Cathy visit

In addition to travel back and forth to Somalia, we had some things going on in Nairobi as well. As I’ve mentioned in previous blog entries, we often have birthday party invitations. Now that the girls are older, this is something that they can often attend on their own. In the past, for example when we were in Bujumbura, we usually needed to accompany them – or at least Priya did. I often went as well, particularly if it was at the home of friends of ours or if our friends were also attending.

this was one of those good kiddie birthday parties

Admittedly there were some other pretty boring parties. The essential was that the kids usually had a great time but often I knew no one and the only people I had something in common with were my wife and daughters. Thankfully we had children during the age of the smart phone.

an Idaho plate in a Nairobi bowling alley 🙂

Also as I’ve mentioned, these parties are usually rather significant events with bouncy castles, clowns and so forth. It’s a bit over the top but the children enjoy them and the parental peer pressure means that it’s not likely to change anytime soon.

visiting the giraffes

We also had a visit by our friend Cathy. We were friends in Dar es Salaam from back in 2005. After we left Tanzania in 2010, she visited us in Burundi in 2012. After she left Tanzania, she worked in Mozambique for several years. She’s still there but looking to move on. As she is between jobs, she was able to take some time to visit us in Nairobi.

There is no shortage of things to do with visitors to this city. Indeed, the rains have begun and you sort of need to adjust accordingly. We all appreciated good food so we exposed her to some of the culinary delights that Nairobi has to offer. The city is not really known for food but if you explore a bit, there are some really good places to eat.

yummy lunch

One activity we’ve done a few times, either as a family or with visitors, is the giraffe center. It’s located about a half hour from our place with good traffic. Founded in 1979, the center was created to protect the Rothschild giraffe, a subspecies of giraffe found only in the grasslands of East Africa. At the time of the creation of the center, there were apparently only about 180 left. As the species has been protected, the population has grown to over 300, most of whom have been reintroduced to national parks in Kenya.