Walking the "Capital of Africa"

Saturday morning, we woke up and were moving a bit slower than we had originally planned.  We had told Thomas earlier that that may end up being the case, and that we’d text him in the morning when we had an idea of what time we’d be ready.  We got up at about 8:00am, a bit groggy from the previous night and texted Thomas and let him know 10:00 would probably be a good time.  Even still we found ourselves running about 10 minutes behind schedule, but fortunately, Thomas texted us to let us know he also was delayed due to a flat tire and would be there closer to 10:30. 

National Museum of Kenya

Our first stop was the National Museum of Kenya in downtown Nairobi.  We arrived, and Thomas took care of the entry fees via MPesa, which is the preferred payment in most places and is an electronic currency, similar to Venmo or Apple Pay, but I believe exclusive to Kenya.  This was something I didn’t have time to fully plan out how to get access to, and so we were travelling with out.  Thomas said we could simply pay him back later.

"Beer Straws" (yes it really says that)

The museum was not large, but had sections on wildlife, political history, and cultural history.  One of the main exhibits on the second floor illustrated a rough chronology of life in Kenya through displays of various artifacts from each time and area as you followed the displays around the square terrace. At the beginning it discussed the tribal traditions, and by the time you got to the end it showed lunchboxes and back packs with “Blue Cat”.

Hand-over of Governing Power

From the museum we decided to head downtown, unfortunately while we were not far from the “Central Business District” known as the CBD, traffic in that direction was incredibly bad.  Thomas said this was highly unusual for a Saturday and couldn’t figure out what would be causing it.  I tried doing some research on my Google Maps app for alternates, but the traffic map showed even all the secondary streets were bright red with traffic not moving.  We sat for close to an hour virtually not moving at all.  It appeared the cause of everything was at the “Globe Roundabout” which is a large roundabout on the edge of the CBD and through which we had to get through to reach our destination. 

At one point, suddenly it seemed the traffic began to flow after 20 minutes or so of complete standstill.  As we got towards the roundabout we saw that, sure enough, there were some flashing red and blue lights of an emergency vehicle.  As we got closer however, from what we could tell, the actual cause of the delay was that they were adding road stripes to the pavement and had part of it blocked off.  

We were now significantly behind schedule, and so we decided to grab lunch and do a very quick

Lunch at CJs

walking tour of the CBD. We had initially picked out one restaurant downtown that had Somali food, however in talking with Thomas, he strongly recommended against it.  He said he had eaten there one time long ago and gotten sick and was worried about the general hygiene of the place. Instead he recommended CJs.  This was another restaurant we had found and had actually planned for another day. So we headed over there, and had a meal that was far too large and we ended up with boxed leftovers.

From there we ventured out on foot and viewed some of the more famous buildings such as the City Market, (which we walked through very quickly since we’d already done shopping the day before) trying to ignore all the “looking is free” solicitations.  A few times Thomas helped keep the vendors at bay saying they are only passing through.  At one point however, a small child perhaps 3 years old came over to us from his mother asking for money for food.  Thomas was quick to take his leftovers and give it to the child.

City Market (Outside)

City Market

We also saw the governor’s offices, city hall, parliament, and the Kenyata International Conference

Nairobi City Hall Annex

Center, or KICC, which was once the tallest building in Nairobi.  When we arrived at this building, I mentioned to Thomas that I had recently read some interesting things about the building from a few different sources.  So I asked him, “Is it true the architect designed this based on the shape of a donkey penis.”  He paused for a very short second, and asked very politely “What was that you said?” Aimee jumped in and said, “Yes, you heard him correctly.”  I repeated it and said that I had read the same story from a few different sources so I had assumed it must be correct, though it sounded very strange. 

He laughed and said, “Honestly, this is the first time I am ever hearing this.”  Later while in his car, I did my Google research, and sure enough found two different local interviews with the architect that seemed to corroborate the story (unless they were satire, but it didn’t appear they were.) I read one of the interviews and Thomas laughed and said “I learned something from you today!”

