Nairobi

A couple of days ago, I took a flight to Nairobi to spend my last days in Kenya 🇰🇪 I was lucky since I had a window seat on “the right side”so that I could see Mt. Kilimandscharo 🗻from the airplane.
Back in Nairobi I took an Uber 🚕 straight to the Jabulani Backpackers Hostel, where I had stayed already so many times before. It has become sort of my second home 🏠 away from home/in Kenya. Initially, my plan was to stay only for 2 more days there but I ran into some issues with my eVisa on the website. Germans require a Visa in Tanzania 🇹🇿 which actually can be obtained on arrival when entering the country but I heard some horrible stories of travellers crossing the border to Tanzania being extorted or scammed by the officials of the border police 👮🏿 They had to pay a fine (up to 300 USD) because of “mistakes” they had made. For example, leaving Kenya on the last day before their visa expires (leaving them with no other option than to proceed to Tanzania and pay whatever is necessary) 🗓️ But also seemingly irrelevant things could be used as reason for making up a fine like having not printed out the eVisa. 🤦 Therefore, I wanted to avoid being scammed by the officials at the border and opted for getting my eVisa upfront, print it out and leave no room for discussions. The immigration website for Tanzania is one of the sloppiest programming for a government service that I have seen so far. First of all, it was not reachable ⛔️ many times when I tried accessing it. Once it was available, I found out that you cannot make your Visa application with a mobile phone because the website is not mobile ready and thus you need a laptop 💻 or desktop 🖥️ to enter your details. Thankfully, I was able to borrow a laptop from Susan (the owner of the hostel). She has gone through the process with another traveler a few days before already. 🙄But that was only the start of it. After I entered my personal details and uploaded the required documents, it came to the payment. Of course, the payment process was broken as well. 😠 After the 50 USD were deducted from my credit card, there was only a white page with a server error shown instead of a confirmation page. I also didn’t receive any confirmation email - neither for the Visa application nor for the payment. 🤬 If I hadn’t made some screenshot of it before, I wouldn’t have even known the transaction ID for my Visa application! And when I tried to lookup the status of my application with the transaction ID, the website indicated even that it cannot find my Visa application. 🤨 At that point I had lost all trust that I even had a valid application for a Visa in Tanzania. So, I sent an email that outlined my issue to the technical support for the website which has not been answered yet - even to this day! 😤 I was mad and if I had not already booked my flight back to Germany from Tanzania’s capital Dar el Salam … I would have skipped this country altogether. But there was nothing more I could do. 🤷 So, I went with some other travelers of my hostel to the National museum in the afternoon. It has very extensive exhibition halls for typical Kenyan animals like elephants, lions and birds but also featured an exhibition of marine photography 📸 by Prince Hussain Aga Khan called “fragile beauty”. It was designed to raise awareness for environmental issues and concerns in ocean ecologies as well as inspire appreciation for wildlife and ignite a desire to protect it. The exhibition has been shown in multiple places already. Canada 🇨🇦 has featured it on a website that gives a quite good impression: https://www.glenbow.org/exhibitions/the-living-…
Apart from wildlife, the museum also gave insight into Kenya’s pre-colonial, colonial and post-independence history 📖 I already knew some facts from other visits to museums or historical sights in Mombasa as well as Lamu but one thing that was particularly interesting for me was the construction of the railway. Between 1896 and 1901, and under the pretence of attempting to stop the slave trade, Britain built the Uganda Railway 🚂between Mombasa and Lake Victoria. The British faced many problems, especially lack of manpower since Africans were reluctant to offer their labour. This forced the administration to import almost 38.000 workers from India. 🇮🇳 Of these, about 2.500 lost their lives to the lions of the Tsavo national park, diseases and other causes. Also the engineers faced major challenges since the railway had to be built on the highlands ⛰️ The Africans objected to the railway passing through their land and for example stole the rails as a source of iron for their local blacksmiths. The railway was seen by the British as an opportunity to open the way for the exploitation of East African resources. They were convinced that it would be a means for making huge profits for the colony💰 Ultimately, it had cost over 5 million British pounds and proved to be an expensive and uneconomical venture. 😅
After two hours in the museum we had enough. Outside of the museum was the Snake house which was included in the ticket price. So, we paid it also a visit and it was surprisingly good. We could hold a python 🐍 (not venomous) and also a small chameleon in our hands. Apart from that they had also turtles 🐢 and crocodiles 🐊 in outdoor habitats that you could watch from further away.
In the evening, we went with Susan to the cinema 🎦 to watch “Dune 2”. We had seen „Dune 1“ in the hostel on the night before and were excited to see how the story further unfolds. IHMO it was not a great movie but entertaining enough. 😌

