Nasty nasty Nairobi fly

Nairobi, or at least the area where we live in, is a very lush and green area. So it is understandable that it also has a very lively fauna. In addition to the bigger animals, it is also a home to numerous insects.

It's weird how the different insects come in waves. A while back there were big black insects that looked like a hybrid of a cockroach and grasshopper everywhere, then came the sugar ants and as it is the rainy season the kumbi kumbi or flying termites.

And now we've seen the Nairobi fly, the nastiest of the nasty.

Nairobi fly is not a fly at all, but a small beetle. It does not fly, nor does it sting or bite, but it can still cause some serious harm to us. Although it lives in rotting leaves and long grass, it's attracted by light and tries to get inside the house in the evenings.

The nairobi fly's circulatory system contains a strong toxin, apparently this toxin is 15 times more poisonous than cobra venom, that causes blistering and burns on the skin similar to having acid on your skin (which the toxin in fact is). This happens if you crush the animal against your skin, and the worst is that the poison will spread to a wider area and if you rub the infected area against other parts of your body chances are you'll get the toxin there too.

As the animal is small, 6-10mm, it is easy to crush it by accident. You'll not notice it immediately, the itching and burning starts 10-18 hours after you've been exposed to it.

Healing takes time too, the rash will typically disappear within 10-12 days and may leave scars on the skin. That's why the insect is also called Nairobi eye, as many people have scars on their faces caused by it.

You can treat the burns with antiseptic wash and a weak steroid cream, but some also swear on the effectiveness of tooth paste (the old type, not gel).

Luckily we've only seen them so far but none of us have burn marks yet. Some people we know have, so I hope the rainy season is over soon and the nasty Nairobi fly gets replaced by the next insect (which by the way I hope is not the locust. I've seen a few of them already and they are not nice either).

Burning hot Nairobi summer

Summer in Nairobi is typically from January to March, before the rainy season (called long rains) starts. And boy, has it been hot and sunny. In the afternoon, around 3pm seems to be hottest time and the temperatures some days exceed +30C. Luckily mornings and evenings are cool, so it is actually quite nice. At least the water in the swimming pool is tolerably warm yet refreshing.

So weatherwise I love it. What's bad though is that it is really dry. The earth is cracked and there's dust everywhere. Even after a short jog you can clearly see the sock lines, white under the socks and reddish brown from ancles up. I've also developed a bit of 'golfer's ancles', thanks for all the sun or maybe it is the dirt tattooing my legs

I'm surprised there are no bush or other big fires as there's open fire everywhere. People make small fires for cooking, burn trash and to warm up in the evenings so one would think there would be accidental fires as a consequence of that. It is good that's not the case since emergency services are almost nonexistent over here.

If you dial 999 in Kenya or even the direct number for your local police station, most likely you'll get an automated message saying: ‘The number you require is out of service/not accessible’. I've only seen an ambulance a few times, and police don't have too many vehicles and Police often like to catch a lift to a crime scene in your car because they rarely have fuel for their own vehicles and it is not uncommon they'll ask for a ride to the scene because they don't have a car or it is out of fuel.

I don't think there's a fire department either, and if there is it probably would take hours to get them to fight the fire. Some private security firms have their own fire trucks and you better be a subscriber to their services if your house if on fire and you need help. I heard about a story where someone's house was on fire and the private fire truck came to the scene, but refused to help before the poor guy handed over his credit card details as he was not  a subscriber to their services. Quite sad, and scary. Hopefully we never really have an emergency...

Political tension in Kenya

It is interesting to follow how the presidential elections and the surrounding political situation are very different in Finland, Kenya and USA as all countries are preparing for getting a new president. The situation in Kenya is quite volatile and the political tension clearly visible.

You may have seen in the news that the International Criminal Court in Hague ruled yesterday that charges against 4 of the 6 suspected were confirmed and they will stand trial before the ICC in a case of crimes against humanity after the post election violence in 2007-08. The charges include murder, deportation, persecutions, torture and rape, hence the ICC case.

A little bit of history is needed to shed some light on the background. After the last presidential election in Kenya in 2007, post election violence erupted leaving over 1,300 Kenyans dead and more than 300,000 people fleeing from their homes.

It all started when the runner up, Mr. Raila Odinga claimed that he was cheated of victory and should be the president instead of the elected current president Mr. Mwai Kibaki. This resulted in protests by supporters of Mr. Odinga and eventually violent clashes with th e police and supporters of Mr. Kibaki. Kenya consists of multiple tribes that belong to 3 ethnic groups. As the candidates represented different tribes and ethnic groups the supporters of Odinga and Kibaki also divided along ethnic lines and the clashes had strong undertones of ethnic differences and rivalries. The long standing land and economic disputes between the groups also played a role in the violence the followed the elections. The violence eventually ended when Mr Kibaki and his rival Raila Odinga agreed to share power, with Mr Odinga becoming prime minister.

At the end of 2010 International Criminal Court named the suspects. These suspects were six high-profile Kenyans he accuses of being behind the violence. The six suspects represent both sides equally, and were said to be ‘most responsible’ for the actions even if a larger amount of people were involved.

