No lights

So let's fast forward a few days since the last post: in essence there was a short nice stay in Munich and a sleepless flight via Dubai to Nairobi. Oh, and the first days in Nairobi of course!

Since we landed in the morning, I had the opportunity to see Kenya from above from the border city of Mandera in the North-East to Nairobi in the South-West. The sun hadn't risen yet and the country was shrouded in haze, but general landscape features such as hills and rivers were recognizable through that.

What struck me immediately was the utter lack of lights on the ground. We crossed the whole of Kenya diagonally and the first lights visible from the airplane were 10 minutes before landing – nine dots of light, to be precise!

Kenya is a country with about 55 million people spread over an area 580.367sqkm – so it's not like it's uninhabited.


We spent the first day strolling around in our neighborhood – the expat district called Westlands.
Privileged (and white) people all live in gated communities: wherever you go, there will always be walls with barbed wire or electrical fences on top and large gates guarded by security services. Also our apartment house despite not being fancy at all is well equipped with those.


As we discovered later, you ideally only leave these fenced-off bubbles in a hired car and get out behind the gate of your destination. So the wandering around on foot isn't a really thing to do. In fact, also the infrastructure does not provide for this activity as there aren't any sidewalks in the whole district.

The Westlands' street life...


...is in stark contrast with the experience behind those omnipresent gates:


Since it was Saturday, we decided to go out the first evening and chose a club / eatery / hangout area called The Alchemist. The burger was good, as were the drinks, the music excellent and people really friendly and welcoming.

The first impression of missing lights in Kenya was confirmed during the first night in Nairobi: even on major streets in our district there weren't any street lights which makes moving around on foot too dangerous to attempt for any sane person.
PS: sorry for the spacing of the pics. The Blogger rich-text editor is a Webapp without possibility to view HTML and the UX on iPad is beyond shitty. Definitely gonna migrate platform asap – which unfortunately means after this trip 🤬
Location: Westlands, Nairobi, Kenya

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