I live in Karachi...

Now that might seem a strange thing to say after 18 months of living here, but I have to admit that every so often I get this sudden realization that I do in fact live in Karachi. I still find it amazing that I have shifted (that’s me picking up Pakistani idiom!) 4500 miles across the globe and now live in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.

My last few days in Kenya where great, I had a couple of days when the boys were at school and Paul and Pam were at work. So I settled down with the DVD player and my latest cross stitch project and didn’t get out of my pyjamas! I watched the first series of Spitting Image and was disturbed to find that it was 25 years old which made me feel very old indeed. I also watched ‘The Sarah Jane Adventures’ which is a spin off from Dr Who which I really enjoyed.

On Friday Jackie and her parents and I went into Nairobi to visit the Maasi Market and I now the proud owner of two giraffe and four Maasi warriors. From Nairobi we headed to Mitchell’s Tea Farm at Limuru, which was absolutely delightful. We had a short talk on tea growing and how it is harvested and processed and then a gentle stroll round part of the farm followed by a delicious lunch in a very colonial dining room.

Friday evening a made a roast dinner to celebrate my final night with the family and discovered that making good roast potatoes at 7500 feet is not possible. Because liquids boil at a lower temperature at altitude it means that the oil never gets hot enough to get the potatoes really crisp. But that aside I really haven’t lost my touch and roast dinner for 9 was delivered to perfection, if I do say so myself!

The journey home was fine; Dubai airport doesn’t get any better even though they have opened a new terminal for Emirates flights. Like most everything else in Dubai it is dedicated to shopping and there really wasn’t anything worth buying amongst all that glitter. There was one excellent piece of news when I arrived at the gate at Dubai, I had been upgraded to Business Class for my final leg which was most enjoyable, and the lobster was particularly delicious!!

It’s been a busy week since I got back from Kijabe last Sunday. There have been A level exams in school which has meant late finishes on a couple of days. There have also been a lot of meetings and things to organise. We have also lost a member of staff so there are more timetable changes to sort out tomorrow. The timetable sometimes feels like the Forth Bridge, just when I think I have finished I haveto start painting it again!!

This year’s school production is now only 6 weeks away and I am getting just a little bit nervous, in fact I have woken up a couple of time in a cold sweat thinking we will never be ready. We have managed to sort out some of the costumes this week from ones we already have which is great and Tanveer Carpenter should have completed stage one of the set over the weekend, so the show will o on, Inshallah…

Habari

That’s ‘Hello’ in Swahili, and it literally means ‘What’s the news?’ to which the response is Mizuri which means ‘good’. This is always the case even if things are going badly!

I am pleased to report that I have survived my trip into the African interior! We set off on New Year’s Day on the ‘four’ hour drive to Amboseli, Now we left Kijabe later than was planned and we stopped for lunch in Nairobi and took our time over that, but we thought that the drive from Nairobi would take us three hours, we were wrong!!

We left Nairobi just before three and thought we arrive about 6pm just before the park closed, and we would have an hour or so of daylight for the campers to set up. It was nearly half 7 when we finally got there and the park was closed!!! I had worked all this out, about 2 hours earlier and a sense of dread had come over me. If the park was closed then all 9 of us would have to sleep in the two vehicles!!! So I had started to pray, and thankfully God did not want to teach me patience or fortitude and the gate guards where friendly and welcoming and couldn’t do enough for us, for which I was truly grateful!

This did mean, however, there was still another 90 minutes driving to the Banda where I was staying and the campsite where everyone else was staying. So at around 9.30pm I was warming soup and cutting bread in the Banda whilst the gang where erecting three tents in the field! Now when I describe it as a field it is no word of a lie. There was a couple of standpipes and a pit latrine and not a lot else!! I was so grateful I had been willing to owning up to being a wimp and asking for alternative accommodation.

There was another blessing in this as well, as when the vehicles were finally unpacked, the stoves where found to be missing and were assumed to still be in the garage back in Kijabe. Had we not had the Banda we would have had to build a fire for each meal we wanted to cook!

Despite myself I did actual enjoy my time in Amboseli, and on the first night it was amazing to look up and see all the stars in the sky, that are normally blocked either by cloud or the huge amounts of light pollution we have in our modern world.

I joined the others for a couple of game drives over the next two days, one in the afternoon and one setting out at 6.30 am. We saw thousands of animals and it was amazing to have to stop whilst a troupe of elephants crossed the road, large ones, medium sized ones and even little tiny ones!!

