Slums and Souvenirs

Sunday was an overcast day in Nairobi, but I quickly set out to accomplish the few items I had set out for myself. The first and simplest was quickly thwarted, as although all the barbershops list hours starting at 8 AM, none of their signs mention that they are uniformly closed on Sunday. This country has some sort of vendetta against giving me a haircut. I proceeded into the city center to verify that there heretofore unmentioned City Hall Masai Market souvenir fair was indeed present. Its vendors were just starting to set up, so I followed my original plan to go to YaYa Center, a suburban shopping mall which hosts the published Masai Market on Sundays. I caught a “City Hoppa” bus (I assume that it’s a play on words since Hapa in Swahili means “here” but I’m not at all certain) which engages a staff of two – one driver and one hawker who shouts at people on the street to entreat them to board instead of opting for a competing bus company or any of the parasitic matatus that follow the identical route. The hawker also collects the 20 KSh fee (about 25 cents). The bus arrived at YaYa Center much more quickly that I expected and I missed the stop. Since it was still early though, I decided against disembarking and taking another bus in the other direction and instead decided to ride this bus for the loop, see a little bit more of the neighborhoods of Nairobi, and then jump off when it came past the mall going in the other direction. The circuitous route took me through some truly lovely tree-lined suburbs like Hurlingham, but then passed through those into Kawanguare, a suburban Nairobi slum. Many of the people were boarding in their Sunday best heading into town for church, but that made them stand out against their environment even more. Clapboard shacks with corrugated iron roofs as homes and kiosks. Not a shred of green to be seen, as whatever scrubby weeds surfaced were quickly mowed down by the emaciated livestock. Mountains of open garbage as tall as the window on our bus with goats rooting at the top and children rummaging around the bottom. The estimates of how many people live in Kawanguare range from 250,000 to 500,000. Having struck up a conversation with my hawker by this point, I asked him what these people did for work, and he replied “Nothing”. He said that many of them expected to inherit farms, but when those lands were transferred away from them through a variety of unsavory means, they came to the city seeking sustenance. But in his words, “They have no land, no jobs, and no hope.” Although that is likely an exaggeration, it is true that this is an area with some of the most extreme poverty in the world, with people living off about US$1 per day. He did say that the schools in that area are slowly but steadily improving, and agreed that education was the only hope for preventing the slums from being inherited by another generation.

        

Even the Nebulons are getting in on the action...

Disembarking at YaYa Center could not have provided a more sudden or stark contrast. For those of you in the DC area, YaYa is like Tyson’s Corner Center, but with even more white people. Exclusive brand names stores, gleaming marble floors, upscale coffee shops, even a street team in full space-age regalia hawking the new Samsung smartphone for a sum which exceeds most Kenyan’s annual income. 
    

It keeps going...

... and going

Arrayed in the parking lot were close to a hundred mats, splayed on each were hundreds of African tchatchkes ready for the haggling. Every step I took though the market was met with “Hello friend! Jambo! Karibu Kenya! What is your name? Where are you from? Please come with me just a moment to see my shop, looking is free, but you must hold the wares to know their quality and for you as my first customer of the day I have a special deal which I will not be able to extend for very long, so please let me feel like I am working today, sister please start wrapping these products for our foreign friend. Wait, but you are not buying, let me give you another price just for spending this time with us, and you are still not buying? Do you prefer this price? I feel this is our special time, and that we should do business together, but you are walking away. Do you promise you will come back? I will hold this piece for you, but you promise you will return?” Rise, repeat, multiply by one hundred, I am not exaggerating. I wended my way through the warren of pressing venders jotting notes down on what prices I was hearing and what products I was interested in procuring as gifts. Finally, I looked at my list and realized that if I were to go negotiating each of these gifts from vendors separately, I would be there all month. I decided to take a chance and try to make the system work for me. I beckoned one of the particularly earnest sellers, Mike, over to me and explained the system of agency, whereby I would provide him with a list of products, he would procure them for me at the best prices, and then I would negotiate with him and only him on a price for the bundle of goods. If I like the price I got from him, I would only need one agent, and if I didn’t then I would engage another agent to compete with him. Industrious as all Kenyans I’ve met, Mike eagerly set out on his task, engaging a deputy to help on his search. I sat in the shade with a mango juice, while they busily traversed the shops, bringing me products to verify. At the end, I had a pile of about 25 gifts, and hadn’t lifted a finger. Mike started with an absurdly high price for the group, and I re-explained that I could easily get another agent to engage on the same task. He immediately cut his price in half. I negotiated him down to about one third of his initial asking price, happily handed over the cash, and received the hefty bag of loot in return. Before letting me go, Mike asked me what course I studied in school. I told him Software Engineering and Business, and he paid me what I can only take as the ultimate marketplace compliment, “You are a tough customer.”

