Steamed-up glasses

Jomo Kenyatta International Airport - Nairobi's international airport - has been the site of some heady emotions for me.  Arriving with excitement, leaving with excitement, welcoming with excitement, keeping hold of handfuls of passports and email travel tickets, or of trying to maneouvre in suitcase after suitcase of Essentials (aka branston pickle, brandy butter and mincemeat.)  And when emotions run high, my glasses steam up.

Scientists have demonstrated that specific details learned during heightened emotions are less likely to be remembered.  That's my case, and I'm sticking to it. And it was proved conclusively today, one of my least successful during my time in Kenya.... Reader, read on.

I'd arranged to meet up with my start-up business's accountant at his offices, out at the airport. I've been with this accountancy firm for 18 months, and they are marvellous. Can explain tricky concepts so that, even if I don't understand them now, its clear from my notes I did understand them when we were face to face. Set up my company with no hassle. Took me through the Kenyan tax system. Explained the procedures for getting work permits (more than once) and lent support to my case. Most importantly, do it all without paying bribes, without ever paying bribes, a major major accomplishment for Kenyan fixers. 

Over the 18 months I've only once been to their offices, right at the beginning. Out at the airport is a long way from home for me, and for most things they send the papers in to be signed with a staff member to a handy central Java cafe, and you do your business there.  But today I wanted to copy a spreadsheet, discuss procedures,  hand over a shoeboxful of receipts, get firm guidance. Take reliable notes. Needed to make my way back to their offices.

The road to the airport is tortuous. It runs through the industrial area and some major roadworks. It's the main road from the freight port at the coast through to Uganda and Rwanda. It's busy, with petrol tankers and freight lorries and shipping crates. Busier still when (as today) the rains are here. So I set off early. Allowed an hour and a half for a trip that, early morning, takes 20 minutes. And the monsoon rains started - great plump drops, heavy heavy rain.

I'm not a confident book-keeper. I know others do it better, consistently put the same article in the same column, log items chronologically. So when I look at my shoebox full of receipts, I get that hot flush under my collar, much as I would if someone were leafing through my knicker drawer.  Private, and should stay that way. So I'm already rather flustered about the journey.

But off I drive, through the rain and the massive potholes, and much later am nearing the airport. There's the fence. There's the sign. But which way is it?  In a very Kenyan way, the sign for the airport is in the middle of the road and doesn't point out which way the airport itself lies. I know I should know. Have been here often before. But remember the heightened emotions. And usually, if we are travelling, a driver brings us as there's no airport parking.  So I took the righthand lane, and whizzed over a flyover, through a post-industrial landscape reminiscent of scenes from the Sopranos, and far far away from the airport. NOT that way, go off road to turn round and zip between carriageways, back we go again.

THERE'S the airport, some 20 minutes later, still in the driving rain. Fumble with the map. Take the first turning before the airport barrier. Oh no here's the barrier. Here are the police bombchecks. Here's the bit you can't reverse out through. 
'Please can you tell me how to get to this bit?'
'But Madam, that's at Wilson airport not here....'

Oh my. So it is. Quite another airport, quite another bit of town.  Probably an hour away in the torrential rain. And I've been there before too. It's just, when you're paralysed by receipts and directions, when your glasses are steamed up, well it's hard being efficient and effective.

Phoned the accountant to apologise. He said he could hold on for me. And this is why you want him to be your accountant too, when I said,
'Well actually, I've just been to the wrong airport, am stuck in traffic in the rain and am now am too flustered to listen carefully when you explain, if I did reach you', he guffawed down the line, and gave me another appointment.
What a darling. Erastus CPA.  Moving next week to a more central location!

Shopping in the Rain

In lush, verdant, soggy, coastal South Wales, where I grew up, you didn't have one set of clothes for the rain, and another set. You just took the heavy duty cagoule everywhere, like a wartime gas mask. You knew that fine drizzle, or alternatively those heavy, pelting monsoon-like storms, would come down each day, no need for thought or alternatives.  Fogged up glasses with bits of soggy tissue stuck to them, drips from your nose, damp hair till lunchtime, sodden coat on the back of your chair, why would life be any different?

But Kenya - or Nairobi at least - is different. Here it's mainly dry. There are the short rains in November, when it seems to tip down at 3pm each day for around 40 minutes, just in time to soak dutiful mothers waiting for school pickup. And the long rains, 6 weeks of heavy duty rainfall, from March.

And the rain here, because unaccustomed, does necessitate new purchases.  R, the gardener, who cuts back the jungle-like branches which short the electric fence, sent me off for size 11 wellies.  And today mentionned, fluttering eyelashes, that though he now has all envelopping wellies, he actually doesn't have an umbrella or a raincoat either. I impulse purchased 8 metres of plastic sheeting, and Blue-Peter-like, have fashioned some rather nifty raincovers for our outdoor sofa, and for the roof of the guinea pig cage. 

Our night guards have to tour the garden each hour, and punch their number into a farflung clock, to check they are both awake.  Last year they got into trouble with the punctilious contract manager, due to a difference in interpretation. They didn't believe 'every hour' meant 'every hour even when its raining'.  It seems a universal assumption here.  The deliveryman who delivered my printing, which was meant first for Thursday, then for Saturday, said charmingly on Monday 'I didn't come on Saturday.' 'No, I noticed, why not?.'  'Well it was raining, wasn't it.'  On the other hand, given we live 2km from the nearest matatu stop, maybe a wise decision.  Though not one which would have much traction in Wales.

The matatus increase the fares during the rainy season, seeing their chance to profiteer.  Our housekeeper has already taken me to one side and shown how her commuting costs have gone up by 50% this month.

And, agricultural economy that this is, now that the rains are here and the ground is wet, the staff are negotiating leave to go up-country and plant their shamba. Sadly it coincides with the (fixed date) end of term, and my need for some childcare so I can get to work through the holidays, but oh well.  Last year the drought meant that L's harvest of beans failed, so it's all the more important.

For us, the foreigners with a car, the rain has less impact. Yes, in heavy downpours, the tv link to the satellite goes, so you miss the climax of Spooks or the resolution of Casualty. And then, two seconds later, all power goes, often for 12 hours or more - water in the system, somewhere.  The traffic is far, far worse - partly because of increased volumes and the state of the roads, but also, largely, because soggy pedestrians go into their own trance.  They look at the large puddle ahead, and leap into the path of the traffic to keep feet dry, rather than assessing the risk of being flattened by the stream, going at 30mph and with increased stopping distances.  So its nice to feel more in touch with more elemental agricultural rhythms, the shamba-keeper's gratitude for good, plentiful rain, the careful selection of crops for this season, sourcing of seed - where can we get yellow sweetcorn seeds, not the plentiful but tasteless white corn - the anticipation of a good harvest, the prospects of abundant food.