Hardship

Habari,

When I first agreed to come to Kenya for this assignment and negotiated my package, I thought it was a great bonus to have a hardship allowance attached to your salary.  Now that I’ve been in Nairobi for almost six months, I think expats earn every damn dime of that money!

Lately my commutes to work have become harrowing experiences.  I’m not sure I mentioned it previously, but I’ve moved to another apartment in a part of the city called the Westlands.  This is the hip and happening  part of town that feels even more like home than my previous address (that’s because it’s around the corner from a really nice mall, yet it is peaceful and serene).  However, it is much further from work than my last apartment.

My new apartment

The apartment itself is really nice and I’m in a very peaceful part of town.  So far, I’m the only IBMer in this complex, but more will join me in the New Year.  Getting to and from work will be my greatest challenge.  Last week one of my drivers, decided to take a short cut to get me to work on time. By the way, if you don’t use the back roads here, you will never get to work.  He took me through a slum to cut the commute time.  Let me tell you something.  I have never seen anything like this.  Explaining it will require an entirely separate post. 

The roads on this side of town are BEYOND horrendous.  At one point the ENTIRE van rolled into a pot hole.  I was scared to death that the van wouldn’t get out of the hole.  All I could think was, “If we get stuck in this hole, I’m not getting out of this car.”  The mud in Nairobi is so thick and sticky, nothing would have been salvageable.  I’ve already lost a pair of shoes to this mud.  Driving over the pot holes that day I felt like I came away with a bit of whiplash.  I’m not kidding!  I had to ask Master Pu for some painkillers when I got to work. 

There is nothing in the United States that matches Nairobi traffic.  There’s no predicting the traffic.  You can only hope for the least of the worse.  Traffic occurs at any time of day or night.  Anyone who lives here knows that driving home on a Friday at the end of the month is pointless.  Apparently everyone gets paid at the end of the month and goes out to spend their money.  True story.  You might as well go to a bar and pass the time on those days.  Master Pu experienced this just the other week. 

I was clairvoyant enough that day to work from home due to the horrendous experience I had the Friday before, where I literally sat in the car for hours trying to get home.  It got so bad my driver started chatting with the drivers in neighboring cars.  Even though there was nowhere to go, this annoyed me to no end and I told him to stop.  LOL.  They know me by now so he started to laugh.

On the night Master Pu got stuck, a horrible thunderstorm hit Nairobi.  Since I was working from home, I was feeling very smart because I knew traffic was going to be a nightmare.  I had only been in the apartment for a little over a week and it was starting to feel comfortable.  Every time I heard a lightning strike and heard the downpour, I smiled even more because I was in the safety of my apartment.  My smile disappeared when the lightning hit right outside of the apartment and shook the building. 

I was having friends over so we all commented on how scary the strike was.  We had ordered takeout and finished dinner.  Now, I can survey the apartment compound from the kitchen window of the apartment.  As we started to clean the dishes I notice that a huge section of the security wall (brick and mortar) was gone.  These walls are made with heavy stones and electrified wires are layered on top of them.  All of that was gone! 



Crumbled Wall Outside my Window



On top of that, the paved parking lot that was beside the wall started to crumble into the crater that was left.  Folks, lightning struck the darn wall!  I couldn’t make this up if I tried.  My neighbors started coming out of their apartments running to their cars to move them before they fell into the crater (All of the cars were saved).  I turned and looked at the local Kenyans having dinner with me and they began swearing to me that this NEVER happens.  I’m not buying it and my lips were pursed. 

All I could think about was the fact that IBM Security was going to make me move because of this damn security wall and I just got here.  L To my delight, the landlord started cleaning things up and rebuilding the wall the next day.  You see, there are people from the U.N. and U.S. Embassy staying here.  IBM Security never has to know anything.  LOL. 

I have a whole new respect for the hardship allowance benefit.  The near death experiences in traffic, the pollution from cars that don’t have to go through anything that resembles an emissions test and the fifty million times a day that the electricity goes out (it has gone out four times since I started writing this…it’s a bad day).  The hardship allowance is meant to compensate us for enduring these things.  As I head home for an extended stay for the holidays, I can’t wait to experience the joy and wonder of things that actually work and the presents of laws that govern the highways.  It will be a glorious experience. 

I will be home for my next post people.  Join me here next week where I will be writing from the good old U.S.A.  See you next time.

Asante Sana,

Della Rochelle

Copyright © 2011 by Della Rochelle Williams