High Five

 It’s been a very rewarding couple of days for our team, and hopefully we’ve even got room to improve from here. Before the reveal, maybe it’s worth giving a little bit of insight into what our daily schedule has been like over the last few weeks that we’ve been researching and drafting our report. We’ve typically been getting up around 6 or 7 AM, joining together for breakfast at 8 AM, starting work at 9 AM, working until 1, breaking for an hour for lunch, resuming at 2 PM until it’s time for dinner at 7 PM, dining for an hour, then heading to the bar, laptops in hand, to work from about 8 PM until midnight or later, then going to bed for a few hours until we get up and do it all over again. Our team recognized early on that we had a massive body of research to tackle and a lot of report drafting to do, and we grabbed on with both hands from day one.

That hard work got put to the test on Tuesday as we gave our government sponsor a preview via phone conference of the draft report that we intended to present to her extended staff the next day. Although all of us were quite confident in the quality of our work, I think the shared fear was that we were not going to tell Dr. Katherine Getao anything that the head of the e-Government wouldn’t already know, and that she would look at us and say, “Right. So?”

Far from the case, she was attentive and inquisitive from the first substantive slide. One of my teammates believes she counted 20 “Fantastic”s over the course of the call. She gave us a couple of additional areas for investigation, followed up to clarify a few points that were new news to her, and expressed her excitement to see the final report. Though it was very gratifying to hear it, we soon shuffled off to bed, as we had another 5:30 sortie to Nairobi the next morning to present our preliminary report to the CIOs of Kenya’s 42 government ministries. Since I have already had a chance to present on numerous occasions, I left this one to my teammates, which meant I got to sleep the whole car ride. We arrived at the conference center at the Kenya Institute of Education, and heard Katherine give a heartfelt, humorous and very ambitious presentation on the e-Government strategy for the next year. Her staff reviewed some of the subtopics in the strategy, and then it was our turn. Anna had created a visually stunning presentation, and Nimeesh and Luan both did a great job sharing it with the assembled ICT officers. The questions came fast and furious, substantive and on point, and I used my perch in the center of the seating area to clarify our key principles and outline the opportunities that Kenya has to “leapfrog” a number of stages of technological development, and learn enough from the world’s experience with e-Government to “cheat” and start on the last page of the book, as it were. The reception to our points was very warm with both Dr. Getao and her staff immediately integrating some of our points into their responses to crowd questions. At lunch, I was able to sit with Katherine, together with one of the architects of the Kenya Vision 2030 plan and a gentleman from the Ministry of Information and Communication who has been instrumental in drafting and passing many of Kenya’s laws pre- and post-constitution. I will admit to a thrill when during the somewhat heated lunch discussion regarding whether these principles were better promulgated as new legislative authority or simple regulatory edicts, and what position they would occupy vis a vis some of the laws already in process, Dr. Getao at one point said “Yes, but are you listening to what IBM is telling us???”

