Nostalgic for Autumn

The weather here is hotting up for Christmas and grey skies have turned blue. It’s possible to lie by a club pool at the weekend and if you are feeling brave (and the solar panels have absorbed enough sunshine) you might even be persuaded to take a dip. However, I can’t help feeling romantically nostalgic for autumn in England, my favourite time of year back home.

The first year in Africa, living on the coast of Tanzania nearly nine years ago was very strange. I craved for autumn days, wishing to be kicking through red and brown leaves on crisp, cold days; wishing for the opportunity to pull on a woolly sweater, a scarf or a pair of black opaque tights (that always look good and make it possible to avoid shaving legs for a few months, hooray!). You can eat more, look pale and interesting with layers of make up and covered up, rather than sweating on the East African coast line in long, loose fitting cotton clothes to avoid offending local Muslim etiquette. For my first couple of years in Africa I also missed springtime flowers, long summer evenings and cosy winters at home, English fruits and vegetables and warm clothes.

It seems very spoiled to complain about year round sunshine but we do miss out a bit on discussing the weather, the Christmas lights, the fun fair or the carnival coming to town, fireworks, parties and Halloween. Dashing to the shops in the dark and huddling in the local pub next to an open fire with a pint or some mulled wine. It was jovial and fun and cold.

Here we do have a Halloween dressing up day at the kids’ school but trick or treating is not done and not practical. In our neighbourhood no one leaves their gate unless they are firmly behind the wheel of a car, foreign walkers are eyed with interest. You can catch some fireworks at the local golf club and some of us even don woollen scarves and fleece jumpers, but you might end up overheating. We don’t do toffee apples, but plates of chips and hotdogs instead. Christmas lights appear in December and are reserved for the odd shopping centre.

My friend, who left England only a couple of years ago, reminded me of drizzly grey days and getting up to go to work in the dark and then returning home in the dark in the evening. Of piling children into coats and hats every time you had to pop out for a pint of milk which, quite honestly, sounded like a nightmare, but I still can’t help missing it all a bit. Autumn/winter was my favourite time of year in England and my ‘edited highlights’ memories make me feel nostalgic in October/November without fail.

Dry gardening in Kenya

Today’s gardening session/lecture was all about dry gardening and growing succulent plants. I started the morning fairly ambivalent about fleshy leaved or stemmed ‘succulents’, then left three hours later quite keen on them actually. I like the idea of a colourful rocky garden with zero watering required, but am not so keen on the multiple truck loads of boulders, hard core, horse manure and top soil required to achieve it. Anyway, simply knowing what ‘succulents’ are is like having the scales fall from my eyes and I can look at plants and even actually differentiate between them now. The Latin names are not coming yet though!

Now I know that there are tons of different aloes and not all are the famous ‘aloe vera’, in fact some aloes are deadly poisonous so best not to squeeze the juice onto your open wounds unless you know what you are doing? (Was also surprised to learn that Oleander are so deadly poisonous too and I’ve warned the kids not to touch them when collecting leaves and flowers for their muddy potions?!)

Something else that’s been bothering me from a previous session is how impossible ‘organic gardening’ seems to be. Previously I enjoyed blissful ignorance on this subject; ‘buy organic’ ‘don’t use chemicals’ ‘fertilizers are harmful’ slogans ringing in your ears while shopping. Well it’s all very well if you are not faced with pests, fungus and disease in your garden. Using garlic sprays to treat one problem, white oil to deal with another, neem for nematodes, introducing predators to eat up your pests without harming your plants. It seems that the whole topic is a minefield and I seriously feel for farmers compelled to ‘go organic’ these days – it seems a nigh on impossible task and a wonder that they can produce anything!

