Had a busy weekend accompanied by lots of rugby watching…England’s unexpected win cheered us up no end and it was great to gloat over their success with our South African friends with whom we’d had to sit through a humiliating evening of SA/Brit defeat a couple of weeks earlier. Most of our English compatriots actually sloped off home early that night as they couldn’t bear to watch while the SA lot gleefully partied on ‘til dawn.
Then there was a very pleasant ‘evening of classical music’ where a Kenyan lady opera singer did a sort of beginners introduction to classical music by performing ten pieces by various composers accompanied by a deft Kenyan pianist. She prefaced each piece of solo singing with a short explanation about the story behind the opera she was singing from and the characters involved. She really brought it all to life for a philistine like me. Plus it was a corporate evening out and we had a fun table, so another surprising success.
The classical evening was staged for A New Dawn Trust (ANDT), founded and run a group of young professionals who raise money for the education of young people in Kenya and make a point of donating useful gifts in the form of books, scholarships, desks, chairs and building projects, rather than just handing over cash.
Then our eldest daughter took part in a local swimming competition and surprisingly won her 25 metre breaststroke heat, in spite of diving straight to the bottom of the pool and then confusingly surfacing in someone else’s lane.
That was followed swiftly by a visit to the 2007 Nairobi Airshow at Wilson Airport (see:
www.nairobiairshow.com) which was a huge event (thousands of people) the highlight of which for me was the aerobatic displays by a pair of South African pilots doing loop the loops and death defying feats in Pitts Special biplanes, whilst flying close together in tandem. I was almost convinced they would crash into one another and wouldn’t have like to be one of those pilots’ wives, who we spotted looking surprisingly relaxed watching from the ground from within the safe confines of the aero club.
So, in conclusion, just another weekend of surprises from the buzzing, bustling capital of Kenya, where all sorts of exciting things are happening all the time.