The conference was a bit eye-opening hearing that the status of some of the projects that our legislative proposals will legitimize was more rudimentary that we had hoped, and we will need to adjust some of our included timelines accordingly. And we did get ambushed by some laws in draft form that no one had bothered to circulate to anyone in e-Government but that will directly affect our outputs, but by Thursday morning we had already tamped those down and were working them into our final report. Overall, it was extraordinarily gratifying to have many hours of hard work pay off with an eager and engaged reception and a very satisfied client. The next few days we’ll spend ensuring that the final full-length report if of similar quality and contains the few tweaks that Dr. Getao requested.

We celebrated this milestone with some boisterous alcohol-fueled card games, neither of whose names are of a quality to be published in this blog, in the bar with the extended team. This weekend, most of the team will head to Lake Nakuru, while I hitch a matatu ride to Nairobi for one more crack at the Nairobi Hebrew Congregation, a long-awaited meet up with my dear college friend Ellen who works in the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, and some frantic souvenir shopping for what seems like an endless list of deserving recipients. One week from now, we’ll have finished our final client presentation and I’ll be on a plane to Kinshasa… how the time has flown.

The Gory Guts of Government

Our whirlwind day in Nairobi started in Nyeri at 5:30 AM followed by a three and a half trek south. It was a frantic sprint over poor roads and unmarked speed bumps for much of the journey with a few jar-rattling moments, with the last third of the trip spent staring at the bumper in front of us in a choking traffic jam from Thika into the capital which is apparently de rigeur. The massive road building projects in process seem to be targeted at exactly this migration pattern, but there seem to be enough cars transiting to fill the new road with plenty to spare.

We arrived at  Nyayo House (which still gives me chills) slightly late for our first meeting with the General Counsel of the Immigration Ministry the organization that has subsumed most of the government's Registration departments. We were shuttled up through the masses into the VIP elevator and whisked into his office. What followed was a frank discussion about which laws they respect and which they don't and how we can ensure that our legislation falls into the former camp. Government authorizing legislation is so vertical here, with empowering acts dedicated to each of the ministries, that cross-cutting rules are relatively rare. Success will depend as much on the political power of our sponsor as the quality of our report, but we'll do our part.
We then delved into the front lines of the processes we hope to reform, getting an all-access tour thanks to our backing from the President's office. We began with the head of Passport issuance, who held forth at length on the Somali threat, bragged - rightfully - about the degree to which IT automation in that process has squeezed out the opportunities for graft. Touring the floor was dizzying but not without some method behind the madness. The duplication and over-specialization within the step-by-step-by-step carousel of clerks was at least organized, publicly posted and ultimately effective (if not efficient) in that it can turn around a well-qualified passport request in 14 days (quicker than the US to my recollection). Our magnificent guide took us through the pre-check, the verifying clerk, the cashier, the photographer, the scanner, the indexer, the recommender and the adjudicator. Astoundingly, all of this is done without a whit of external validation or cross-checking unless there is a whiff of suspicion, despite the fact that they have the entire process automated and online access to perfectly good sources of validations. Not only that, but the din is undiminished as people from all over the country flock into this one of only five national processing centers for passports, both to file their application and pick up their finished passports - a daunting task as you can imagine for people coming from the sticks. We saw numerous people turned away for issues with their paperwork or improper materials for pickup. The notion of corruption was literally laughed away, blaming it on "blockers" outside who stand outside the offices posing as expediters who make off with hard-earned, unschooled shillings with no results. (Others have told us that the blockers are only still able to hang around because they kick up to the bosses within the Ministry.)

We took tea with the ministry CIO, Jane Otoko, who was quite blunt with what she hopes to get out of e-government and how we can best achieve it within our allotted time frame. We then proceeded to the low point, at least until that time, of the organization process at Makadera station deep in the neighborhoods of Nairobi. Gone were the gleaming computers, well ordered queues, clear processes, and pressed uniforms. These were ramshackle huts, literally sticks bound with twine at some points, populated by a listless group of unbusy bureaucrats whose chief duty appeared to be delaying the snaking line of humanity outside their door from getting their National ID cards.The administrator held forth in painful and painstaking detail about the finer points of each inane step of their process, proudly displaying "archives" of paper logbooks tenuously stacked in jury-rigged bookcases. No window was intact. No clerk strayed from their designated simple portion of the task. Their tools seemed plucked from the 18th century. No customers were served simultaneously, each one waiting for the one before to complete the full Model-T assembly line process. The opportunities for subjective evaluations, inexplicable delays, and corruption abounded. A single web-form could render all of them irrelevant and their customers served at a much higher level.