Parliament (Front, shorter building)

Governor's Building

Kenya International Conference Center (KICC)

McMillan Memorial Library

Originally when I sent Thomas a note letting him know what we planned on doing today I had said that as part of the National Museum we had planned to do the “add-on” snake park.  He suggested a much better choice would be to skip the snake park at the museum and go to the Stedmak Gardens in Karen (Karen is a suburb of Nairobi, named after Karen Blixen as the suburb sits on the former land of her coffee plantation, showcased in her book and the movie based on it “Out of Africa”).  We headed out that way which was a 30 minute drive, and fortunately, traffic was not terrible.

The Stedmak Gardens and Recreation Center is a large complex and resort, as well as what appeared to be a fun center with a large pool and a “bouncy house” park.  It also had a wildlife center with rehabbed animals where we could tour various live birds, primates, snakes, and even a couple lions and hyenas in outdoor enclosed areas.  The wildlife tour was guided by a young woman who worked for the center. Thomas said he has been through it several times and would relax and meet us when we were done. 

Our guide took us past ever cage, tank, enclosure etc. explaining a bit about each animal.  It was

interesting that of the dozens of birds and fowl that we walked past, after she told us basic information about each, she would say whether or not they were edible (most were by the way).  The birds were not just local ones, but also some from around the world. (I did wonder how this played into the “rehab” aspect that was stated regarding the nature of the displays…).  As we walked past baboons, our guide warned us to be careful because they can reach through the fence and can be aggressive at times and that they also like to steel things. 

The lion enclosure had a male and a couple of female lions (though they were currently separated while they were feeding).  When we got to the hyena enclosure, we were surprised to see the hyena respond to its name and come over to be scratched through the fence like a dog.  Our guide offered Aimee the chance to scratch its back through the fence that it was leaning against.  After petting the hyena, she said that it had very crazy eyes and she certainly would not give it any more opportunity at her than simply the scratch of its back.

Towards the end of the tour, we were taken through an indoor display that had a couple dozen glass

enclosures with snakes (and a few other random reptiles) in them.  Upon leaving this section I will admit I didn’t realize how many things there were that could kill me by biting me, kill me by spitting on me, or cause me sever injury (but maybe not death) by biting me.  I exited the building a bit more afraid of the world.

After the tour, we texted Thomas to let him know we were done and he came walking up out of the restaurant.

At this point Aimee and I were absolutely exhausted.  We said we were ready to head back to our hotel so we could get cleaned up and get dinner.

Dinner was at a restaurant not too far away called MamaAshanti.  We ordered a couple drinks when we sat down and were “entertained” by music that was quite a bit too loud for our liking in this setting.  It was being provided by a young DJ mixing what I’d describe as African dance/house music.  I will say, while I’m not the most discerning consumer of beats mixed by a DJ, it did not seem like he was the best at what he was doing, as quite often two songs were overlayed that were clashing heavily either by tempo or by key of the underlying hooks.

Our food was a mixture of different western African cuisines.  Aimee ordered an Okra soup.  From the discussion with our waiter, it sounds like this was normally

Mama Ashanti

eaten with meat in it, but she requested just a vegetarian version, which she really liked.  I ordered a chicken and fried rice dish which was more of a light and buttery rice vs. the typical Asian chicken and fried rice we get in the US. It also lacked the bit of egg that its Asian counterpart would normally have. The rice came with a side of a tomatoey, very mild salsa to pour on top which was tasty.  We were given one small dish of red pepper sauce for anything we wished to spice up by putting it on it. This was INCREDIBLY hot, but very tasty.  Aimee over did her first taste of it and had to mostly avoid it for the rest of the meal.  I carefully added some of it to my fried rice, and enjoyed the reaper-pepper-level kick it provided. We had a couple different varieties of ugali that we tried, and Aimee had something that was fermented casava with a tomato relish on the side to mix in. All in all it was an enjoyable meal.  Capping it off was that there were a few cats roaming around to keep Aimee company.

Aimee's Conversation with a Cat

After dinner we debated hitting the town for some more entertainment, but given we had to pack up to check out in the morning and get picked up by our safari driver at 9:00am we thought it may be better to head back to the hotel and rest.