Livin' the expat life

This week was relatively rough at work, so we balanced it out with a few days spent enjoying Nairobi’s finer expat spots. There were rumblings of a plan to try and climb Mount Kenya in 3 days, but given my success on my DOC trip so many years ago, I decided to hold out for a 4 day climb (still ambitious timing)yet to be scheduled.

Thursday night we had a team dinner at Zen Garden, a pan-Asian complex of restaurant, bar and tea house a bit outside the city. It’s a huge compound, carefully planted and paved beyond the requisite iron gates. True to its name, it’s the calmest place I’ve seen in Nairobi yet

We only made it to the restaurant, a big open space with sliding glass doors, tastefully decorated with faux Asian fixtures. The one touch I really liked were the wooden screens separating all the tables – it gave us a sense of privacy you do not always find here. The lighting and the white walls were way too bright, but you could tell the restaurant was trying its hardest to be Nairobi’s answer to the NYC palaces of Tao or Buddakan. Nevertheless, it was clearly a Kenyan restaurant owned by Indians, staffed with African waiters wearing modified samurai gear, serving dim sum and sushi to expats.

Despite the atmosphere, the food was quite good – passable dim sum, good curries, noodles and stir fry (the Thai green curry had the perfect amount of lemongrass for the Jasmine rice), and awesome chocolate mousse. I also had one of the best juices I’ve had so far – lime and ginger (lots more people drink fresh juice than soda here).

It was also a really interesting group of people – a bunch of grizzled expats who had lived everywhere telling battle stores about life in exotic places. Nairobi doesn’t seem so exotic compared to Honduras during a hurricane or Hanoi in the 1980s or Caribbean island chains I’ve never heard of (…hmm, when do I have to return to the Firm?) This did give the dinner a whiff of the colonial that was vaguely disquieting – the modern day equivalent of British settlers gathering at the club for G&Ts and telling stories of the Bush. The ghosts of history are hard to exorcise here.

Friday night we continued our venture into the expat scene with dinner at Toona Tree, one of the restaurants in a plaza near our apartment in Museum hill. This place’s gimmick is that the entire restaurant is on a platform built around a gigantic tree. Looking through the branches, you can dimly see the cars rushing through the Museum roundabout. The major issue with the restaurant - the food was simply prepared western-style meat and fish – was that we were the only people in this massive space. Despite our sole possession of the restaurant, there was not enough chocolate mousse to go around!

Saturday morning was the same as Saturday morning anywhere – TV, manicures (done at home, alas), eggs and Challah (Nakumatt might call it braided raisin brioche, but I know what’s up). After finally giving up on the hot water heater and getting ourselves dressed, we made our way over to WestGate Mall to spend the afternoon with well-heeled Nairobi at the very Euro-trash Art Caffe. We sat out on the terrace under an umbrella and enjoyed crème brulee and carrot cake. It was a great place to write and also to enjoy the random books I’d managed to find at the two English language bookstores having sales. Currently reading a biography of British food writer Elizabeth David; next up are more Ian Rankin novels and Out of Africa.

It’s impossible to be here without feeling uneasy at the inequality, especially when sitting at Art Caffe. The very Western shopping center juxtaposes poorly with the poverty in the surrounding streets. After a few days, the prevalence – and concern for your own safety - make you somewhat immune to the inequality – you only see the worse areas from inside a cab. That’s part of what makes life here not feel all that different – we go to the same types of places with the same sort of people as we would at home. The main difference is how you get there and how early you decree last call. The guilt is balanced by the fact that we are here to do good, and our grant writing will seriously impact the lives of thousands of farmers. Still, there is an unease that comes with privilege that is much stronger than any I've felt back home.