Those few of them who were working in a dilapidated concrete structure had an interesting cornerstone.

Given my experience yesterday, one would expect it to say "killed fighting FOR Mau Mau" especially on a building populated by the government that has now dedicated their national holiday to them. A fascinating dissonance.

We rushed back to Sheria House in the government complex and met with the Attorney General's CIO, who tried to give us a clearer idea of what we needed to provide the legislative drafters. In the course of the meeting he enlightened us to the 255 forms that they provide for corporate legislation, the five types of marriage they register (civil, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, and African customary), and the hodgepodge of other functions their office serves.

On the ground floor, we then witnessed what was the most striking of all the processes we experienced today - the Birth Certificate registration office. Only 60% of Kenyan births are registered, since many still occur at home, especially outside of Nairobi. Many children are not registered until they need to sit for matriculation exams, and the administrator was telling us of cases where people don't register their birth until age 70, when they want a passport to leave the country. The process is completely manual, with the only computers involved being one set for printing the certificates, by manually typing them and then printing onto form paper, and calculating statistics, by manually typing collected numbers into an Excel spreadsheet with over 70 tabs and copying the numbers into a "report" in Microsoft Word. The actual records are stored in hundreds and hundreds of red backed books dating back decades and decades. These books are on shelves, on desks, strewn on the floor and, in at least one instance, being used as doorstops. Foot-high piles of applications rested on every spare surface, with some clerks unable to see over the pile in front of them. No process was apparent although the administrator assured us it existed. The dysfunction was dazzling, and I've provided a brief snippet below. This is one of those areas where someone concerned with e-Government throws up their hands and does not know where to begin, except maybe with a match and a jug of kerosene.

We finished off the day meeting with Vivian from IBM East Africa at a delightful repose called the Nairobi Java House, a Starbucks knock off which definitely smelled, felt and tasted like carefully calibrated corporate issue home. I'm not saying I miss it, but it's impossible to deny the draw.

Nyeri Town

Today we ventured outside Nairobi for the first time en route to our “permanent” home in Nyeri. Nyeri is the “breadbasket of Kenya”, an agricultural center which also serves as the cultural stronghold of the Kikuyu, the largest and most powerful of Kenya’s communities. Nyeri is home to both the current president Mwai Kibaki and Dr. Catherine Wanjiru Getao, our client.

The departure from Nairobi this morning was… apropos to Nairobi. Crushing, chaotic traffic, road construction, dirt, smog and reckless pedestrians at every turn. Our convoy of six cars probably took six different routes getting out of the city. Luan and I were fortunate enough to be driven by Maureen, the IBM East Africa communications and marketing resource who has been effectively made the liaison between us and IBM EA. She first wowed us by informing us that our group’s arrival had made the papers, appearing in that morning’s edition business section of the Standard, one of the two major Kenyan newspapers. Maureen is pretty amazing, a Kenyan through and through, worldy, eloquent, mellow, sharp, upbeat, and a objective knock-out. Like all Kenyans we’ve met she’s also an unapologetic optimist, seeing only brilliant progress on the horizon despite the atrocities, chaos and violence that have littered Kenya’s recent history even in her lifetime. She lives a city life during the week and strikes out into the Kenyan countryside on the weekends. I got the sense from her private Catholic University education and her being raised outside the tony Nairobi suburb of Karen that her parents were probably at least relatively well off, but I don’t know for certain. Along the way to Nyeri, we discussed politics, development, IBM, and her life. That plus the scenery I’ll describe was enough to banish from my mind any idea of using the ride to rest.