They were so majestic and it was awesome to be that close to them in their natural habitat. I didn’t manage to see any lions though some of the others did on the third game drive, but it was a lone lioness and she was a fair way from the land cruiser, so I don’t feel too robbed.

The roads here in Kenya are in many places better than in Karachi, which is good. Though sadly this is not true on the road from Namaga to Amboseli, which is about the last 30 miles of the journey. This is a corrugated road and is exactly like it sounds. It is like drive over corrugated iron roofs for 30 miles, very, very uncomfortable. This also took its toll on both the vehicles! The Pajero sprung a leak in its fuel tank and we had to catch the fuel in a bowl under the car whilst it was parked. Thankfully, it made it safely back to Kijabe, and is waiting for the ministering hands of Justus to bring it back to life. The Land Cruiser also suffered during the return journey where it has either got a hole somewhere in the exhaust or lost a part of the silencer! All in all a great time was had by all 9 of us, but we were relieved to get back to a shower that removed all the dust!!

Monday was spent recovering and I ended up in bed by 9pm as I was totally exhausted. Then today Pam, Jackie (another mum here) and David and Mary (Jackie’s parents, visiting from Poole) went shopping in Nairobi. Now compared to Karachi Nairobi is well off for shopping and I was able to pick up a couple of nice “decoration pieces’ as my Urdu teacher calls them, ‘ornaments’ if you come from ‘t’Bridge’! I also bought some books, including one for school (you see teachers are never really on holiday) and also several grocery items so that I can cook dinner on my last night here on Friday.

The boys have gone back to school today and all the boarders have returned, so Ali didn’t arrive home from school until 7pm, just in time for supper, as he had been playing football with his friends since school finished at 3.15!

The rest of the week will not be too straining and I intend to finish my third book of the holidays before I leave on Friday (I have to its Pam’s book). This is called ‘Salmon fishing in Yemen’ and is really good, in fact I think I might finish it tonight...

Should Auld Acquaintance...

NOTE FROM THE EDITOR: APOLOGIES FOR THE LATE UPDATE, I RECEIVED IT VIA EMAIL AND SCOTLAND HASN'T QUITE GOT MS WORD YET SO IT HAS TAKEN A FEW DAYS...... TOM

So we reach New Year’s Eve 2008, which finds me this year in Kijabe, Kenya.  I am staying with my friends the Howorths who have been in Kijabe for 11 years and in Africa for nearly 18.  Paul is a doctor and Pam is a nurse educator and they are here with AIM (Africa Inland Mission).  Paul heads up the Rural Health Ministry, which means he is responsible for all the Dispensaries that exist all over the country.  He visits to support the nurses that run the dispensaries and also to deal with medical situations that are beyond their training.  Pam is involved in training and teaching nurses but is also responsible for AIM work throughout the region.

I arrived here last Sunday after a good flight with Emirates.  We were delayed out of Karachi (nothing new there then!!) which only gave me about 50 minutes on the ground, but it did manage to change some sterling into dollars, to pay for my visa when I arrived.  To buy a bag full of chocolate for the boys, they can get it here but it is quite expensive, and also to purchase something to make Pam’s ‘Special Passion Fruit Juice’!!

The first few days have been spent lounging around, which I have really appreciated.  I hadn’t quite realised until this morning how very tired I was and it was a relief to wake up this morning and not feel tired! 

We did go into Nairobi yesterday, to take Alasdair and his friend Paul Go Karting.  I decided that I would hold the coats and be official photographer.  Paul H did join in, though he was called off the track twice, which he maintains was because of a fault with the vehicle, but I think it was more for ‘failing to make due progress’!

We also did a bit of shopping as we are off on Safari tomorrow!  We are heading off to Ambosali Game Reserve which is about 4 hours drive from here.  The Howorths will be camping out, I, however, have been upgraded to a Banda (a little cottage)!  As you will be aware, I don’t do canvas and although I spent three days in a tent in Cornwall in the summer I decided that I just couldn’t cope with tents in Africa!

Ambosali contains all the animals that you would want to see, save tigers and is in the shadow of Kilimanjaro, so hopefully I will soon have some iconic safari pictures to share with you.  We get back on Sunday and I still have another week here before returning to Karachi.  I may have to wait to up load my pictures for you as, believe it or not the internet connection is even worse here than it is in at home.

Well we are off to friends of the Howorths to see in the New Year, so all that remains for me to do, is to wish all my readers, Neya Sal Mubarak.  See you all in 2009...