Wednesday 10 September 2014

Things that are different...smells

How is life in Nairobi different from where we have lived in the US? We can think of many things.  This morning on the way to school, while driving on a different side of the road, in a Toyota Noah (not an ark, a Noah), one daughter commented that if one of her friends came here to visit in a year, they would notice the smells, but she would be so used to it that she wouldn't notice.

Smells here are definitely different.  When we lived in Upper Hill and were usually walking to the grocery store (in the Highwayy Mall (original spelling not mine), traffic fumes were the most noticeable. By noticeable, I mean that I take back all of the complaints I ever made about emission control back home (how the annual inspections were a nuisance, did it really matter, what a hassle...  Once you've passed within feet (or inches) of some big lorry belching billows of black smoke, you get the point. 

If we went the other way to a different mall, the bridge over a ditch had an entirely different, rotten smell of decay (putrescence!).  Add muddy water and trash, and it makes one walk faster.  There are definitely some of these smells in places back home, but we didn't go to those places.  Here it's part of life, on the way to buy milk and bread.  And on the way home again.

Then there's the trash burning.  Apparently, whatever one throws away here is probably going to be gone through, so it's good to remember that.  And happily, we have been able to find recycling collection locations in both places where we've lived so far (some of you know this is really important to us).  But it is common to pass a pile of burning trash (one daughter warns us to close the windows and turn on the recirculate so we don't breath more than we need to).

Every day we notice interesting juxtapositions--a burning pile of trash near a well-cared for coffee plantation, a bicyclist with three large bundles of hay pedaling up the hill on UN Avenue near the US embassy (not in the bike lane, either!), or herders with sheep passing through an up-scale estate on the way to school.  It's all part of life in this busy, bustling capital city in East Africa.

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