I keep forgetting to mention the food I’ve sampled and the amazing places I’ve been to. Sundays’ are typical for me; if there’s a Formula One race on, you’ll usually find me at GP Karting (go-kart race track, also has an archery section and a big screen – the main building is an open type banda place). The atmosphere is absolutely great for watching racing of any kind, especially with the race-track behind you, full of speeding kids and adults adds to the ambience and the beers are chilled to perfection. It’s also very surreal looking out into the plains of the Nairobi National Park which is right next to it and hoping to catch glimpse of any wildlife. But alas, the numbers are dwindling as Nairobi keeps growing out. Or if the telly is out, we usually go to Choices, a club/restaurant in the Industrial area but it’s too gloomy in there and not as enjoyable. The only plus is the volume, which is on a permanent high.
Yesterday, we went out for our usual race and then off to the boys’ hang out, Kengeles West. They have a live “Kidum” band playing, great music. They do covers but there are some original pieces, music rich with Congolese rhythms and awesome beats. The leader singer, the drummer is a Rwandan who’s mother is Hutu and father is Tutsi…or the other way around, I never remember but a gorgeous voice. A friend joined the gang later but left after a while and since she was going my way, I jumped in with her. Bless her ravenous stomach, she wanted something decent to eat. Now, if I’m with the boys, I know we’ll just stop at a Kenchic somewhere and eat the greasiest drumsticks and fries but she wanted a proper meal.
So we went to Haandi’s restaurant at the Mall in Westlands. It advertises, as selling north Indian cuisine and the food is pretty good. The interior of the restaurant is pretty cool; you can watch the chefs slaving away through the glass window that surrounds the kitchen. The menu is gloriously diverse and you’ll have a wide range of dry and saucy meats and vegetables to accompany the many types of naan. The food is quite hot – heat and spice so be careful if you can’t stomach it. The prices are decent but as is with a lot of restaurants in Kenya, the wine selection sucks. Oh dear, I just googled Haandi and they are all over the place – including Bethesda! Oh wow, the menu is pretty much the same except the Kenyan Haandi has a larger variety and the fillet choices are tilapia and not salmon. Sigh, I do miss salmon.
A place that I will absolutely praise and drool about is called Bahari Bistro (Beach bistro). It’s a Swahili theme restaurant at Adams Arcade here in Nairobi. It’s also next to a Java (Starbucks with sandwiches and salads) When you go in, it looks like a typical café type place but when you actually step into the interior, it’s lush carpets and private eating areas. I was meeting some girlfriends for a pre-going out dinner and JC, who I’m beginning to discover has an extremely discerning taste had found this place. We were in a private curtained-off dining room and when you walk in you take off your shoes and sink down into plush cushions in front of low tables. The lights are dimmed and the music is the typical Taarab music of the coast. The one thing missing was a fireplace because it was actually quite chilly but still nice ambience. The menu is quite simple, lots of pilaus though, coconut flavored meats. I think I fell in love with it because the prices were wonderfully affordable. One draw back (or blessing) no booze. Actually, that whole area (Adam’s Arcade) is trying to go alcohol/smoke-free, a pioneer move that they are close to realizing. They have delicious fresh fruit juices though but you do get the odd twinge when drinking an incomplete Screwdriver. Anyway, a while after we’d ordered, power went out in the building. Generators immediately fired up but the overhead lights didn’t come on and it was actually quite ok because the coastal mood was enhanced by having the whole room lit by the candles flickering all around us. Very nice, total date place. Before the food came, our waiter came around with a pitcher of warm/hot water and a basin for us to wash our hands in and the food followed thereafter…huge servings of simple yet absolutely delicious food. (drooling) I had the coconut chicken and rice, yum, yum, yum. I don’t know what everyone else had because for about 15 minutes it was heads down and eating like we’d never seen food before. It was that good. We hang around for a little while longer and then took off because it was Saturday night.
