New digs, and introducing 'shorter, fatter' Gareth

We moved into our new home on Saturday. It is a lot better than I was expecting; a three-bedroomed flat, one of which is en suite, on the top floor of a desirable new government housing scheme, Langata Court . We’re on the top floor of one of the green-roofed buildings you can see in the pictures on the Langata Court website. It’s about five floors up, and despite this being just a couple of years old this government scheme has no obvious disabled access.

Another volunteering couple, Allys and Eddie, are living with us as they wait for VSO to sort them a flat on the right side of town for Allys’ placement. After that, we imagine someone else will move in because it’s a big space. That means there’s at least one spare double room in a secure flat about two miles away from safari at Nairobi National Park. Beyond the busy dual carriageway at the end of our road lie giraffes, leopards and many other beasts currently participating in the world’s second largest mass migration. Visitors are welcome and encouraged, but perhaps not until after Christmas when we’ll know the place a bit better and can do it justice as tour guides.

Moving in was an incredibly stressful day, unexpectedly providing the biggest challenge of the week. VSO has so many people to move that they simply picked us up on Saturday, took us and our things to the flat, then gave us a soft furnishings allowance, a shopping list and about three hours to buy everything we need so they could transport it back to the flat. This means making decisions on everything from big purchases like mattresses, gas cookers and bedding through to cutlery and your first week’s food shop. We were not aided by some unfamiliar purchasing systems. Everything electronic has to be tested in front of you in the shop, so at one point I was actually forced to watch a man boil a kettle. Still, slightly more entertaining than the premier league.

We were at that point losing the will to live, never mind shop, which means we inadvertently spent a substantial amount of money on a bed spread and have a mattress which is as hard as oak.

And ass the huge shop we were in covers four floors, anything bulky you choose is stored while you get the rest of your shopping in. The shopper is supplied with a handwritten number on a scrap of paper which denotes each purchase, to be given first to the till staff then to the customer care people who hold your gear. We bought so much stuff that, probably inevitably, confusion ensued. It took around seven members of staff at T–Mall’s Tuskys to scrutinise our receipt and scraps of paper before we were free to leave with the goods we had paid for.

It seemed a shame to be spending this amount of money in one big shop. Tuskys is clearly a very important employer but I will be asking VSO to consider how they/we might spend some of this money on products from the many projects they are in partnership with, which I am sure produce curtains, blankets and the like.

Despite the frustrations the whole day was made worthwhile when I received a call from the other Gareth, who you may remember as my ‘twin’ from the Indian Gareth blog. VSO took Gareth to the same shop about three hours after we’d left. Many of the staff asked why he had come back to buy all the same things he’d just bought. The VSO guide tired of this and decided to preempt the same query from the next assistant by explaining that this was a different person to the one he brought earlier in the afternoon. The assistant replied: ‘I know. This one is shorter and fatter than the other one’.

Kwaheri,

Indian Gareth