On the next day, I visited the tower 🗼of the Kenyan International Congress Centre (KICC) together with two other travellers from my hostel. As the first and still one of the tallest skyscrapers of the city, the KICC tower provided a great view 🏙️ of all the different districts. On the way to it, we witnessed hundreds of Kenyan lawyers coming out from their graduation party 🧑🏻‍🎓of their university. All of them were super well dressed but ridiculously also wore blond wigs. 🫣
Anyways, in the afternoon I finally went to a hair dresser which is close to the hostel. Zhe haircut was much needed and they did a great job. For only 2000 KES (approximately 13 EUR) I got my hair cut as well as a head and a neck massage! 😃😊
It was the fourth time for me that I have been in Nairobi during the past month but I have never been out. Susan was intent on changing that and suggested to go to a Standup Comedy show 🎭 in the Levels Hotel that night. Among others - Mike (from the U.S.), Christel (from France), Romain (from France) and I joined her to go to the venue. That day was the international women’s day. So, a lot of the jokes revolved around that. Kenyan humour is a bit raw and less intellectual though. Some comedians were hard to understand because of their accent but many of them were really funny. 🤭 After the show had ended, we went to the pretty nice Gecko bar - where I had a whiskey sour 🍸- and then continued to the popular Alchemist club. The DJs had an interesting style where they would play a song not longer than for 20 seconds. It was a bit annoying after some time since you never really got into a song before the next transition. 😒Anyways, we stayed until 3 am and then decided to go back to the hostel which was only 10-15 min. away (on foot). The only problem was that it was raining heavily 🌧️ that night with small breaks of maybe 10 minutes. So we tried to time ⏱️ our walk back as good as we could but ended up running for the last 150 metres through the rain. 😅

On my last day in Nairobi, I just recovered from the evening before and didn’t do much. 😴 I tagged along with Romain when he went to the Sarit Centre and to Tamu Tamu dishes for lunch 🍽️ We had heard from the cleaner in the Hostel about “mukimo” - another Kenyan dish - and were eager to try it out. It is a delicious mash made of potatoes 🥔, corn 🌽, peas 🫛, spinach 🍃 and onion 🧅 It is quite filling. So much so that after finishing the portion, I felt stuffed for the next 48 hours. 🫃
After lunch we returned to our hostel and - call it a hunch - I tried to check my Visa status again on the buggy website of the Tanzanian immigration office. 😒 I didn’t expect much but magically there was a new status - my eVisa was approved - despite all the prior hiccups. 🥳 Exhilarated, I went to a copy shop in the Sarit Centre to print out the eVisa approval so that absolutely nothing could go wrong with immigration at the Tanzanian border. 🤩
In the early evening many people from the hostel (including me) went to the Jumuiya cocktail festival (https://www.instagram.com/p/C3-uvMKIYwL/). 🍹 It was at a nice location but I could also immediately see that it was for the more affluent people. So, prices were a bit higher in comparison with other places in Nairobi but so was also the quality of the drinks ✅ IMHO the cocktails of the Artcaffé were particularly good. The event was over at 11 pm and we went back to the hostel where I only packed my backpack 🎒 for my journey to Tanzania on the next day.

It was a fitting last night in Nairobi that also gave me the feeling that I had done everything I could. I was ready to move on and start the final chapter of my sabbatical. 😏Read more