I shall neglect to mention a certain sports bar in a really nice neighborhood that has loads of big screens and tellys peppering the walls but around 11p.m., strippers come out and join you while you’re watching Brazil v. Argentina.
For late night snacking, if you ever happen to be in Westlands around the roundabout just opposite Gypsy’s (the place has three names, great mixed drinks though.) Pavement, (nice club but fake as hell, the place to go to see loads of Bs.) and Barcode (gets crowded, good music, crowd that likes to see and be seen) There is a food truck right outside quite near the circle and these clubs. Well someone just took a shipping container, spruced it up and offered amazing gyros at about 4 in the morning. The fare is mostly Greek but the staff and owners appear to be Somali….hmmm. This place is not cheap though and they can afford to get away with it because it really is quite good. I don’t remember the name of it but I’ll find out later. They serve gyros and kebabs; my partner got the chicken former and it was quite large and very tasty. It had five different sauces and they blended really well together to form this mouth watering taste experience.
Pizza lovers: Pizza Garden in Westlands offers an awesome menu. But the amount of time it takes to prepare a pizza for dine-in is the equivalent of two delivery trips in a ten- mile journey. They take FOREVER! But the pizza’s great. You almost always have to ask for extra cheese though. R from Sudan will hate me because there’s a gas station food court that serves awesome pizza that I absolutely love and he disses! Lol, Pizza Inn is what it’s called, part of a chain but don’t be surprised if you want to order something and they’re out of one ingredient or the other so in the end, just sigh and say, “what do you have then?”
Ok, enough talk about food. It’s lunch time and I’m starving and now I don’t know what I want to eat.
Tuesday, July 26, 2005
Thursday, July 21, 2005
Why MPs continue to be scum and sorry for being away so long!
There’s something going on in Nairobi this week and I’m not sure when it will be over. Personally for me, this has probably been one of the worst weeks I’ve experienced since I’ve been here and my need for a vacation has reached crisis mode. On a more serious scale, I think the events starting from last week have started to get down on a lot of people’s nerves. It started with the massacre in the northern part of Kenya – fighting between tribes and it’s all over land and water. It was really weird reading the world headlines and following the stories about the suicide bombers and the fifty or so people who’d died and then reading the local papers – front pages splashed with bloody bodies, empty looks of the survivors among the 80+ who died. And then over the weekend, the idiot bastard MPs once again went on holiday to Mombasa to reach a consensus on a draft because they couldn’t do it in Nairobi. So this week, the city has seen some serious fighting. Monday wasn’t so bad but Tuesday and yesterday were particularly awful.
As a result of my having a incredibly bad day yesterday, I managed to leave the office early (4.30 – very early for me!) and got home just in time to turn on the telly and see people running down the very same streets I’d just been on to get to my matatu. I had wondered why there were so few matatus left at the stage and even waited for one to go without me getting on because it was dirty. Idiot child – had I known there was a full-scale fight between protestors and the police less than a mile away, I would have rushed home much faster. Basically, the demonstrations have been because the idiot MPs want to alter the original draft of the constitution, which will amount to treason if it ever passes anyway.
The people are tired it seems and I honestly see this continuing to escalate. Watching the news last night, seeing police fight with demonstrators – policemen beating people with their rungus batons, bleeding noggins everywhere, cops on horseback thundering down the road in front of parliament. And as is with demonstrations that start out peacefully and end up violent, the looting began. A thief was killed infront of the store he’d just ransacked. I heard horror stories from my office this morning of folks being forced to run to the point of ditching their bags, taxi drivers charging double and getting away with it, hiding in stores, behind counters.
I am safe, well as safe as can be. I’m consoled that this is not just a rampaging group running amok in the city center but instead a legitimate demonstration against ignorant imbecile representatives of the people whose immediate agenda is to fatten up their pockets at the expense of the wanainchi (ordinary folk). They have absolutely lost touch with the people who put them in power and in two years, they will be the same ones on their knees begging to be elected to seats once again and sad to say, most of them will pass. My only advise, avoid dealing with them. They are worse than scum – I say this everyday.
