22:09, Monday, 17 September, 2012

This Nairobi trip was very enjoyable considering how much I miss being in camp when away there.  Michelle and I went out dancing two of the nights.  One reason having her around was so excellent: it forced me to pop my comfort bubble.  Without her I doubtless would have stayed in and read or worked, and I definitely wouldn’t have been convinced to wear mascara for the first time ever (first, and probably last the way I couldn’t itch my eyes when I needed to).  Hilarious Michelle: we talked to a couple of, well, interesting British guys on the dance floor, and as soon as we turned away she crossed her eyes and said, “I am so not excited to go home.” 

Not as wild as camp, but still way more so than any city I’ve ever encountered, Nairobi was full as ever of hyraxes screaming bloody murder, skinks crawling up the curtains, ibises cawing like there was no tomorrow and monkeys balancing on telephone wires.  The ibises had Michelle and I up at 6 one morning, their obnoxious “WRAAAAA WRAAAAA”s jolting us out of sleep and holding us captive there.  We ended up so desperate that we opened our window and cawed back at them in an attempt to simultaneously shut them up and blend in so as not to wake the neighbors.  The result was a horrendous impression that did no more than to make us giggle like maniacs.  I entertained the idea of going out and running beneath the tree trying to scare them before Michelle wisely talked me out of it.  At long last, someone began throwing stones at them from the courtyard, and they flew off to leave us in peace.

The monkeys on the wire were adorable.  First, an adult female went tight-roping over, having only slight difficulty keeping her balance.  But then her young one followed, flollaping about all over the place so that I seriously worried it would fall.  Once it finally made it to within about a foot of its mother (waiting on the post at the other end), it all out leapt into her arms, and she hugged it tight for a prolonged moment before looking about and continuing on to the next wire with her kid hanging from her belly.  Now that is talent.

This was the trip I had to learn everything, so I didn’t hesitate to take the keys, even when we went downtown.  Coming back from an errand downtown, and everything was going fine.  I was still breathing: cool, calm, relaxed.  But wait, that’s not how my life goes.  It violates some rule written high in the universe that nothing should be a piece of cake.  So out shot our spark plug, and our car shuttered to a stop on the side of Kenyatta Avenue, a rushing highway.  I locked the doors and prayed while Michelle took the boiling hot plug off to find a mechanic; thank God there was one right around the corner, because neither of us had any idea that the thing was even a spark plug.  A kind mechanic came, Michelle got in the driver’s seat, and the mechanic and I began to push.  What a feeling of utter hilarity to watch your shadow push a car across three lanes of traffic, holding everyone up.  Then, at the top of the next hill, Michelle started to slip.  I began tugging the car the other way, desperately worried she would go whizzing uncontrollably down the hill.  But the mechanic looked at me and said, “She’ll be fine, she’s got brakes.” So it was: there goes Michelle.  In downtown Nairobi with nothing but brakes and a steering wheel.  I freaked out and attempted to run after her, but the mechanic just walked as though out for a Sunday stroll, making me feel obligated to slow down. Michelle told me later that she was wondering why the heck we weren’t sprinting after her.  But she managed to grace the turn into the center block.  Some dude who was selling newspapers or something randomly started to help us push back across the street (I love people who just pop out of nowhere and help you out), until finally we made it to the mechanic’s and had the plugs tightened.  Phew!