Old article I wrote for Weekly Telegraph on Camping in Kenya

Thought I'd post this article that I wrote a year ago for the Weekly Telegraph 'Expat World' page, re: my feelings about camping in Kenya. Although our successful camping trip last weekend has made me feel a bit more positive about venturing off into the wilderness, I must admit that what I wrote then still rings true for me, (though the children all being a year older this time did make things easier):

'The concept of camping in Kenya never fails to tie my stomach in nervous knots. The lure of wide open spaces and the smell of frying bacon in the great outdoors do nothing for me. Whilst planning and packing, I find myself darting around the house like a woman possessed in search of bars of soap, toys, nappies, buckets, boxes of cereal, matches, clothes, hats and shoes. There are also multiple trips to the local shop to restock supplies of sun cream, bread and packets of biscuits. A well stocked first aid kit is essential, standing by in case of scorpion bites, burns, deep wounds (my husband did lodge a machete into his shin once, whilst cutting wood). Goodness knows what we would do in the event of a snake bite. To add to this, I am not a ‘lists’ kind of person.

It’s understandable to feel nostalgic for smooth British motorways dotted with roadside shops and restaurants, whilst travelling for hours through vast landscapes, lurching over potholes. Five hours is viewed as a comparatively ‘easy’ journey here. Our personal best was eleven hours in one stretch with minimal loo stops. Armed with juice, colouring pens, a thermos of coffee and sweets, we set off for a days driving. Loo stops in service stations are generally not recommended. You will commonly find a smelly long drop (difficult to dangle a child over), in a ramshackle outbuilding with no running water. A low point was when one daughter’s foot slipped into an open drain whilst wearing sandals. To squat behind a bush by the side of the road is a better option, though spectators do always seem to magically appear even in the remotest lay-bys.

Those with enough disposable cash will prefer to pay for an ‘organised camp’. The professional ‘mobile safari’ company will provide tents, beds and bedding, food, showers and loos and there is a team who are responsible for heating shower water over fires, cooking and cleaning exclusively for you whilst in camp. The more swanky companies will hang a white towelling dressing gown in your tent and offer massage, sundowners and ball games whilst in camp. The tents are as comfortable as the best hotels suites and your every need is met by a small army of staff. All you need to bring is a good selection of khaki clothing and sensible footwear.

Another reason why the call of the wild does not appeal to me is that our camping trips are often worked around a motor sport event. This means my ‘team mate’ will be totally distracted by cars for the duration and is generally unavailable when it comes to lending a hand to camp life, or with our three children (1,3 and 6 years old). On one such occasion a team of us decided to organise our own camp. On arrival I felt a strong compulsion to stay put in the car with the air conditioning turned up full blast and not to set foot in the hostile brown and yellow stony desert that surrounded us. After some time I pulled myself together and got out in order to set to work with the rest of our friends levelling ground for the tents and clearing thorns using large pangas and jembis (scythes and hoes). Meanwhile, my husband and his competition car were needed at ‘scrutineering’. Another pressing chore was to rig up some canvas to create desperately needed shade. I threw down a masai blanket under an acacia tree and told the children to stay on it, but they soon got bored and began toddling about in the dust getting increasingly red in the face as, thankfully, their ayah (nanny) watched over them.

Along with food, clothes and tents, water should also be packed, sometimes both for drinking and for washing. We put together a makeshift shower, comprising an old bucket with hose attachment, winched up on a rope over a tree branch and the children were bathed in a large bucket. It was here that I managed to pick up a mango worm. It is an egg that attaches itself to your clothes from bushes or trees, then buries itself into your flesh, mutating later into some kind of maggot under your skin in the form of a giant boil.

We once took a family break to a national park. When the car was packed it looked like we were orchestrating a house move. A large wood and canvas umbrella (plus concrete base) and safari chairs were shoehorned around the large cool box on wheels. The campsite in the park was pleasant with an open area of cut grass and evidence of a camp fire in the centre. There was even a tap with running water. Whilst setting up, we became vaguely aware of many eyes watching us from the surrounding trees. By the time the tent was up, baboons were drawing closer. When we began preparing a meal the baboons were upon us, one shoving me out of the car as it hurtled inside in search of biscuits. A bread roll was snatched from my daughter’s hand and at sundown we were dismayed to see our baked potatoes wrapped in foil, being plucked from the campfire and disappearing into the woods. During the night the chomping noises of buffalo by our heads explained why the campsite grass looked like a recently mown lawn and when emerging from our slumber, passers by on a dawn game drive and safe in their land rover, asked if we had spotted the leopard just behind our tent minutes earlier?! After spending over an hour pinning down anything that could be pilfered by baboons, we made our way to the nearest park lodge and willingly paid a daily rate to use their swimming pool and restaurant until dusk.

