop is an absorbent that removes dirt and dust from the floor while also absorbing any liquids that may have spilt as well common with mushy mud tracked in on your shoes. To me it also seems to keep the dust levels in the establishment down after mixing in with the sawdust because you can imagine what effect dried mud would have on the dust levels in a shop or restaurant. After the day is done, then you just sweep it up together with all the other detritus throw it out and lay on another layer tomorrow. Perhaps well-constructed pavements and better repaired roads would remove the need for this sawdust scatter something you never see in Nairobi but perhaps happens in the outlying suburbs.
How healthy the practice is I shall not even dare to conjecture because it serves a practical useful purpose in addition to ensuring that not an iota of a precious tree goes to waste.
So for those city slickers like me that never knew why you found dirty sawdust on the floor when you visited your village shop back in the day (or upto today) thinking that everyone was a slob, now you know.
As for those who knew the reasons why, your medal is on the way!!
Call me daft if you want that it has taken me this long to find this out and I will just say Duuuhh! After all I was born and brought up in the city and it is only now that I have taken the plunge to reside in small town Kenya that I am realizing that the dirty sawdust on the floor on visits to my grandfather’s restaurant actually had a practical purpose!
Since the onset of the rains (weatherman says it a passing cloud though) everyone who walks into the bank treks in with some mud on their shoes and then proceeds to deposit half of it in the bank probably enough at the end of the day for a kitchen garden, quality herbs and all, try as they might to scrape it off before they enter the door. This goes for staff as well and so the poor cleaning lady is constantly mopping up muddy shoe prints or sweeping dried muddy detritus off the floor.
Many establishments, restaurants, butcheries, supermarkets, MPesa shops, barber shops etc have chosen to have a heap of saw dust at the entrance to their shops sometimes even scattered on the floor itself. While I have seen this many times over the years, I have never really stopped to think why. That stuff is actually very healthy. Through many rainy seasons and years of muddy shoes, not many people stop to even scrape of some of the excess mud off their shoes as they enter into an establishment. They just saunter in oblivious to the muck and the mud they shall drag into your shop!
Sawdust sprinkled on the floor or at the entrance to a shop is an absorbent that removes dirt and dust from the floor while also absorbing any liquids that may have spilt as well common with mushy mud tracked in on your shoes. To me it also seems to keep the dust levels in the establishment down after mixing in with the sawdust because you can imagine what effect dried mud would have on the dust levels in a shop or restaurant. After the day is done, then you just sweep it up together with all the other detritus throw it out and lay on another layer tomorrow. Perhaps well-constructed pavements and better repaired roads would remove the need for this sawdust scatter something you never see in Nairobi but perhaps happens in the outlying suburbs.
How healthy the practice is I shall not even dare to conjecture because it serves a practical useful purpose in addition to ensuring that not an iota of a precious tree goes to waste.
So for those city slickers like me that never knew why you found dirty sawdust on the floor when you visited your village shop back in the day (or upto today) thinking that everyone was a slob, now you know.
As for those who knew the reasons why, your medal is on the way!!
Monday 10 February 2014
Musings of an immigrant:
I couldn’t get a Sprite either in 1.5 or 2 litres. One of my favorite exotic flavor juices Red Guava was also not available. Did they have it in stock? They had never heard of Red Guava and had never stocked it but we have Passion, Orange, Pineapple, Red Berry and other variants of these in mixed flavors was the helpful response. What of curry peas, my favorite finger snack? Did they have that in stock…..ever? What is that I was asked but we have “njugu karanga” I was told. The office needed a foot scrapper and door mats where could these be found as they were not in stock? Blank stares met me obviously communicating that they had no idea what the hell I was talking about!!
This was a rude awakening since these are things that I have always taken for granted while shopping in Nairobi but which in Nyeri seem to be exotic, alien products probably since the suppliers do not wish to have dead stock on the shelves so choose to supply only their most popular flavors guaranteed to fly off the shelves. But don’t get me wrong! These products may be available somewhere around but I have not found them yet. The reality of small town Kenya is now sinking in and it involves decisions such as where to eat, where to get a haircut and a carwash or even a decent pub.
Nairobi spoils one for choice given that there a myriad of options to choose from on one street alone. In Nyeri a barber's shop is bound to be one of those River Road look alike places where we were taken by my father back in the day for a crew cut by Kinyanjui in a setting comprising those old comfortable barber chairs with poorly drawn characters on the wall depicting the various haircut and beard shave styles or a place squeezed in between an MPesa outlet and a restaurant almost as if it were an afterthought by the landlord where a poorly designed barber’s chair is located in an environment where three people present threatens to cause a riot all for the princely sum of 50 bob for a beard shave! 50 bob, I muse, so what gives those chaps in Nairobi the temerity to charge 200 bob for a simple shave?
But then again what standards of hygiene can be observed at 50 bob? Do they really thoroughly clean those hot towels or do they just rinse them off after the last customer and then reuse it on you when it is your turn? And that aftershave in a plastic bottle has to be the cheapest and smelliest on the market!
But again, the fact of the matter is that each town, market, village, county in Kenya etc has its own style of doing things and relating it to somewhere else is doing it a great disservice. So I will just take it one day at a time as I explore the possibilities that are there in Nyeri and consume what is available leaving my options open.
This was a rude awakening since these are things that I have always taken for granted while shopping in Nairobi but which in Nyeri seem to be exotic, alien products probably since the suppliers do not wish to have dead stock on the shelves so choose to supply only their most popular flavors guaranteed to fly off the shelves. But don’t get me wrong! These products may be available somewhere around but I have not found them yet. The reality of small town Kenya is now sinking in and it involves decisions such as where to eat, where to get a haircut and a carwash or even a decent pub.
Nairobi spoils one for choice given that there a myriad of options to choose from on one street alone. In Nyeri a barber's shop is bound to be one of those River Road look alike places where we were taken by my father back in the day for a crew cut by Kinyanjui in a setting comprising those old comfortable barber chairs with poorly drawn characters on the wall depicting the various haircut and beard shave styles or a place squeezed in between an MPesa outlet and a restaurant almost as if it were an afterthought by the landlord where a poorly designed barber’s chair is located in an environment where three people present threatens to cause a riot all for the princely sum of 50 bob for a beard shave! 50 bob, I muse, so what gives those chaps in Nairobi the temerity to charge 200 bob for a simple shave?
But then again what standards of hygiene can be observed at 50 bob? Do they really thoroughly clean those hot towels or do they just rinse them off after the last customer and then reuse it on you when it is your turn? And that aftershave in a plastic bottle has to be the cheapest and smelliest on the market!
But again, the fact of the matter is that each town, market, village, county in Kenya etc has its own style of doing things and relating it to somewhere else is doing it a great disservice. So I will just take it one day at a time as I explore the possibilities that are there in Nyeri and consume what is available leaving my options open.
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