June 30, 2008 - Couches, camels, and crashes! (actually only one crash)

Kristoffer and I are never short on adventure here in Nairobi. This weekend we had the goal of falling in love with some furniture...but as you can imagine, it is very difficult to plan falling in love! Our Saturday started with the door-to-door paying of some bills and led us to our hunt for the perfect couch (sofa) for our upstairs living room where we have our television. One couch that we liked a lot turned out to be too large for the space and the only other couch that we liked had been sold to someone else during the week. No! I was very frustrated, but Kristoffer kept hope alive even though we had already gone to every place we knew of that sells furniture. Luckily, there was an advertisement posted on a bulletin board at one of our malls with pictures of nice looking furniture. When he called the number, Kristoffer talked to a guy named Michael, who planned to meet with us about making some high quality furniture (as opposed to the furniture we bought when we were first lived here which is very poor quality).

Before meeting him though, he directed us to an up-scale interior design store to which he supplies the furniture they sell. At the store, we really did love several couches and other pieces of furniture, which had all been made by his company. They were simple, modern, comfortable, attractive, and not tacky (the biggest problem with most furniture here!) but at the store the price tags were very high. When we met with Michael later in the day we were able to custom design the couch for our living room and cut the price tag nearly in half by dealing with him directly instead of ordering from the store. How great! They started making the couch today - a large off-white sectional sofa that will fit beautifully in our cozy room (sorry to my friend Marcie who does not approve of sectional couches) - and it should be done in about 3 weeks. Once we get that and are happy with it, we will proceed to design more furniture with him for our downstairs living room and maybe some other spaces too. It started off as a frustrating day but turned out to be better than we even expected!

As we were driving around Nairobi hunting for couches, we came across the strangest sight. If only we had a camera with us (we keep saying we should keep one in the car at all times, but then we forget!) we would post the picture of 3 camels walking around Nairobi. Camels! Now Kristoffer has seen camels in eastern Kenya on the border of Somalia where they are very common and necessary to the way of life there, but here in the city?! It was totally bizarre, and they were definitely causing traffic!

Speaking of traffic...Kenya, and Nairobi in particular, is known for horrible traffic and a very high number of RTAs...random traffic accidents. Well last night, we were in our first traffic accident here, and actually Kristoffer's first accident ever. Don't get worried, we are totally fine and our car is fine too - it was just a very crazy incident. We were driving home from the mall in the late afternoon and we were on the main road where we had the right of way. We approached a T-stop intersection where we were turning right. Kristoffer had signaled and slowed down as he should have, but there was a car at the intersection turning right onto the main road and he basically didn't wait for us to complete our turn before he advanced through the intersection. The reason it was so bizarre is because he was there waiting, waiting, and waiting to turn as we approached but he just didn't wait long enough and ended up hitting us! Because our car is so big and high up, he just hit our back right tire and there was no damage to our vehicle, but the front left side of his car was mildly crunched. At that intersection there are all of these guys who wear bright yellow vests and sit by the side of the road and we always wonder what they are doing there. Well it turns out they sit there to observe the traffic and witness accidents - or at least that was their function last night. They immediately came over to us when our accident stopped traffic and spoke to Kristoffer as well as the Kenyan driver. It was obviously the other guy's fault which they said repeatedly; the guy didn't want to call any authorities because either he didn't have a license (which is very common here) or he didn't want the accident to count against his license, as it definitely would have. So Kristoffer agreed that our car was fine and this guy agreed that it was his fault, and we both went on our way. The whole ride home we were like, "Did that just happen?! He waited and waited until we were right there and THEN he pulled out?!" We were reminded that even when you are doing everything right here, you can't really trust other people to do the right thing because people seem to follow their own rules. It was just so bizarre. But now we have survived an RTA in Kenya and we hope there are no more to come, or at least that future accidents are as minimal as that one.

Yesterday was also the day that we interviewed Mary to be our housekeeper and cook. The interview wasn't horrible, but it didn't go that well. I think basically we didn't do enough research or talk to enough people about how these things usually go, so she had a little too much control over the situation. I am sure she would be a good cook and would keep our house very clean and orderly, but she wanted to live with us along with her 3 year old daughter and a girl who would live there to take care of the daughter while Mary was doing the housework. We are not quite ready to have 3 people living with us at this stage, and she wanted more money than we expected given that we would pay for all of her food and provide her with mattresses, uniforms, and a stove to cook on (apparently domestic staff would not cook their own food in our kitchen). So instead of hiring Mary, we are trying to hire a different woman who has worked for a Danish friend for a long time. The friend is getting ready to move back to Denmark though, so we are basically trying to hijack his help before someone else snaps her up! If it works out, she will come once a week until September, and then will come 3 days a week to clean, do laundry and ironing, and cook dinner on those days. She doesn't want to live with us, which is okay by us. We are really hoping this works out and think it is a good way to see how we like having staff first before ramping up to hire someone full time in the future. There are only two of us, after all, and we aren't THAT messy!

The only other interesting, although sad, news is that a Danish woman we know who is in Kristoffer's program with the World Health Organization was the victim of domestic violence last week. She had been living with her boyfriend, a Ugandan-born Kenyan resident who played basketball at the University of Notre Dame in the US during his college years. We aren't sure of the timeline, but essentially she broke up with him and afterwards he attacked her and tried to strangle her to death. She fought back, apparently biting his finger until he let go of her, and managed to escape. As horrible as this is, the worst part is that before she had a chance to report this to the police, he went and bribed the local and diplomatic police officers and pressed charges against her for biting him. So the police, to date, won't help her because the guy paid them off and in fact they are threatening her with jail time because she bit him. It is a horribly screwed up system! The Danish Embassy, much to Kristoffer's dismay, was not very helpful and did not really want to get involved. Luckily, our Danish friends who are close to her have gotten her legal help within the UN system and they should get everything sorted out soon, but needless to say it was an extremely sad and scary incident. We heard today that her sister came from Denmark to be with her through this ordeal and she is staying with our friends indefinitely.

As I started with, there is always something bizarre happening here! On Thursday I will start working on and off for the next month and will then be full time in August. Even though my contract at UNICEF won't be official for a few more weeks, my boss said I could start counting my days now for which I will be paid retroactively. I still have a crazy sleeping problem but last night I drank almost a whole bottle of wine before bed and yes, I did sleep very well for the first time in a long time. I don't think I should make that too much of a habit...but we'll see. Otherwise, I am feeling well and am eager to have things to do both for work and with Kristoffer's mom when she visits. It is a beautiful, sunny, warm winter's afternoon (it is at least 75 F) here in Nairobi and so I think I will go for a walk at the gym.

LMW