Wow, I love Africa!

Yep, I love this place already. How long did it take me to come to this conclusion - about an hour and a half.

With all the horror stories I was hearing about Africa (and Nairobi in particular) before we left (from the media, friends, friends of friends, the Interweb, our guide book even), I'd have forgiven myself for getting a tad nervous and actually using the internet to book some 'safe' place to stay for our first few nights. But then I remembered I've done all this before, and the worry-mongers out there are many and varied. I've always tried to live my life outside the confines of the 'machine', and so far I reckon it's worked out pretty well (for those who don't know what I mean by 'the machine', just read Aldous Huxleys 'Brave New World', or George Orwell's '1984' - the machine is alive and well, and doing quite nicely for itself in the 21st century, and we're all, myself included, to varying degrees, little worker ants keeping the machine's cogs a-turning, and the biggest cog in the whole machine has 'Fear' emblazoned across it...).

So, not heeding the doomsayers I decided not to book anything in advance and to begin the trip as I intended to continue it, on a wing and a prayer - or in other words, to go 'travelling'. (To be honest, I did organise things so that our flight arrived really early in the morning, giving us the whole day to sort something out. I also checked with http://www.hostelworld.com and all 20 or so accommodation places listed there had full availability for the days we arrived, which I knew to be low season. I also did enough research on Nairobi to know where a group of decent hotels were located close by one another. Finally, I also knew that the budget for this trip is far healthier than the last time I went travelling, so in a worse-case scenario we had plenty of money to stay in a really expensive place if need be. So, all in all, I knew full well we would have no problem finding something.)

Anyway, given all the above, poor Sarah was still swayed by the machinations of the machine (who is it that said 'Hell is: other people'?), so I actually relented and said she could book somewhere in advance. But in the rush of the last few days she never got a chance to do it, and we flew from Dublin with nothing organised at all - hurrah!

All the departures, connection, visas and luggage went perfectly, no delays, no crowds, no queuing (even Dublin security was empty and I think we were literally the only people in the newly opened Area 14 check-in area). So we arrived in Nairobi airport pretty relaxed and refreshed.

I was still half expecting a barrage of loud, aggressive touts to hit us once we got through customs (I'm certainly not immune to the machine's workings, not yet anyway!), but in fact there were very few of them, and they weren't anything like as persistent as I'd expected. After a few, 'No, we're fine, we're being collected by friends', they pretty much left us alone. I kinda liked the guys immediately in fact, since they weren't brash or pushy at all.

So, feeling much emboldened (embiggened might be a better word) by this first encounter I went looking for the local bus stop to get the local bus into town - taxis are for wimps, and I hate getting them anywhere, especially in Dublin. But when travelling, I always prefer public transport, whether it's a metro, tram or bus. You always get a better feel for the place, your interacting with the real locals (ok, only a little bit), and it always feels more genuine to me. The signposting isn't the best at the airport, but it didn't take much asking around to work it out, and within a half hour I'd gotten money from the ATM, water from the shop (so I could have small change for the bus) and we were sitting comfortably on the bus with loads of room and surrounded by locals - we were the only white people on the bus.

But as for the title of this blog entry ('Wow, I love Africa'), it really comes from the bus conductor guy. He was amazingly friendly and smiley, and made a bit of a joke about us having to pay extra because our rucksacks took up an extra seat (remember something similar in Poland Mullin's?). Anyway, he was just lovely, and it was at just this moment, after all the hype and the niggly worries from back home before we left, that I just sat back, relaxed and realised that this is going to be a great trip, and that I already loved these friendly, smiley people. Once you like the people in a place, you automatically love the place, and I just knew straight away, 'Wow, I love Africa'.