The road to Nyeri was bumpy, rocky, and under construction at the start, with heart-stopping near misses de rigeur. But Maureen faithfully piloted our rolling projectile without incident. We made it as far as the market town of Thika before stopping at a fruit stand for refreshment. Del Monte has ample operations in the Kenyan heartland, and most of the items on the menu seemed like the kind of canned or boxed product you might find in three weeks time on a grocery shelf in Europe or America. Dedicated as we are to the “authentic” we promptly ignored those selections as soon as we saw a selection under the juices labeled “Fresh Pineapple” for the absurdly low price of 70 shilling (about 75 cents). Luan and I ordered three, to be gracious to our driver as well. We moved from the cashier to the next window to pick up our frothing glasses of pineapple juice, already licking our lips. When we saw the individual behind the counter reach for a pineapple from under the counter, we looked at each other and said “Wow, when they say fresh pineapple juice, they really mean it!” Our smiles turned quizzical when two more pineapples made an appearance on the counter, thinking “How much juice do you get from a pineapple anyway?” They then took out a bag, inserted the 3 pineapples and handed them to us. Fresh Pineapple meant just that, and any juicing would need to be a result of our own effort. Undefeated, I ran to the car, found the paring knife I had acquired in Nairobi, and proceeded to dissect a pineapple and share it around. It was sweet and succulent, and there was certainly no loss in having an additional two to bring with us to Nyeri. In the future though, I will hesitate before assuming away the literal.

The closer we got to Nyeri, the more lush and verdant the surroundings became, with fields predominating over dustbowls. We passed through small towns, but between them were thatched huts, men tending cattle on the road shoulder, women carrying bundles of hay or twigs on their backs, a few stray goats, and some people sitting without any clear objective, although admittedly some of them were on cell phones. This intensely rural landscape was not one we expected a mere hour outside the Nairobi city limits, and the contrast was bracing.

Nyeri continued the green surroundings, but placed a thriving town with rich offerings in the middle of it. Though we have not yet had a chance to thoroughly investigate, we already caught glimpses of banks, restaurants, cafes, service stations and the like. I’m hopeful that we’ll find sufficient material to satisfy our rudimentary needs while we’re here.

We arrived at the Green Hills hotel, our home for the next four weeks. The accommodations are mixed, with thriving, beautifully cared for horticulture, and somewhat less cared for architecture. The gym, spa, and small pool should not be discounted,  but the lack of internet in the rooms might cause us some bit of consternation as we strive to keep in touch with each other and with the outside world. I’m planning to go up to the terrace in a half an hour to Skype with my family, despite the fact that it is pushing midnight, and I’d much rather be in my PJs.

We jumped back into our suits, snapped up a quick lunch on the terrace overlooking a beautifully manicured plaza, and then headed out for our work content for the day, a meeting with local District Commissioner and Provincial Commissioner… roughly the mayor and governor of Nyeri and the surrounding area. They were pleasant and seemed to enjoy hearing a brief overview of our work and charitable efforts, and confirmed much of what we had heard regarding the need for these initiatives. To hear them talk of the 42 agencies’ efforts that they coordinate in the local area, and to empathize with the frustration they felt, for instance, at the three to nine month period it takes them themselves to get a driver’s license, gave us valuable proof points for our strategies. And both the DC and the PC will certainly provide us critical access to their bureaucracies so that we can see first-hand how the process works (or doesn’t work) currently. However, the most powerful evidence of the need for change came just outside the office where the queue for the various registration actions that the population needed to take snaked out of the offices, across their entry halls and out into the dusty parking lot. And the PC assured us that this was not even a bad day. The notion of the people sitting out there in the hot sun, hopefully in the right line at the right time with the right documents, praying to get in front of a clerk before they leave for the day who is competent and has integrity, when the registration they are performing is likely completely duplicative, half-knowing that they’ll likely be there at least another time before their transaction is complete and furthermore knowing that the whole process could likely be done online with a few key clicks was both heart-rending and fortifying. We provided some small gifts to the DC and PC and headed back to unpack at the hotel.