The next presidential elections are held end of this year, and obviously this not only refreshes people’s minds regarding the outcome of the last election but also potentially impacts how the elections will go this year. The case has especially big impact on the forthcoming elections as two of the suspects, William Ruto and Uhuru Kenyatta, plan to run for president this year. Not only do they plan to run, but are the key presidential aspirants. Having said that, it is easy to see the impact to Kenyan politics and forthcoming elections.

There were concerns that there would be some sort of adverse reaction by the public on release of the ICC verdict by supporters of the suspects, street protests etc. Luckily so far it has been peaceful and we can only hope this is a good sign considering the rest of the year.

It remains to be seen what the outcome of the decision of ICC will be and how it’ll change the elections this year. Hopefully no matter what happens the history will not repeat itself and we can have as peaceful elections as in Finland right now.

Patience is renewable virtue

It's been a while since our last post, time flies when you are having fun (or your nerves tested) I guess. Anyhow this post is long overdue, so apologies for that.

Living in a place that's so different from all the other places we've ever lived is sometimes testing, there's a lot of good but also things that'll test your patience. Luckily even a short break of normalcy in life can help restore your patience, but it is easy to become impatient and short tempered. Here are a few examples of what I mean.

After months of power outages without power back-up, we finally got a generator about a week ago. I though the commissioning would be a simple and quick task, but it ended up taking several days. The generator house is next to the pool, and they had to bring the cables from there to the main fuse box. As the cable's are thick, they had to chip away part of the perimeter wall fences that was just fixed after the landslide took part of it away. Needless to say, the fence now looks quite awful. Also, no one had the manual nor was really able to explain to me how it works. It's not rocket science, but I hope I know how to operate it just by studying it. We had a power outage today, and hooray the generator started automatically. shortly after that the generator stopped working, and it turned out that while commissioning it they didn't fill the radiator and the generator overheated. Luckily this was easy to fix, but hopefully they didn't make any other shortcuts.

We also found out a short a few weeks ago that our househelp Emily is pregnant. We agreed that her sister would fill in while she takes a well deserved break and nurses the newborn to a good start. They were supposed to come together today so that she can teach her sister on what to do. Of course she had the baby over the weekend, and we found ourselves starting with a new person from scratch. You'd think having someone clean the house for you is a relief, but our ways or keeping the house is not necessarily universal. Dishes are washed using table cloth, shirts are ironed inside out and beds are made so that duved is on top of the cover etc. When Emily started she had never seen a vacuum cleaner before, we told her what to do with it and the next day we find her happily vacuuming the drive way to the house with it. I guess we should have been explicit that it is for inside use only.

Our house has practically been a construction zone since we moved in in August. It is great that the landlord is investing in the house, and many things are much better than they used to be. The garden for example is now quite beautiful, and the new wall much higher than before. What has been frustrating though that everything is done 2-3 times, sometimes because it didn't go right the first time and sometimes because there's no planning what so ever. You also usually have several people working in your yard, and they never tell you what's going on or when the project is expected to be ready. Last week Taru was doing something in the kitchen to realise that 3 men are staring at her through the window. Instead of knocking on the door and asking for the plastic bags they needed, they waited until she noticed them. Needless to say this felt a bit creepy, and this kind of behavior does not really encourage you to use the pool for example as it is sure they will all stare at you while you try to enjoy a quick dip in the pool during a hot day.

Shopping is not always dancing on roses either. We've already learned to buy while it's there as you never know what shortage might hit the stores next, and sometimes it takes months to restock certain items. More frustrating is the quality of food. This week we bought beans to make chili, and at home when we were rinsing them realised that instead of beans we got a bag of bugs. Well, it was beans but a colony of small bugs lived in the bag and every bean seemed to have an occupant. Discusting. Also, often when buying cheese or similar it is moldy even if the best before date is well into the future. I guess this is due to the handling and transportation issues, but it's hard to find a good quality items consistently.

I could go on for a long time, but I guess this is enough venting for now. All this is testing our patience on a regular basis, but luckily it is a renewable virtue and a few weeks of enjoying our house without constant work and no new setbacks will help restore it I'm sure.
TIA I guess, we just have to learn to like it as it is.

Pot holes and rainy days

Although the weather in Nairobi is generally speaking very very nice, there has been some surprises. The average highs only vary a few degrees over the year, with February and March being the warmest at 27C and July and August being the coldest at 22C. This doesn't mean though the weather would feel the same all the time and although it would probably be too much to call them seasons there are clear differencies.

The 'summer months' tend to be nice, warm and sunny where as the 'winter months' are cloudy and still quite warm and nice. As the city is high up it might be cloudier in the morning and in the evening but usually by mid-morning the sun burns through. The real difference is seen during the rainy seasons.

There are two different rainy seasons.  The "long rains" season occurs from March/April to May/June. The "short rains" season occurs from October to November/December. I though the rain would be different during these two seasons, but apparently the long and short are only in reference to the length of the rainy season. And when it rains, it rains really really hard.

