Nairobi

I got off the plane and for the first time I was met by someone with my name on a placard – very cool.

It was a lot less hassle than I thought at the airport, no one was trying to sell me anything, so once I had met the cab criver that Kaajal had hired me for the day, we headed to Kaajal's husbands office to drop my bags. I had a good chat with him about the history of the place, though obviously very much from the point of view of an Indian born Kenyon, which I suspect would be quite different to that of a African Kenyon.

He went to Manchester University, so we had the Curry Mile chat. They had a tea lady whose only job was to make tea, though I only realised after I accepted that it came made with half milk and 3 sugars – almost a meal in a cup! Apparently all soft drinks here are very sugary – I had a Vimto Special with my dinner that night, which turned out to be 50% cordial, 50% lemonade – too sweet even for me.

In the industrial section of Nairobi they have Kate House – clearly a place making very high quality goods.

Driving around during the day I was pretty much the only white person other than in the posh ex-pat communities, but no one took any notice of me, other than the children who would always wave. People were very chatty though, friendly and wanting to talk about Kenya and the UK.

The traffic in Nairobi is as you would expect – mad, flashing the lights indicates both 'you can go' and also 'have you seen me, I'm about to go' with often intersting results. Thye have traffic lights at the roundabouts, but no one pays any attention to them, so they also have 4 traffic police on each roundabout controlling the flow. It's common to drive in the wrong lane if the first 2 are full. There are some paved roads, but mud tracks for roads are common and the potholes make the London streets seem like they really are paved with gold.

All the cars and PSVs have cool sayings on them like 'God's gift' 'Patience pays' 'time will tell' (on a hand drawn cart) and oddly 'desired'. Either that or some kind of football allegiance, normally MU or Barcelona.

There is nothing really in Nairobi, not even for tourists, so spent the day driving around looking at things and people, and having lunch in the expat area feeling weird with my black driver whilst people stared.

At one point a Baboon crossed the road, and they have cool birds, especially two at Ngong Hills, black with red under feathers on the wings, and a very distinctive call.

Ngong Hill overlooks the Rift Valley to one side and Nairobi to the other, so we climbed up to the top of the hill and saw the wind farms and view, talked to a nice farmer and waved at the children. We walked no further, as the park ranger told us it would be dangerous.

When I got back to Kaajal's house I napped on the sofa as I had only got 4 hours bad sleep on the plane, and she gave me some snacks, Arrow root crisps and fresh avocado from her parents garden. Then we went to her mum's house to get a mattress and I was given more food, spicy fried plantain which was great, but filling, then she also tried to give em a banana, but I had to refuse, and asked if I could maybe eat it tomorrow.

We went out in the evening for great Indian food and afterwards a beetle leaf – a leaf of some sort piled high with spices and seeds that is meant to be eaten to aid digestion and things like that, though I had the baby one – no tobacco! I was definitely in the Indian area of town and was the only white person in both the restaurant and the bar that we went to afterwards.

I came to realise that in Africa it's not what you know, but who you know and Kaajal's family know a lot of people – everywhere, which should be useful when I come to travel later on.