Nairobi is bumpin'

I arrived Sunday evening in Nairobi, exiting the double-decker jumbo jet around 7:00pm and was immediately enveloped in the hot moist air of the city, perfumed with the strong scent of bodies in motion, many without access to Speed Stick. I stood for over an hour in one of two lines for Immigration. I had to chuckle to myself as a gum-smacking, hair-preening, touristic American woman complained to her family about a lack of ''customer service'' due to the wait. I wanted to advise her to remove her gaudy ring before stepping outside the airport but figured theft would be well-deserved as she clearly knew nothing about her destination.

It was already dark when I made it through Customs, who just smiled broadly and waved me on. Oliver met me outside with Robert Mutsaers, the brilliant Dutch social entrepreneur who devised a plan for rural electrification via micro-hydro power called Green Power. Translation: small water power projects for rural Kenya, built by and for the community. He is impossibly tall, as the Dutch are, and Oliver as well. I'm only 5'9/1m75 but even I tower over most Kenyans and the troop of us together looked gigantic. I was expecting the Masai build of Kenyans, tall and lean, but for the most part Kenyans are small people, short and more rounded with beautiful sculptural faces but few hard edges.

There are around forty different tribes/ethnic groups in Kenya, with distinct cultural differences, but I noticed one outstanding similarity: an overwhelming warmth and beauty in their walnut shaped eyes of the deepest, warmest browns and blacks. Their skin tones range from light brown to a black so dark is appears mixed with the rich, yet ash tone of a concord grape. There is also a massive immigrant population here, mostly Indian, which has infiltrated culinary traditions so much so that nearly every restaurant we've been to offers a sort of samosa!

Oddly enough, Nairobi feels more like home than any European or American city where I have lived. It has the familiar chaos and distinctly dissonant symphony of 'underdeveloped', like many places in Mexico.

Meetings have been back to back and profoundly interesting. My brain is pooped daily, but carry on I must, fresh by 6:30 for breakfast meetings and the like. They like to start very early here, to beat the heat and the traffic, which is terrible and worse than Mexico City because there aren't many ways around it. It is supremely green here, lush and diverse foliage everywhere you look. It makes me feel closer to nature than I have in years, much more so than when I lived in Switzerland where despite its pristine beauty and Alpine proximity, nothing feels out of place, or distinctly wild. For the most part, nature there follows the path the Swiss have set it on, including the streams in their cement beds, and the graveled woodland paths, delineated centuries ago. In a bustling, churning, grinding city like Nairobi, you can hear the birds in the morning before anything else. They begin their song around 3:00am. This, combined with the tropical foliage, constant motion and wet heat makes for an excitingly new and certainly, wild experience.

Off to a dinner meet now but headed at the crack of dawn to see some game in my few hours off! Much more to tell tomorrow....

'Til next time,
Hilary