I am sure that ‘only a fool can be uncomfortable’ when camping but in my opinion employing the help of professionals is always money well spent.

Unexpectedly successful family camping trip in Kenya?!

Since last posting we have had half term, I’ve organised two compost heaps/systems (with the help of Jared and Shadrack doing basically all of the work). The first is cooking nicely. Also went to another interesting gardening morning, though some of my fellow students seem to be such know alls on plants that it was beginning to get on my nerves. It was beginning to be a bit of a competition to ‘out knowledge’ the lecturer, with hands going up all over the place and statements like; ‘well of course MY moonflower/lantana/bougainvillea actually DOES seem to like it in the shade’ etc.etc.

I took my three daughters to see the lovely white fluffy rabbits next door, but omitted to tell them that they were being bred for eating. My eldest has placed an order for a baby tortoise when they hatch and requested a visit when the ducklings appear which is predicted to be next weekend.

Most momentously – we went camping!

Based on passed experiences, I hate camping. Not only is it uncomfortable, but it always involves a horrendous amount of shopping, packing, work and often long distance driving. Thrown into the equation in Africa are; the total lack of facilities (ie for loos, hot water substitute spade and bucket of water), nasty creepy crawlies (scorpions, deadly snakes, biting ants etc), fine dust everywhere, thorns and heat. However, the upside of camping is that the kids love it and it’s cheap, so we set ourselves the challenge of finding a site not too far away, with flushing loos and hot showers!

Initially, I thought we would never find such a place (and secretly I was pleased to have an excuse to cancel the trip), then a good friend and fountain of all knowledge, told us of a campsite in Naivasha on the shores of the lake, only one and a half hours drive away, which met with my stringent requirements. There was a bar and restaurant too, and even stone cottages to check into if putting up the tent proved too much. Off we set with the VX Landcruiser groaning with gas cylinders for making instant cups of tea and coffee, foam mattresses on the roof, sleeping bags, pillows, duvet, travel cot, food and more food, camp chairs, camp table, clothes, warm clothes, kettle, saucepan, potty, waterproofs, you name it... and we were only planning to stay for two nights.

Anyway, I have to reluctantly admit it was a success! The campsite was green and shady with lots of big trees (only some thorns). The Naivasha climate is quite like Nairobi, so not too hot. Tent pegs were easy to push into soft soil so pitching the tent was relatively easy. We found the flushing loos next to the restaurant and put our tent next to those (risking the disapproval of the site management) and thus we able to swerve the row of fly blown thunder box toilets that we were supposed to be using at the other end of the campsite. It was fun to orientate our tent toward the lake and watch the sunset. The electric wire strung out between us and the water felt like a reassuring deterrent for night grazing hippo that are known to emerge from the water and wander for miles at night.

We braved the showers which were indeed warm, looked at the stars and made many camp fires and toasted marshmallows. It rained on the first night but the tent stood up to the challenge and we all slept well. Booming ghetto blaster music was minimal. Colobus and Sykes monkeys swung around the trees above our heads in a picturesque way, but weren’t brave enough to snatch our food and bother us. The kids ran around and made friends with other kids from other tents so needed minimal entertainment. The onsite buzzing bar and restaurant looked nice and had a good menu, though we didn’t test it as I was determined to get through the fortnight’s worth of food we had with us. I even found out about a swimming pool at the neighbouring resort which was possible to make use of at a daily rate, a useful fall back if things got to sweaty back at base. In fact, we didn’t bother swimming this time because we went on a fairly expensive boat trip (half an hour cost more that the two nights camp fees) on the lake and saw fish eagles and hippos. The bird life was great for my twitchy husband and later we visited Joy Adamson’s former home ‘Elsemere’ for an old fashioned tea – which was a bit of a rip off to be honest. I found myself beginning to reassess; ‘value for money’ in light of being seasoned campers now.

Hell, this camping experience was actually civilised! I felt like I’ve cracked it and managed to analyse that my kind of camping is pretty much all about decent loos.