After a pleasant dinner, with sufficient fruits and veggies to fill my belly, we headed out into town to a small bar called the “Gazelle Impakt” (don’t ask me). It was quite dead, but still always enjoyable to hang out with the group, we downed a few Tuskers (which appears to have *excellent* market penetration) and called it a night.

Safari

So much to report in the last 48 hours... I'll likely break it up into a few messages.

The early bird gets more than the worm here... woke up Friday at 5:30 AM in preparation for a 6:30 AM departure into Nairobi National Park. My guide, Vincent, arrived early and we set off.

Given that I expected to spend the next 4 or more hours with my guide as my sole human companion, we began to make small talk. It's still bracing to me how quickly tribe (or as I've been reconditioned to refer to it - community) comes into the conversation. Vincent's Luo heritage was not only the first thing he shared with me, but it seemed to color his views of living in Nairobi, politics, economics, other tour groups and even the treatment of the park. He was tickled that I knew that Barack Obama's heritage was Luo as well, and we enjoyed a bracing round of US political discussion immediately prior to arrival at the park. Early in line, we paid our entry fee and proceeded into the smallest of the Kenyan wildlife parks, but one so close to the city that planes fly over during the duration of your visit and the Nairobi skyline is often the backdrop to the animals that you see.

At this point, my sense of safari was founded. I admit, I have been conditioned to zoos, and we visit the National Zoo in DC quite often. In a zoo, the pace is typically "Animal, animal, animal, animal, animal, lunch, animal, animal, animal, animal, animal, animal, go home". This is not a safari attitude. Safari is more akin to "Drive, drive, drive, drive, squint, drive, drive, drive, drive, drive, drive, animal!, photo, photo, photo, photo, photo, photo, drive, drive, drive, repeat". It's not boring per se, but it does require a clear set of expectations and a zen-like attitude. If the animals are to be seen, you will see them. And as my guide said repeatedly "No rush in Africa."

Fortunately, Vincent stayed ahead of the larger buses, so we were able to spot animals that were chased away by the louder, larger vehicles. Zebras, hartebeests, gazelles, elands, baboons, hyraxes, ground squirrels, guinea fowl, water buffalo, giraffe, ostrich, maybe of them just a few feet from the car. It's quite exhilarating to see them in their natural surroundings, but one's plan of action having honed in on this majesty is rather unclear. Admire it, certainly. Capture it for personal posterity. But there is a certain ... futility in this magnificent voyeurism. It's momentarily exhilarating, has undeniable natural beauty, is set against an undeniably transcendent backdrop, and yet - maybe I'm just not a safari guy. I don't think the absence of lions and black rhinos made the experience any less than. I just don't think I got "it" my first time out.

The only point at which we were allowed out of the car once in the park is at designated picnic areas, which not coincidentally is where some baboons congregate. Once we stopped one quickly took up a position on top of our vehicle, transparently taunting us. There were more than a few young, and I am still amazed at how much watching the families of baboons interact recalls looking in an evolutionary mirror.

Out of the animals we saw, the water buffalo were certainly the most threatening. Built like furry tanks, their craggy horns bespoke their previous violence. After I photographed a herd of three and gazed upon them for a short while, Vincent started the car again to pull away. Immediately all three water buffalo snapped a rear leg into position to charge and visibly tensed the muscles in their powerful forelegs. If wildlife was wont to quote movies, the next words would have been "Go ahead, make my day." We drove away from the group without incident.

On existing the park, we stopped to admire the site at which former President Moi burned 12 tons of confiscated ivory in a two story bonfire to demonstrate Kenya's determination to halt poaching of its elephants. Dramatic and impactful, it goes to show that even a broken clock is right twice a day. Though any exemption from environmental criticism is quickly dispelled upon viewing the preposterously ostentatious, red-roofed villa that Moi permitted his crony to build smack dab in the middle of the park in disruption of migration routes.

