East african adventures

After a month stay in t banana farm eco hostel in Tanzania, I am relishing the city life in Nairobi. Well, more like the diversity of foods, really!

First order of business: I moved into my accomodation for the month, a tiny house in the suburbs of Nairobi. A dream come true for the minimalist in me, and a joy to have a full kitchen again, after many weeks without! The place is so serene, I barely want to leave to go anywhere, except to go try out some food of course...

I happen to live within walking distance of the best fish restaurant in Nairobi apparently. While I am *mostly* vegetarian, I have been known to make an exception for fish under some circumstances, and well the best fish experience in a hipster, industrial style setting seemed worthy of such an exception. So off I went... Step 1: pick a fresh fish from the lake ( fresh, but not alive!), Step 2: they weigh the fish and price it, step 3: they fry it in a pan over an open wooden fire and slather it in some coriander tomato sauce gooeyness, step 4: you take a seat and order sides and sip on some natural sugar cane, lime and ginger juice! The verdict: the sauce and the drink were the real MVPs, the lake fish tasted more bland than the salty fishes from the sea, which I am more used to :-) Ambiance was on point, clearly a well loved local joint!

The next few days, I organized a dairy and produce delivery from a local farm, and true to my swiss & american ways, I of course tried the locally made (brown's food co) cheddar cheese, cream cheese, greek yoghurt, hummus, artisanal crackers and cinnamon raisin bagels which are all to die for!

One thing I would say is utterly inconvenient in Nairobi, as is in most African cities (also Dakar for sure), is public transportation. Basically you have a choice between unpractical and dirt cheap, or Taxi/Uber (convenient, but swiss expensive)... Middle class locals solve this problem by getting a car, which is now relatively cheap, but of course translate into condensed traffic. So if you don't want to drive yourself, you are left with two options at extreme ends of the spectrum. On the few days that I left the house, I have spent a minimum of 20chf per trip, just for round trip fare, a far cry from the 24-hour ticket in Zurich which goes for 13chf and gives you access to all of Zurich and suburbs for a full 24 hour period. Understandably one has to be efficient about city trips, and yes so far, I have mostly ended up in one of the many Nairobi malls. Not proud of this 😅 but clearly the most local thing to do here, and surprisingly an excellent way to try out some of the Nairobi food offerings... also most malls here incorporate outside areas so not the typical enclosed experience! So yes, from the many cafés, to Arab/indian influenced restaurants, to Ethiopian take away, I can say my palette has been richly entertained here in Nairobi.

But it's only been a week, I am now heading to the sea, and when I am back, I fully intent to figure out the accomodation/ public transportation business and get myself more out of the house for authentic fun outside of the malls 😸Read more