What I've been up to

It's been quite hectic here lately, which mostly means that I'm having a great time. I've managed to cut down some of my unhealthy weekend habits a bit and instead done two very sporty weekend excursions to beautiful nature sites.

Hell's gate, Naivasha: Hiking in a rocky gorge











Mount Kenya: Again a hiking trip, however a badly organised one. The organisers didn't know where the mountain started, so after hiking the whole day without seeing much mountain landscapes we arrived to the entrance to the Mount Kenya national park, but everyone was too tired to go on. Luckily a game drive and especially horseriding in a beautiful scenery very much alleviated my disappointment.



My beautiful African breakfast in the sun



We entered a cave where Mau Mau rebels hid during the rebellion, with lots of skulls inside. No human skulls though.



And these freaks are half zebras, half horses.





Finally some very typical Kenyan roadside views. It's really difficult to take good pics from a moving car, which is a pity because the roadsides are often the best part of the trip. You see people carry huge things on their heads, colourful clothes, camels, huts made out of whatever material is available and other interesting and stereotypically African things.







Apart from travelling, I've filled my spare time with going to the Alliance Francaise which has a nice European film festival going on and lots of excellent concerts and cultural events. Without the French there would be few cultural events in Nairobi. The cinemas tend to show really bad films.

I've also made some efforts to learn more Swahili. It has really not been a fully successful project so far. I already chat quite a bit with my teacher, but I'm not motivated to start using Swahili because almost everyone here speaks excellent English. I'm always very happy to run into someone who doesn't speak English, but that doesn't happen too often. It's a bit like Swedish in Finland: you can do fine without, it's just sometimes nice to understand it.

The posting frequency might after all be a bit better than in last time's formula. At least I've got some more things in mind I want to write in my blog. So don't declare it dead just yet.