this is me

decided to bite the bullet and pay the 6 pounds it costs to use internet for 90 minutes in this airport. oh how i look forward to the day when wireless internet is free everywhere. i am not even close to the first person to say this, but the whole airport security process is really excessive and often humiliating. on the way to Nairobi via Heathrow, i didn't pull all my 'liquids' out of my bags because I had no problem going through Dulles with everything inside, and then was held up for approximately 1/2 hour while they searched about 5 bags ahead of mine before they could look into mine. Today i was smart and pulled it all out into one little plastic baggie and got through Heathrow security in about 30 seconds flat. Nairobi was actually the most redundant security system of all - they scan all your bags before you even walk into the airport, then you go through immigration (which is much faster leaving than coming in, obviously), they have you put your carry on luggage...

is replaying the news as it broke on 9/11, as i understood it did in real-time yesterday in the US...i'm surprised by how overwhelming it still is to see these images and realize how vulnerable we were and still are. I was a junior in college and in class when both planes hit the Twin Towers, and missed seeing a lot of this footage the first time around. It's still shocking.

i didn't plan to pass 5 days without blogging while on this trip, but the second week has been drastically different than the first. after moving to the crazy resort-like hotel, my life was overtaken by the real reason i came here - to participate in a conference with the prime contractor on our project, which was scheduled from 8:30am-6pm every day and usually ran over. these days were tempered by sharing a bottle of wine or a couple beers with a coworker afterwards, then doing more work after that and heading to bed. it's been great, but i'm starting to feel drained and possibly getting sick. tonight the project manager based here took us to her house for dinner. her husband works for the state dept so they live in a government-owned and therefore bigger-than-necessary-and-quite-beautiful house that has a guard outside 24 hours. it was great to go 'off-site' a bit and see a bit of what her non-work life is like. her husband is great, too. last night was probably ...

and I saw more zebras than I could have imagined even existed! Makes sense, since they're essentially wild horses, but still - they were everywhere. We saw at least 25 rhino today - especially when they are laying down, they look almost fake. Fantastical creatures. 7 million flamingos at Lake Nakuru - you could hear the sound of their wings flapping wherever you were. Baboons EVERYWHERE - slightly unsettling, til you see the babies crawl on their mom's backs. So grateful to have a driver recommended by the company who was a great tour guide and had a great sense of humor - his laugh was contagious. He could point out giraffe a full 30 seconds before they came into my view, and see rhino from 100 yards away. He wants to take me to the airport next Saturday - we'll see if that works out. And yeah, I feel like i'm in Africa now. :) The Windsor is gorgeous, as expected - golf course out my window, everything has an 'outdoor' feel to it, and again, this hotel r...

this guy was close enough for me to get a solid shot this one ran by at the perfect distance this guy wanted to jump in our van female and male ostrich together Tons more pictures at http://picasaweb.google.com/emilyrindone/Kenya02 #

I just made plans to have a driver take me to Nairobi National Park tomorrow and Lake Nakuru on Sunday! So excited to see the 'wilder' parts of Kenya.

Today's really the reason i came out here this week - our procurement manager is leaving the project, and our replacement arrives today, so it's the big hand off. As procurement is the majority of our work on this project, and USAID has very strict, specific regulations as to how procurement is carried out and files are kept, it's important that the transition goes well. I coordinate all the finance details from DC, so it's good that I'll be here. Plus lots of fires to put out with subcontractors in Ethiopia not performing, and other typical 'emergencies' that pop up on this problematic project. I'm never bored! It's almost the weekend! I need to make plans for exploring. I've gotten some good suggestions from various people who have been to/lived in Nairobi, and plan to spend one day in Nairobi and one a couple hours outside. There's a safari park near the city and some good shopping areas, so I can buy the requisite souvenirs and take ...

couldn't resist eating too much at the pool side restaurant tonight...white wine, beef medallions, cheesecake, tea....if only i lived on per diem all the time. :)

The Kenya office has an office assistant named Derek who's job it is to bring us all tea or coffee when we arrive, and at an appointed time in the afternoon. I can't get used to it. He's a sweetheart, though.

when i'm in the DC office i complain about getting interrupted all day and not getting any work done, but here in Kenya I don't get interrupted enough and miss the social interaction a bowl of fruit salad that would cost $6 in DC cost 50 Kshs, or less than $1, here avocado must be considered a fruit here since it's in my fruit salad i still don't like mango

It's been a while since I used this blog to document my travels, and I've posted lots of random stuff since then...but since I was sent to Nairobi for my first business trip, I figured I should start posting again! I arrived late Monday night, after a flight from DC to Heathrow and then to Nairobi, both of which went smoother than any of my domestic flights earlier in August - go figure. British Airways might be my favorite airline - quality food, fairly spacious seating, video screens at each seat. I sat next to a family with a baby on my first flight and was impressed that British Airways provides baby seats that attach to a fold-out shelf so that parents don't have to hold their kids the whole time. As is the custom for most of our international offices, the Kenya office sent a driver to pick me up at the airport and drop me off at a colleague's apartment, where I'm staying for the first week. The apartment complex is part of the Fairview Country Hotel ( www.f...

watch at least til you get to where they give the spider the main ingredient in marijuana...then you'll understand why this video is so amazing.

my interest in blogging waxes and wanes. Today I am reading an article called Hearts of Darkness from the magazine City Journal, and there are parts of the article I wanted to put out there because they're making me reconsider the way I view international development efforts. "A recent Heritage Foundation study found that, of the 70 least-free countries on earth, nearly half have received U.S. foreign aid for more than three decades. The result is more poverty, more aid money, and more corruption. In Zimbabwe, for example, foreign aid enabled strongman Robert Mugabe to destroy property rights, introduce a command economy, and create a kleptocracy where the inflation rate recently reached 11,000 percent. Once southern Africa’s breadbasket, Zimbabwe now depends on subsidies to feed its people." "Kenyan economist James Shikwati agrees that handouts thwart the emergence of a culture of self-reliant problem solving and that they breed corruption to boot. When a drought ...