Returning to Nairobi and chatting to a travel agent friend, she said that the camp we went to was really the only place to do ‘that kind of camping’ in Kenya, but if we tried Namibia next time, they also have very well equipped sites. Next, I discovered that the place we’d just been to was exactly where an Australian tourist was killed by a hippo in the early evening hours about a year ago – apparently she got too close when photographing the beasts. This tarnished the warm glow I had about camping somewhat, but I think we’d still go back – perhaps in a year or two….

I want a dishwasher (machine!)

I’ve got a bee in my bonnet about buying an automatic dish washer. They are available in our big local supermarket chain now, and they even sell the soap tablets now to go inside. Far too many man hours have been spent in this household leaning over the sink and washing up (OK, admittedly they have not been necessarily my man hours, rather an employee’s, though I do dabble in washing dishes at the weekends), but now I’d really like us to join the 21^st century. Some argue that washing dishes in luke warm water is the cause of many tummy upsets too, as we don’t benefit from the high sterilizing temperatures of a machine.

When I was pricing the dishwashing machines today my seven year old daughter said;

‘What is that Mummy?’

I replied;

‘It’s a dishwasher, for washing up plates and cups; you know - like the one at Granny and Grandpa’s house and at Granny and Grandad’s, in fact there’s one in nearly every kitchen’s we’ve been to in England.’

‘Oh!’ she said; ‘I thought it was just a kind of cupboard thing that was popular in England for putting plates and things inside.’

I rest my case.

It was the same thing in Tanzania. We arrived and the entire grass cutting was done by ‘panga’ or scythe. How the gardener didn’t lose his toes in the process I will never understand, but he was skilled and practised at the art of cutting grass with a knife, swishing it back and forth in a wide arc for two or three days until the job was done. The situation remained the same for a couple of years but when we procured a clapped out second hand motor mower, we transformed Morris the gardener’s working life. The grass cutting was done in a morning.

Each time we get a large electricity bill my husband tries to convince me of the merits of using a ‘kuni booster’ system of heating our water instead of using electric. This comprises a primitive metal tank device with a chimney that you light a wood fire beneath until the water is hot. I retort that if I have to shout out of the bathroom window to ask someone to light a fire every time I want a shower or bath then we may as well be living in the dark ages!

Some friends don’t even possess a clothes washing machine, so all the laundry must be done by hand too. I say ‘release us from our chains of laborious drudgery and invest in the machine, it’s 2007 don’t you know! (nearly 2008)’ The only problem is that the dishwasher that I like is 57,000 Kenya shillings (£430), new lawnmowers are 50-60,000/- or more (£375-£450+) and clothes washing machines never less than 20,000 (£150), so we can’t afford a dishwasher this month – but perhaps one day we will catch up with the 21^st century.

Comms failure

You may be under the misapprehension that, like most other people in the developed world, I have a broadband connection at home. In fact I don’t have such easy access to the web and as far as I know, it’s not easy in Kenya (even though I live in the capital Nairobi) to get hooked up to broadband at home, although we are promised that one day technology will catch up with us and domestic broadband connections are ‘coming soon’. Most offices buildings share a wireless connection and they club together to meet the cost of an aerial. Expensive broadband connections involving dishes etc. can be justified in large office buildings when multinational companies are footing the bill. Sadly though it leaves people who are self employed, working in small offices, from home, or bored housewives (like me) with only two other options; dialling in to the web via an unreliable land line service, or connecting via your mobile phone (once you have jumped through many hoops to get your pc to ‘read’ your mobile).

Initially I relied solely on our crackly land line telephone to communicate with the outside world, but now I have the heady privilege of also being able to access the web with a cable plugged into my mobile phone, thus dialling in through my handset. The only problem is that both systems often fail me often and today it’s been both.

The landline can be working fine one minute then the next it is inexplicably ‘off’ and we are cut adrift from the outside world with no warning. Either there’s no tone at all or perhaps instead a steady deafening, crackly sound and when the phone ‘goes’ you don’t know if it will be reconnected for days, even months. Alternatively there will be a ‘bad’ line (crackly again or crossed with another - which can be interesting) which is better than nothing but not good enough to establish an online connection. In this case, the only thing for it is to drive to the local telecoms office (they are ironically seldom contactable by phone) and make a report personally in the hopes that the problem will be fixed in due course.

