From Silicon Valley to Swaziland by Rick & Wendy Walleigh (read aloud txt) 📖

First Impressions of Nairobi

And TechnoServe in Kenya

Flying into Kenya was very different from our arrival in Swaziland. Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta Airport is a large international, if run-down, facility in a capital city of four million people. Like many international airports, it has an endless concourse filled with similar-looking shops selling similar-looking “duty-free” goods. There were long lines at immigration with a longer one at the visa desk. And after I picked up my luggage and exited the customs area, throngs of prearranged drivers with signs were trying to make themselves seen by their intended riders. These were competing for space with the horde of entrepreneurs who were opportunistically soliciting for passengers. This, of course, was occurring right below the sign that said, “Soliciting for Passengers Prohibited.”

Despite experiencing this scene many times in my life, I am always slightly panicked that I will miss my driver or that he won’t be there, and then what will I do? In Nairobi, I didn’t know where I was going; I didn’t have a cell phone to call someone, but that didn’t matter since I didn’t know who to call anyway. The driver just had to be there. On rare occasions in the past, the driver wasn’t there, which could be very inconvenient or somewhat scary depending on the situation. (We were pretty nervous in 1994 when we flew into Hangzhou, China, and our guide wasn’t at the airport. The fact that the woman in front of us at immigration had an altercation with the authorities and was arrested also didn’t help our sense of comfort.) Arriving in a foreign country without easy access to communication and not knowing who to trust for help always worries me, but things usually work out the way they’re supposed to; and when they haven’t, I’ve still survived. Yet, that brief moment of worry always grabs me as I look for my name amongst the dozens of signs being held up. This time, I passed my driver three times before I saw my name. Seeing your own name in a strange place always provides a great sense of comfort.

Although there was more hassle in the arrival, the flight from the United States to Nairobi seemed much easier than to Swaziland. It was considerably shorter. The flight from Nairobi to Johannesburg would have been another four hours, and the flight onward to Swaziland would have been an additional hour plus the layover. However, the difference seemed to be even greater. Of course there was one less stop, and because of the timing of flights, the layovers were shorter. All of this resulted in one overnight during the journey rather than two. I felt much less exhausted. And it didn’t hurt that I had gotten upgraded on two legs of the flight and had an exit row seat with lots of legroom on the third to accommodate my 6’3” frame.

The flight arrived in Kenya at 9:00 p.m., and so the driver took me straight to my initial apartment. I thought the late arrival might be inconvenient, but it turned out very well. Since the airport is southeast of the city center and we would be working and staying in the northwest, the trip between the two had to go directly through the city center. During rush hour, this can be a two-hour ordeal. For us, it was an easy forty-minute ride.

My apartment had been occupied by a TechnoServe volunteer consultant (volcon) who was leaving the next day. It turned out that he came home from a long night of celebrating at 4:30 a.m., took a shower, and left at 5:00 a.m. so I didn’t get to have an extensive conversation with him. I’m not even sure what he looked like because I barely woke up when he came in.

The next morning, I went outside to survey my surroundings. The apartment complex appeared nice but modest. It could easily have been in a middle-class neighborhood in Los Angeles, except of course for the high wall topped by barbed wire and an electric fence with a large locked and guarded metal gate. It wasn’t really like a war zone. During the daytime, it was perfectly fine to pass through the gate and walk around in the neighborhood outside the wall, but at night, it was strongly discouraged. There was a lot of crime in Nairobi, and some of it was violent. Even though we were in a “nice” neighborhood, there was no point in taking chances. Philosophically, I didn’t like the implied elitism and isolation, but personal safety trumped philosophy. Practically, it was nice to know I was safe and could concentrate on other things.

Later in the day, I had a beer with Fred, the new TechnoServe country director to whom I would report. He was very warm and really wanted to welcome me. Fred was a big, outgoing man with an effusive personality that immediately engaged me. I really liked our first interaction and felt very comfortable that I would enjoy working with Fred. The next day, I had lunch with Fred, his family and Erastus, who was the newly appointed country director for TechnoServe’s future office in Uganda. Erastus was also a very warm and engaging person. He was not as big as Fred or as effusive, and he was more intense. They were both obviously very intelligent and committed to what they were doing, so it was easy to see why they were selected to be country directors. I was looking forward to working with both of them.

During my first few days in Nairobi, I began to develop impressions and an overall sense of the city. My primary frame of reference was Mbabane, Swaziland. Although Nairobi was a very large city and Mbabane a very small one, they had more in common than either did with any U.S. city. Primarily, they were both in developing countries in Africa with all of the implications. But they also had tremendous differences, which were often the same as differences between large and small cities throughout the world. Mbabane was a small pleasant city that felt very comfortable and safe like many small U.S. cities. Lots of people knew each other, and many were related or close friends. At the one supermarket in Mbabane, it was typical to meet someone you knew. Houses and apartment complexes in Mbabane had some security features, but they didn’t have eight-foot-high walls topped with electrified barbed wire and twenty-four-hour guards. On the other hand, Mbabane had only a few really nice restaurants, no movie theaters, and you could walk through every street in the central city in less than an