Nairobi Travel Journey
2009-08-16

The day, Sunday the 16th, began for me quite early with a taxi ride to SEA-TAC for the first of three flight legs to Nairobi. Frugality with ticket purchases necessitated selecting the multi-stop trip instead of the single-stop itinerary. As always on trips such as these, I packed light in order to avoid checking a bag. Standing in long lines with all my gear on my shoulders can tire, however. The risk of a lost bag is too great to gain some potential shoulder comfort.

As an experiment with Twitter, I started, on the Friday before, actually using the account I opened weeks prior to update my travel status. I started the Nairobi trip by giving play-by-play on which airport I was currently in. I hoped to continue the practice of sending tweets when I arrived in Africa. We'll see if that sticks.

The first leg on Sunday took us, my colleague and I, to Portland, OR. Rough! Not really; a short commuter flight on the Q400 where we had about three hours to wait for our next flight to Amsterdam. I needed to complete a work task while using the airport's free wifi (nice feature, PDX!). We also called another colleague on the east coast to hear on update on the works she's doing in preparation for the Nairobi meetings. I'm sure the others in the sitting area loved to listen in on the conversation, thanks to the speakerphone on the BlackBerry. The sound of the long-haired acoustic guitar player helped, however. He set up two guitars, amps, and a mic to give those in the main concourse a pleasant Sunday concert (he had an enthusiastic fan clapping from the nearby bakery stand).

I saw Maggie R. in the airport. Talk about serendipity. She was traveling to Albuquerque for a week. I saw her arranging her bags after passing through airport security and smiled as I approached. We briefly caught up before venturing off to our respective gates. I kicked myself for not taking a picture with her. Just to prove I actually did see her.

Upon arriving in AMS, we checked the monitors for our gate and exercised the legs for the first time in many hours. As we neared the gate, and re-checked the monitor, the location of our plane changed to another gate two down from where we originally de-planed. Oh well; more needed exercise on the way back. The unnecessary walk afforded me the opportunity to see the "museum" in the airport. So, after leaving my bags at our real gate, I ventured back to the museum for a little artistic exploration. Actually, gazing at some old painting relaxed me a bit.

The most pain of the trip came at NBO. Two hours standing in the immigration line. Ouch. Horrible timing or something. I have all the luck. There was, however, a silver lining: another serendipitous moment. The gentleman in front of us asked where we'd flown from, you know the typical question travelers ask of each other when passing the time. He is also from Seattle and knows my father-in-law and was on his way to the school in Zambia where my brother-in-law taught for a time. We name dropped and exchanged email addresses.

We were relieved to finally arrive at our hotel, the Panafric and get showered before heading to the restaurant for some food. The kitchen had closed, sad to say, so I had a mediocre room service sandwich. It was now Monday around 11:30.

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2009-08-18
Woke at 5:30 am or so, feeling refreshed (not). After a working breakfast, document editing, and another meeting, four of us hired a driver for an brief 2.5 hour excursion. We first visited, briefly, the giraffe centre. Then it was off to the Karen Blixen house (Out of Africa), followed by a stop at the Kazuri beads factory and store. There was more work in the evening and a late meeting at dinner. Quite a tiring day.

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2009-08-19
Long day of meeting (day one of three) and then working in the evening followed by another late dinner. I did get to see and speak with the family using a very shaky Internet connection at the hotel.

Location