When you inform the relevant telecom people that your line is not working, your phone number and complaint are noted on a piece of card, which is then manually filed into a queuing system for ‘dealing with later’. The exchange itself is a poky room that is reminiscent of the set of The Matrix or some other sci-fi film. There’s a tangle of coloured wires with plugs attached to a black main frame or master board that stretches from floor to roof. If you are lucky enough to find someone inside, he’ll be sitting at a wooden desk with nothing on it but a pencil, a large ‘report’ book and an old fashioned phone handset whose number is a mystery.

Later, possibly, a man with a van and a ladder will appear somewhere in your area and do some telephone wire fixing. When you see a Kenya Telecom van on the road, it’s worth winding down your window, stopping for a chat and suggesting that he might like to swing by your address at some stage in the not too distant future. We have had copper telephone wires stolen from our road too, which I gather is quite a common problem as the copper itself holds some resale value. At the exchange office, it’s worth smiling, remaining patient, hiding your frustrations, being civil and promising cups of coffee in order to ensure the job gets done. Irate customers get nowhere or are stonewalled. Inevitably, soon after your telephone line has been fixed, you’ll be back at the phone exchange reporting the next problem within weeks or even days, especially if there happens to be some heavy rain.

When the mobile phone connection fails, you need to call to the technical division of the mobile service provider, who (if you can get through) will do some troubleshooting and hopefully may solve the problem. Between me, my mobile phone, my pc and the technician, we drew a blank today and I was advised to reinstall the software that enables my computer to talk to my phone…. (I think I’ve lost the relevant disk).

All this, combined with daily unpredictable power cuts, conspire to drive me insane on most normal days. So now, I’m posting this via my husband’s computer and his mobile phone. I hope it works.

Please note - to anyone in the western world; please understand that blogging from Africa requires quite some patience and tenacity, though I do love it and the odd comment that I get always makes it feel worthwhile…thanks for reading…

The Kenyan gardening course continues

Wow. Am loving the gardening course organised by the Kenya Horticultural Society (KHS) and am in danger of becoming a gardening bore. The course runs for five weeks and each week we get a morning’s lecture by different garden experts, on various topics, each time in different locations (ie private gardens or garden centres). I.e. last week the topic was; ‘fertilizer and composting’, this week; ‘garden design, space, form, planning’, next week; ‘planting and pruning’ etc. The thirty students attending are a real mixed bag and I think I can safely say that everyone there knows a lot more about plants and gardening than me. They are honing and fine tuning their skills whereas I’m the class idiot. When the question and answer sessions after our lectures veer off into specialist areas and Latin names I can’t help looking blank and try to blend into the back of the group. With any luck the skills will slowly come and the enthusiasm won’t wear off too quickly. We are so lucky in Nairobi, as the climate is very kind to plants with no frosts or freezing, and apart from the odd year of drought, most of the time plants once stuck in the ground, tend to flourish.

Last week we were all admonished for being late by the garden designer who was hosting the session, which I thought was a bit unfair since that day was a public holiday that day and he’d refused to re-schedule. That really added to the school-ish atmosphere. We all have to bring our own chairs, coffee thermoses and a hat to wear. Half way through the lecture I moved out of the sun into the shade of the veranda and plonked into a nice looking and curiously vacant upholstered armchair.
‘You got the best chair didn’t you!’ my 80 year old neighbour said accusingly at the end of the morning. I then noticed that he had been perched on his own small plastic stool for nearly two hours. Oh dear, how embarrassing.

This morning I thought it might help us if I asked my neighbour who has a magnificent garden and a ten acre plot, if I could go next door with our two gardeners (Jared and Shadrack) to spy on how he operates his composting system, with the help of his team of willing staff. We’ve built ours now with wire netting but it’s looking woefully empty. Explaining a system is one thing, but seeing the process in action is much better and fortunately my neighbour was more than happy to help.

