Adventures in Africa
Friday I went downtown to meet Lauren, another Canadian intern, downtown for dinner and to check out the "downtown scene". I took a cab initially and it was actually fairly cheap. I'm sure I was charged more than a local, but that is to be expected and is pretty much unavoidable. We met up and walked around trying to figure out where we should head for dinner. The city, as I mentioned before, is quite nice. I mean, it's not like walking around downtown Vancouver or something. But there are nice wide streets, an interesting assortment of buildings and the people seem polite. The are less visible street people in the downtown core than there are in Toronto. There are, however, several hundred (or so it seems) vendors crowding the sidewalks, selling everything from cassettes, to used shoes, to tinfoil airplanes. The only real dangers we encountered were while crossing the streets (the driving is INSANE) and huge potholes and cracks in the sidewalks and roads.
We decided to check out an Indian place that was mentioned in my guidebook. Well, maybe it was once Indian but once we took a look at the menus we found that there were only 4 items available and none resembled anything remotely Indian - it was more Kenyan-style. So that was fine - I had some chicken and Lauren had a whole fish and we got some flatbread with it. Then we set out to head to a local bar where the guidebook said there was usually live music played on the weekends. We head through the town (almost getting trampled when the street vendors stampeded out of the area when the police came) and ended up in Mang' Hotel. Up to the second floor where the bar was and it was VERY interesting inside. Black walls with neon-painted decorations, a cage around the bar and soccer playing on the TVS. We asked the manager if there would be live music and he assured us there would be. He sat us (at a table with one other person - this is quite common here). The guy at our table had a hat on that said "On the Prowl". Wow. That just about said it all. Then the "entertainment" started. It wasn't a band - it was 5 teenagers - 3 guys, 2 girls, coming out in matching outfits (jeans & matching jackets for the guys, and skirts & t-shirts for the girls) and they did this dance routine in the middle of the bar. It was so funny but they were quite good. This happened about every 30 minutes. Very interesting. Not exactly what I would call "live music" but definitely entertaining and like nothing you would see in Canada. Lesson learned - the guidebook is not always accurate, but can still take you to some interesting places.
Then we went out to another place downtown which had a patio and we ordered some food. We were sat with another 4 people - a girl and 3 guys. They were young and very friendly, asking us a lot of questions and telling us good places to go. The girl was pretty drunk and kept trying to convince us that we should go out dancing with all of them later than night. She was trying to reassure us about one of the guy's harmlessness by loudly "whispering" to us - "don't worry about him - he's gay!". Funny funny stuff. We ended up leaving before they could convince us to go to a dance club. Maybe next time. It was early (11:30) but seemed really late because it gets dark here around 7pm.
Saturday I head to the National Museum which consists of a bunch of stuffed birds of all kinds, a few interesting dioramas, and some interesting info on the history of the area. It obviously hasn't been updated since the mid-1980s but it's only about a 20 minute walk from my house, has a nice café and wouldn't be a bad place to hang out on a rainy day.
Sunday was Ethiopian food - sooooo gooood and really cheap. It only takes 2 matautu rides to get there. They are fun. Except when you are sitting in the front seat and you are seeing both your life and the city flash before your eyes. I can see why there are no amusement parks here in Kenya - when you ride in these each day, you don't see the need to pay for that kind of "thrill".
Once again - I apologize for the lack of photos - I haven’t had a good chance to take many - plus uploading them takes a long time. Hopefully I’ll have some up by the weekend.
We decided to check out an Indian place that was mentioned in my guidebook. Well, maybe it was once Indian but once we took a look at the menus we found that there were only 4 items available and none resembled anything remotely Indian - it was more Kenyan-style. So that was fine - I had some chicken and Lauren had a whole fish and we got some flatbread with it. Then we set out to head to a local bar where the guidebook said there was usually live music played on the weekends. We head through the town (almost getting trampled when the street vendors stampeded out of the area when the police came) and ended up in Mang' Hotel. Up to the second floor where the bar was and it was VERY interesting inside. Black walls with neon-painted decorations, a cage around the bar and soccer playing on the TVS. We asked the manager if there would be live music and he assured us there would be. He sat us (at a table with one other person - this is quite common here). The guy at our table had a hat on that said "On the Prowl". Wow. That just about said it all. Then the "entertainment" started. It wasn't a band - it was 5 teenagers - 3 guys, 2 girls, coming out in matching outfits (jeans & matching jackets for the guys, and skirts & t-shirts for the girls) and they did this dance routine in the middle of the bar. It was so funny but they were quite good. This happened about every 30 minutes. Very interesting. Not exactly what I would call "live music" but definitely entertaining and like nothing you would see in Canada. Lesson learned - the guidebook is not always accurate, but can still take you to some interesting places.
Then we went out to another place downtown which had a patio and we ordered some food. We were sat with another 4 people - a girl and 3 guys. They were young and very friendly, asking us a lot of questions and telling us good places to go. The girl was pretty drunk and kept trying to convince us that we should go out dancing with all of them later than night. She was trying to reassure us about one of the guy's harmlessness by loudly "whispering" to us - "don't worry about him - he's gay!". Funny funny stuff. We ended up leaving before they could convince us to go to a dance club. Maybe next time. It was early (11:30) but seemed really late because it gets dark here around 7pm.
Saturday I head to the National Museum which consists of a bunch of stuffed birds of all kinds, a few interesting dioramas, and some interesting info on the history of the area. It obviously hasn't been updated since the mid-1980s but it's only about a 20 minute walk from my house, has a nice café and wouldn't be a bad place to hang out on a rainy day.
Sunday was Ethiopian food - sooooo gooood and really cheap. It only takes 2 matautu rides to get there. They are fun. Except when you are sitting in the front seat and you are seeing both your life and the city flash before your eyes. I can see why there are no amusement parks here in Kenya - when you ride in these each day, you don't see the need to pay for that kind of "thrill".
Once again - I apologize for the lack of photos - I haven’t had a good chance to take many - plus uploading them takes a long time. Hopefully I’ll have some up by the weekend.
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