From the park we scooted over to the David Sheldrick Trust where baby elephants which have been orphaned (largely due to poaching) are raised until the age of three until they begin the long road towards adoption into an existing herd, a process which takes anywhere from five to nine years, all of it under the supervision of the Trust. So far in their 30 plus years of operation, they have successfully reintroduced 130 elephants, and some rhinos as well. The 19 two and three year old elephants currently in their care came down in a parade before the assembled tourists and school children, were hand fed baby formula via comically large bottle, and proceeded to play in the mud, wrestle, and generally make themselves irresistibly adorable.

We proceeded from their to the Giraffe Manor in Karen where a similar rehabilitation agenda is in place for the nine giraffes that live on site.

These last two experiences, while certainly less wild by a long stretch, offered up close and personal views of the animals not far from their natural setting. To my mind, the ability to observe their behavior at longer length provided a more fulfilling encounter, offering at least a glimpse into the way the animal intelligence expresses itself, often in very human ways.

Much more to say about Friday especially as both the leading edge of my teammates and Shabbat arrived, but I'll save it for another post.

Nairobi 101

I don't expect these updates to be nearly as frequent once we start our project, but while I have time, I figure it can't hurt to post em up.

Some initial impressions from walking around Nairobi.

Mobs of people walk, and yet pedestrians are treated like it is their fondest wish to be a hood ornament. And when I say walk, I don't just mean walk to the nearest Metro station or walk until they get a cab. They walk. Home. Kilometers. And I'm guessing they all get home before their carbon burning commuter-mates, since all I saw in every direction was snarled traffic that made the Washington Beltway look like the Autobahn. In fact sometimes the only indication that traffic is moving is the mammoth belch of black minibus exhaust that chokes the lungs and stings the eyes. Pity the African asthmatic. Adjusting to the fact that lanes are British style here is made more difficult that lane directions are considered optional based on the congestion, evidenced by the dozen or so near head-on collisions when impatient drivers just decided to commandeer the lane for oncoming traffic. I should quote "lane" since none of the roads in this neighborhood are large enough for two cars to pass comfortably but all are bidirectional. I'll be walking.

The next, while contending for the gold in the obvious Olympics, is that I am extremely white. I mean, blindingly so. Walking down Haile Selassie Boulevard to Uhuru Highway with the masses, I became conscious of the fact that everyone was staring at me. I was not wearing a kippah, I did not have tzitzit hanging out, I did not have an enormous SLR camera strung around my neck or bermuda shorts. My baseball cap was not distinguishable from the Indianapolis Colts, Oakland Raiders or Arsenal hats being worn around me. But I sure do not blend in. That's not a feeling I have stateside or in Israel. It's humbling and discomfiting, though in a constructive way. As I got some catcalls from the passing matatus (gypsy vans), I decided to play with the tension and used my rudimentary Swahili to loudly ask the unsuspecting dude next to me to confirm what I already knew to be correct directions. He responded to me in Swahili, so I guess I nailed the accent. Lots of surrounding shoulders shrugged ("crazy mizungu...") and people went about their trek down the hill.

It's sad to see all of the federal government buildings adorned with signs of the sort "The Ministry of Water and Irrigation is a CORRUPTION FREE ZONE" ... an indicator of almost Orwellian certainty that they are not. One particularly candid one said "Help fight corruption ... Please don't offer officials bribes". Also don't feed the rhinos. Sigh.

The Israeli Embassy is next door to our hotel and has a large hand-painted side at either side of the block that says "Please Stop at our Friendly Checkpoint!" with two emoticon style happy faces underneath. I aimed to take a picture, but a pair of dour, AK-toting sentries made it clear that was not in the plan.

Nakumatt is Wal-Mart on HGH. You can bank, get groceries, outfit your electronics, housewares, clothing, change money, get a haircut, do your dry-cleaning, select fresh-cut flowers, buy school text books, order lunch, and log time in the internet cafe, all in one establishment, and I didn't make it to the second floor. It did occur to me that there's no reason that our e-government initiatives can't take locations like this into account, as they seemed well administered and smoothly run despite their sprawl.

Tomorrow the game park, welcoming the leading edge of my IBM teammates, and Shabbas in East Africa.