We novices got more than we bargained for and ended up having a fascinating morning learning about not only composting but how to set up a vegetable patch, breed rabbits, geese, ducks (and tortoises?!). I kept thinking to myself, the kids would love this, why aren’t I doing this, why don’t we collect chickens eggs for our breakfast and breed rabbits?! (We did try chickens once, but our dog got into the run and picked them off in the most cruelly drawn out death). The beautiful white rabbits, geese and ducks are actually bred for eating and most are given to the multitude of staff who work on the ten acres. They also have an ample supply of eggs, pumpkins, bananas, dry beans, courgettes and spinach from the vegetable patch. The herbs and lettuces are grown for the boss and his wife. ‘Joyce’ is in charge of the animals and veggies and she’s also a wiz at getting cuttings to take etc. she has an amazing nursery. We also learned about mulching and tricks about planting (like putting topsoil at the bottom of the hole when putting in a plant, then compost, then bottom soil on the top).

There was such a happy atmosphere next door and you could plainly see everyone working well as a team and benefiting from a successful garden. It really put me to shame when I think of how our employees are missing out on free protein rich nutritious food and the ability to have pride in their work. Shadrack and Jared had a real spark in their eyes when we were walking back up to our gate, the first spark I’ve seen for years. I think maybe they’ve been inspired by seeing how you can reap the rewards of a garden and I’m sure that they are hugely relieved that I’ve finally begun taking an interest in the garden. Whether we start breeding rabbits for the pot remains to be seen, but there is definitely a lot of room for improvement in my ‘shamba’ (plot).

Weekend of Mildly Surprising Events

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.

Learning to Garden in Africa

I started a gardening course today with the Kenya Horticultural Society in the hopes of sparking an interest in gardening at home and understanding a bit about how to plan a garden around the weird African extremes of heavy rains and droughts.

I got in a bit of a panic over what kind of footwear to put on, as it was drizzling this morning and I knew we’d be sitting outside. My choice was; high heeled ankle boots (too impractical for a gardening course) Bata wellies (too much – it was a faint drizzle) old trainers (might be a bit smelly and off putting for the other students) and Timberland boots (I’ve had them 10 years but they still look like new, wearing them might be construed as being a bit of a know all).
I took wellies and smelly trainers with me but then plumped for staying in the high heeled boots. I needn’t have worried. The 30 other students and lecturers were in the varying stages of old age, a little bit aged and the not very young people (like me). I noticed that fashion rules were not being strictly observed, a case in point was our first teacher dressed in typical colonial garb of knee high up beige socks with turned tops, safari boots, wide knee length shorts and a woolly pully.

The joy of learning to garden in Africa is that all you absorb can then be delegated to the gardener you employ at home and then simply ‘overseen’ with no need to get your own hands dirty. The difficulty is to be clear about what you want when issuing instructions. I discovered this morning after a three hour session on fertilisers (organic and chemical), organic gardening and composting, that my main stumbling block will be comprehending the lessons and lectures in the first place especially as the only plant/tree names I know are; rose, agapanthus, acacia, lavender, bougainvillea and ‘yesterday, today and tomorrow’, but I’m resolved to construct a three bed ‘New Zealand’ style compost system by next week’s class. Watch this space.

coffee morning interesting info.

Today over coffee I discovered:
1. if you have a boob job done in Africa (most often South), you have to wear a support bra for three months, including at night, (but apparently this time limit is not the case with all surgeons worldwide). That would explain why the big modest covered up look for ages after returning from the op. when we're all waiting for the big eyefull.
2. The UN/Embassy duty free shop in Nairobi sells cereals, wine, food, nappies and sweets at UK (ie. much lower) prices, but only to official embassy/UN staff and their families. If you have a nice diplomatic friend, they can sneek you in there for a stock up....but I've never been invited sadly...
3. I found out where there's a good local bakery that sells killer chocolate eclairs and pasteries.
And you thought that Nairobi was an unsophisticated African outpost!

Visiting family - the demands we expats make!

