Ngong Hills

I somehow forgot to do a blog post on a hike I did last month. The men from our church got together a while back to discuss kick-starting regular meetings. The group was pretty active when we arrived in Nairobi about two and a half years ago but it later faded to mostly nothing. We agreed that we would start by a regular monthly breakfast and then organize some sort of other ad hoc activities such as watching football (soccer obviously), hiking, paintball, etc. – stuff guys do.

In March we decided on doing a hike just on the outskirts of Nairobi. I had done it one other time, also with the men’s group, though this time I’d say only about a quarter of them were among those who participated last time.  

The hills are not really that far from where we live but with traffic and road construction, it always seems to be a bit more of a daunting drive than it should be. I suspect that once they get Ngong Road done it will be quicker and more tempting to visit more frequently.

For as much as people visit this place, it’s less than straight forward to locate. I’ve grown accustomed to pathetic signage, and Google can compensate for this, but even technology sort of messes with you in finding the shortest route. You get there eventually but I think it would be good just to put up a few signs.

The little kiosk where you pay your entry fee no longer accepts cash. This is something I mentioned in the Amboseli blog but they say it’s basically because either the people taking the money have a tendency to disappear with it or the place gets robbed. Such things have contributed to pushing Kenya, and similarly other parts of Africa, faster down the road of automation. Even though just a little over 1% of the continent’s transactions are online (making one think there is little automation going on), countries like Kenya have been one of the world’s leaders in paying with your phone.

About 22 people signed up for the hike and about that many showed up. The plan was to stay more or less together and we sort of did. It’s not a difficult hike but it can be a bit tough if you don’t have the habit participating in physical exercise. With a trek of five hills, out and back, we had a few that didn’t make it the full five.

This sort of activity is ideal for socializing. Over the course of the morning you end up mingling with just about everyone. The weather was perfect though there was more of a haze than I would have liked. You could just barely make out Nairobi in the distance, similar to when I did the hike a couple years ago.

When we finished, we piled in the vehicles and headed to the home of one of the guys from church – a really nice older home not far from the hills. It’s sort of old school Nairobi. Not sure how old the house is but I suspect it goes well back into colonial times. We proceeded to have a wonderful barbecue before heading our separate ways.

“You can’t be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline – it helps if you have some kind of football team or some nuclear weapons – but at the very least you need a beer.” – Frank Zappa

Confined to my Work

As I’ve mentioned before, my time in Mogadishu tends to offer me the opportunity to catch up on work, write and sometimes even think. Whether it’s the travel between the two countries or evenings in the guesthouse (without the ability to leave, for security reasons), I normally return to Nairobi more caught up than when I left. It does take some discipline to avoid using that time for unproductive things. Having said that, unproductive activities are occasionally useful to clear my head and relieve some stress. 

I’m sitting here in the guesthouse alone sipping on a cup of tea. It’s quiet except for the occasional pop of gunfire (more on that later). It’s a rare occasion to be alone given that there is generally at least one other person, including my deputy director of operations who lives here much of the time. But he’s out of town and there are no other guests. By “guests” I generally mean people that are here providing some sort of technical support or our staff from other locations in Somalia. 

Being in the Mogadishu guesthouse is a bit like being under house arrest. You’re basically locked in and you don’t have the ability to leave the premises and walk around, even within the neighborhood. I was talking to one of my staff the other day who confess that even for him, as a Somali, he’s uncomfortable walking around, particularly in the evening. Female staff more often than not go from hijab (head covering) to full face coverage, not necessarily for religious reasons but because men are more likely to leave them alone. Pretty sad really. Anyway, I reside in the confines of our building, working until my eyes cross, sometimes reading, and eventually falling asleep.

I was prompted to write partially due to the fact that the evening has been rather eventful. It began late afternoon when I heard a crackling sound over near the wall-mounted air conditioner. A bit earlier I had thought that I smelled something burning. The sound stopped so I went back to work. Someone smarter than I would have likely walked over to take a closer look, or maybe shut off the breaker. But no, I continued working feverishly since I was in the middle of something that needed a degree of concentration. 

A few minutes later the crackle turned to popping and soon I could see sparks. This, of course, got me out of my chair. But by the time I approached the breaker, flames were shooting out. The cover for the wiring, about the size of a square dinner plate, was on fire and melting down the side of the wall. It was dangerously close to the curtains so I started by pulling them out of the way. I looked for something to put out the flames. It was slim pickings. Finally I saw a towel that was used as a liner for the utensil container. I pulled it out and beat the flames with it. At the expense of what had been a decent towel, the good news is that it was mission accomplished. The bad news of course was that there was that the electrical work was completely fried and, more pressingly, I now had no AC in the hottest time of the year in Mogadishu. 

Fortunately an early evening breeze had picked up so I opened a door to the balcony and a couple windows. I was a bit hot and sticky but within a few minutes I’d adjusted and went back to work thinking that the event was the extent of my drama for the night. 

However shortly before 8pm there was a loud explosion which shook the building. It was all the louder given that the door and windows were now open. The evening sounds of people chatting, goats walking by on the dirt streets, etc. all seemed to go silent. Within seconds gunfire erupted, starting intensely and then tapering off. Which brings me to where I am now. I can hear sirens, likely of ambulances heading in the direction of the blast. I’ve been monitoring Whatsapp, email and so forth to get information as to what is going on. Usually my security guy is the first message alerting me (and other staff in Mogadishu) what is going on. Sure enough it was an IED attack only a block away. No word yet on casualties but it appears to be an attack on a vehicle. This sort of thing is not always done by militants. It can be a targeted assassination attempt, often times as a result of personal or business dealings. It’s often how scores are settled. 

I’ve heard and felt a number of such incidents during my time here. In fact attacks in Mogadishu in general have been on the rise lately, particularly larger attacks by militants targeting hotels. It’s not clear where this is going. There seems to be a bit of a standoff with no end in sight. The country as a whole seems to be on the right track but they will need to get a handle on the insecurity in order for the real progress to be made. 

Hopefully that’s the extent of the drama for the day. As I said, I wouldn’t mind if things were a bit more boring.