more photos about buildings and food: Africa Pt. 2: Nairobi to Moshi

This second installment of photos covers our first two days in Africa. We arrived in Nairobi at night and pretty much went to bed as soon as we could after traveling for 24 hours. In the morning we went exploring the city, walking around seeing sights and taking pictures, then in the evening we went to dinner at Carnivore Restaurant. The city felt much safer than I had expected (though at night it takes on a completely different character), and the restaurant, though enjoyable, was the kind of place you go to just to say you've gone (tourist trap?). The next morning we were up before sunrise to catch a bus to Moshi, Tanzania which happened to be two hours late. The ride was fascinating of course because we really enjoyed being able to see the transformation from city to countryside, and all the things one sees on the side of the road that are so telling about a nation/culture.

I am very excited and grateful just to be posting these photos, since these were the photos I referred to in the last post as possibly having been lost. I took my card to my friends at Newtonville Camera (also my former place of employment) and they were able to recover all of my lost photos with their data recovery service.

Also a correction on my last post: Gina kindly pointed out that the blog I linked to for Salama Center is out of date and that one can find comprehensive information about the work they do at the Better Future International website.

Now the photos...

The driveway into Gina's apartment compound the Westlands neighborhood. Most middle to upper class residents of Nairobi live in these guarded compounds for reasons of security. When driving around the city outside of downtown, one mostly sees concrete walls. Though understandable, this diminishes the possibility for a vibrant street life in the city.

An interesting public sculpture inside one of the Westlands mall

We didn't feel very far from home at all while we were at the malls.

Blue sky, red dirt.

Downtown Nairobi street scene. The vans lined up on the street are matatus.

We visited the Jomo Kenyatta International Conference Center, the 2nd tallest building in Nairobi, where we were treated to a personal tour of the observation area and the view around us.

National monument in Uhuru Park.

Dave being served turkey at Carnivore. At Carnivore, servers are always coming by with different kinds of meat on huge metal skewers, and you can flag down the ones you want and eat as much as you want until you're full. Most of the meat was things that are available here (beef, chicken, pork, turkey etc), and the most exotic thing we tried was crocodile, which was very delicious.