An expat friend of mine told me that her mum had sent her a very amusing article, written in a German newspaper, by a lady who was relieved that her expat daughter and family were finally moving back home, having been overseas for some years. Sadly, I never read it but the gist of the piece was not just about missing her daughter and missing out on grandchildren developing, but more about the impossible demands made by overseas offspring of their visiting parents. Talking to my expat friends, I discovered that we all foist the same stresses onto our family and friends days before they depart on holiday to come and see us and that sometimes we might pushing our luck with some of our requests.

Here are a few of the demands I/we’ve made on parents who generally have their heart in their mouths at the airline check-in as their luggage is invariably over-weight – plus a glimpse at how impossible getting away to visit overseas family can be from their point of view:

a) On more occasions that I can number, I’ve asked my parents to carry out Christmas presents for the entire family. Their feelings of horror rise gradually as during the weeks before leaving postage floods in from in-laws, siblings, godparents and our own mail order purchases etc. with sometimes bulky, or heavy presents for our entire family of five. They have previously had to leave their own Christmas presents behind (making the festivities rather dull for them) and often sacrifice most of their clothing allowance, arriving with only one or two outfits and holdalls filled with wrapped presents for us. The airport question; ‘did you pack this bag yourself, are there any items that have been given to you to carry for someone else?’ take on a new relevance.

b) I’ve sent a friend into the Jigsaw sale and asked her to buy practically anything in my size, unseen – then I paid her back in Tanzanian shillings. Someone I was talking to recently said she has a friend who regularly does the same for her during the Joseph sale. I’ve asked a friend of a friend (who I’d never met) to get me a couple of Gap v-neck t-shirts when I was pregnant too, and I’ve described a Dorothy Perkins t-shirt to my sister who then had to go and pick out a few more in different colours for me.

c) I asked my mother-in-law to buy summer sandals for my two year old during November in UK and provided her only with a faxed outline of the child in question’s foot (rather than a shoe size).

d) I asked my mother-in-law to buy citric acid so that I could make my own homemade lemon and orange squash. She was practically accused of being a drug dealer at her local chemist (apparently druggies use citric acid to cut cocaine etc) and then on arrival in Tanzania she found citric acid in my local supermarket. Ouch

e) Here are some other random requests I’ve made: marmite, maternity bras and clothes, shampoo, swimming costumes, sun cream, Marigold Bouillon powder, Jelly vits (vitamins) for kids, Nike trainers, a baby doll that cries (twice), one kids football outfit, Bratz and Barbie dolls, Maxi Cosi baby car seat and Gracco bigger seat, knickers, makeup.

f) Here are some items my husband has asked family and friends to bring out:
My sister had to bring with her two full size Sparco rally car seats. (She was planning to get to the airport by tube but had to change her plans and order a taxi when she took one look at the seats and belts filling her London flat hallway). Other family members have carried: an air rifle, a power drill, a motorised toy car, a jigsaw (the electric tool kind), a chain saw (that one I brought out – it had to go into a special security check area and the airport staff checking it all stuck their heads quizzically out of their two way mirrored booth at me, my toddler and my baby in a push chair). And a slingshot (for snakes, monkeys and crows) – Please do feel free to comment Mum, Dad and parents in law, if there is anything I’ve forgotten. I know that there is a motorised toy helicopter to come when anyone is feeling brave enough.

g) My husband has brought over (normally in his hand luggage) various car parts including x 2 cylinder heads (he could barely lift these into the overhead locker); x 4 heavy duty car springs; a prop shaft; a carburettor (that airport security thought was a bomb); one kg of air rifle pellets (airport staff suggested he put these in his hold luggage as they might be dangerous – my husband asked how could they be dangerous, might he be tempted to sprinkle them over somebody?); a newer model air rifle.

h) My kids are hopelessly indiscreet and demand presents from all who grace our guest bedroom, so parents and friends are under pressure to do a lot of random gift buying as well as all the birthday/Christmas presents that may have backed up over the year.

N.B. Most shopping requests are made by us in the 24 hour period before flight departure, even though advice is normally solicited a good few weeks before. This leads to a mad dash into the nearest large shopping centre or city. To friends and family who might be reading, I’d just like to say that we might not change, but I am….SORRY!