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