This years short rains was quite something. I've never seen it rain like that, and we have a lot of thunder and lightning too. The rains usually started in the evening, continued over night and morning. The rain came and went, but it was like turning on a faucet. A high pressure shower is a way to describe it. What made it interesting that sometimes it came in waves, you could see that it rained really hard where you were but not far away it was just a drizzle and of course the it changed all the time.

One night it rained so hard, that the ground got too wet causing a landslide taking a long piece of our perimeter wall with it. We woke up at 1:30am when the security team knocked on the door to find out if we are ok, they'd been alarmed by the noise the wall made when it fell. Fixing the wall took weeks which was quite a security risk.

There's no real drainage anywhere either. I heard stories of garages getting filled with water and traffig getting really stuck when the roads were cut by deep water. There were also flash flooding and lot of deaths as unsuspected (or stupid bold) matatu's were washed away drowning everyone in them. The worst things is though that the roads are badly built resulting in huge amount of massive pot holes. Driving here is bad as it is, but now the roads have reached a new level in bumpiness.

The rainy season went as quickly as it came, one morning last week we woke up to clear blue skies and now it's been really nice (and quite hot too). I hope it stays and the rains won't come back before the next season.

Cape town

I had the an opportunity to go to Cape Town for a convention in early November, and boy was it nice. Although I had problems with my travel arrangements, the city itself exceeded my expectations.

I had a nice 7am flight from Nairobi which meant I had to leave home before 5am. When I got to the airport I found out my flight was cancelled, but luckily the next one was at 9 but I would have appreciated a few more hours of sleep that night. Of course when I arrive in Joburg, my next flight was already closed and I missed it. As I was flying Kenyan Airways from Nairobi and South African Airways from Joburg to Cape Town they had no idea I was coming in late. The nice lady told me at the counter that they have flights every hour, but unfortunately all flights are fully booked and I have to wait until next day. After a long discussion she managed to find me a business class seat later on that day, but I had to pay for the difference. The whole trip took 15 hours door to door and needless to say I was quite tired when I finally got there. The trip back was not much better, the flight from Joburg to Nairobi was delayed and I waited hours at the airport. I eventually got back to Nairobi, but my bags didn't. I was sure I'd never see that bag again, but I got it the next day. Travel in Africa...

Back to Cape Town. Cape Town is the second biggest city in South Africa, with a population of about 3.5 million. It was the first permanent European settlement in South Africa after the Dutch established an outpost there in the 1650's.

Cape Town is apparently also Africa's most popular tourist destination, and that's easy to believe. The nature around it just beautiful, and in many ways it reminded me of San Diego, San Francisco. The mountais around it brought Arizona or Palm Springs in mind.

The city is famos for its harbor, and we spent one evening walking around the water front. The shopping mall was great, and had all the things you can think of. The pubs server excellent local beers, and I had the best meal in a long time in a nice restaurant near the harbor. They also had McDonalds, and of course I had to satisfy my urges for junk food...

I wish I would have had more time to explore the city and what it provides. Hike on the table mountain, see the penguins, go to the beach and enjoy the best wines S.A has to offer at the Stellenbosch wine area.

Cape Town is now on my list of must visit places, and I hope to get back there soon

A nice video showing an overview of Cape Town

Crater Lake day hike

Now that we are over the culture shock, and know the places around our home quite well it is time to explore other parts of Kenya. Jaakko's boy scouts were going for a weekend camp out at Crater Lake near Lake Naivasha and we decided to join them for a day to have a chance to go for a hike.

A fault line splits Kenya into two separating eastern and western parts of the country from one another. This is called Rift Valley, and it is part of the Great Rift Valley. The Great Rift Valley is continuous geographic trench, approximately 6,000 kilometres (3,700 mi) in length, that runs from northern Syria in Southwest Asia to central Mozambique. In some places in Kenya Rift Valley is up to 100 km wide, while it reaches its narrowest point just north of Nairobi at 45 km wide. Just when we though we escaped earthquakes and volcano's of the Pacific Northwest, we find Rift Valley is home to thirty active and semi-active volcanoes and countless hot springs along its length.

Crater Lake is right next to Lake Naivasha, some 110km from our home. The trip there was nice, except for the traffic. The road was in good condition, and seeing the Rift Valley from high up as we descended on escarpment was truly magnificent. Too bad really slow trucks everywhere resulted in constant overtaking and Matatu's and buses driving all over the road.



Eland's and Zebra's in the background



Giraffe family, and we got really close



Taru watching buffalo's



Jaakko and cactus tree







Crater Lake is a small lake in an old volcanic crater, like the name suggests, and it was possible to hike around. The views from the cliffs around it were breathtaking, and we saw a lot of animals. In addition to multiple birds, we saw a hippo, giraffes, zebras, antilopes, elands, warthogs, buffalos, monkeys and dikdiks. The boy scouts had asked one of the local guides to escort us, and he was really knowledgeable in plants and animals. We learned a lot.

On the way back we stopped on the shore of Lake Naivasha and saw millions of Flamingos. Lake Naivasha is famous for them, and for a reason. The lake is huge, but it looked pretty pink.

It was a great hike, and we'll definitely go to other places soon. There so much to see, if only the traffic was a little better...