Case and point: www.eastandard.net/hm_news/news_s.php?articleid=25680
‘Nuff said. In case you forgot, “mzungu” is the term for white person and Gor Sunguh is the idiot MP who at one of the numerous holidays in Mombasa, left his gun in the loo after doing a number 2. Yes, shocker, they carry guns, we already knew they were full of crap.
Aside from that, I have a date tonight, that is if there’s no fighting in town. I’ll probably head out to one of the suburbs and have a nice relaxing evening away from reality. I can only stay holed up in my apartment for so long.
Oh J.E from Woo, prepare to come with a large suitcase of stock goodies for me, including – a six pack of bud. That’s what I’m craving. Sad, oui.
GASP! It’s been a month since I touched the blog! Quelle horreur! This is a testament to how busy I am. I’m usually in the office by 7 a.m. and out by 5.30 p.m. and I go in on most weekends for about 4 or 5 hours. The past two weeks, I’ve been leaving the office, 9 p.m. at the earliest…and there’s no such animal as overtime. I make pretty much what I made during my first job in college. LOL. It actually is kinda funny because if I felt sad about it, I’d be in a total slump.
As a result of my having a incredibly bad day yesterday, I managed to leave the office early (4.30 – very early for me!) and got home just in time to turn on the telly and see people running down the very same streets I’d just been on to get to my matatu. I had wondered why there were so few matatus left at the stage and even waited for one to go without me getting on because it was dirty. Idiot child – had I known there was a full-scale fight between protestors and the police less than a mile away, I would have rushed home much faster. Basically, the demonstrations have been because the idiot MPs want to alter the original draft of the constitution, which will amount to treason if it ever passes anyway.
The people are tired it seems and I honestly see this continuing to escalate. Watching the news last night, seeing police fight with demonstrators – policemen beating people with their rungus batons, bleeding noggins everywhere, cops on horseback thundering down the road in front of parliament. And as is with demonstrations that start out peacefully and end up violent, the looting began. A thief was killed infront of the store he’d just ransacked. I heard horror stories from my office this morning of folks being forced to run to the point of ditching their bags, taxi drivers charging double and getting away with it, hiding in stores, behind counters.
I am safe, well as safe as can be. I’m consoled that this is not just a rampaging group running amok in the city center but instead a legitimate demonstration against ignorant imbecile representatives of the people whose immediate agenda is to fatten up their pockets at the expense of the wanainchi (ordinary folk). They have absolutely lost touch with the people who put them in power and in two years, they will be the same ones on their knees begging to be elected to seats once again and sad to say, most of them will pass. My only advise, avoid dealing with them. They are worse than scum – I say this everyday.
Case and point: www.eastandard.net/hm_news/news_s.php?articleid=25680
‘Nuff said. In case you forgot, “mzungu” is the term for white person and Gor Sunguh is the idiot MP who at one of the numerous holidays in Mombasa, left his gun in the loo after doing a number 2. Yes, shocker, they carry guns, we already knew they were full of crap.
Aside from that, I have a date tonight, that is if there’s no fighting in town. I’ll probably head out to one of the suburbs and have a nice relaxing evening away from reality. I can only stay holed up in my apartment for so long.
Oh J.E from Woo, prepare to come with a large suitcase of stock goodies for me, including – a six pack of bud. That’s what I’m craving. Sad, oui.
GASP! It’s been a month since I touched the blog! Quelle horreur! This is a testament to how busy I am. I’m usually in the office by 7 a.m. and out by 5.30 p.m. and I go in on most weekends for about 4 or 5 hours. The past two weeks, I’ve been leaving the office, 9 p.m. at the earliest…and there’s no such animal as overtime. I make pretty much what I made during my first job in college. LOL. It actually is kinda funny because if I felt sad about it, I’d be in a total slump.
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