Beautification

All across Kenya (except for in the most remote corners), advertising colors the cities and villages. Shops agree to a fresh coat of paint in exchange for the paint advertising a product or service. (Some villages are "Coke" and others are "Safaricom.".)

There is a new building being built in the complex where I work. For safety reasons, a corrugated steel fence blocks the building site from the rest of the complex. Someone decided to trade the raw-steel-look for the Crown Paint look.

"Crown" is the brand. "Vesta" is their economy product line.

Notes:
1. The signs were totally painted by hand - no rulers or any other guides were used.
2. The little white rectangle below the "gloss" is where the paint color would be written on the can. (I might not have thought it to be central to the design enough to have included it in the advertising reproduction.)
3. I enjoyed the artist's version of the crown's glow.

TREATMENT

Some days...

...I just feel like I need to visit this room.

Edible soap?

I have featured India's No. 1 soap brand before. This time it's the "sandal" flavor. Unfortunately, the word "sandal" is hidden by shine from the package's gloss finish.

Like most of the products I feature, I bought this at Nairobi's Nakumatt Mega.

(I haven't tried eating it.)

What happens when labor is cheap

Our apartment complex has four buildings with four apartments in each - 16 total. And we have two full-time gardeners.

That would not be the case in America. At least for anyplace we could afford to live at.

But you see, they make about $60 or $80 a month. Yes, a month.

It's such a complex set of factors - if they made more, the other staff would need to make more, etc. A house of cards. I don't like it but am in some way part of the crime.

Several of my employees have full-time live-in employees who work 12 hours a day, 7 days a week. For about $50 a month. (They do have free room & board.)

We try to be generous where and when we can.

(By the way, note Gideon's broom - all natural! And it's another cost-saving measure.)

Church under a tree

When you live in a place with a perfect climate (Nairobi), it works fine to meet under a tree for worship.

One Saturday we visited the Nairobi Arboretum. Within a few hundred yards of each other were about four different church groups.

It's cheaper than having a building program. (But then, in North America the climate would not allow this sort of "building" for much of the year.)

Ah, but the visuals are great

This post is dedicated to my friend Albert Porter. He values high fidelity sounds more than any other human I've known.

This particular stereo (from Nakumatt) values the visual aspect a bit more than the sound quality. If my bandwidth were higher, I would have inserted a video of the stereo - imagine the lurid color circles around each speaker cone pulsing in time with the beat. The sound? Imagine a transistor radio times 100.

A truly evil man

The April 23 international edition of Time has a cover story on Robert Mugabe, the malevolent dictator of Zimbabwe. (That's a country just above South Africa.)

"Unemployment is at 80% ... life expectancy is 34 for women and 37 for men ... inflation is expected to reach 3,700% by year's end. (A single brick costs more today than a 3-bedroom house with a swimming pool did in 1990.)"

Be thankful you live where you do. Pray for Zimbabwe.

Just another day in the life

Today I went to the police station. A guy who works for me was arrested.

It wasn't his fault. The citation was for "changing lanes."

As a colleague stated, "You don't ask." In other words, the police are the authority, and if they cite you for smiling inappropriately, you don't argue.

The pain of it all is the approximately $50 it cost our organization, having to get the car out of the impound lot and all day in court for him.

In the interest of science

This morning I poured camel yogurt over my granola. Yes, yogurt made from camel's milk.

When I saw the small refrigerated case displaying camel yogurt and camel milk, I had to buy some, for you, my dear readers.

The performance report? It doesn't taste weird. I got strawberry, and the real-fruit flavor does not shine through the heavy sugary taste.

After I got home from the supermarket (Nakumatt, of course), I discovered that the expiration date was past. Too much hassle to return it. (Besides they may not have had any that was not already expired.) Thankfully, it had not "gone off".

That boot

When I was in school, this style of boot was called "chukka". Here, it's made by Bata and called "The Safari Boot".

And they are very popular here.

This billboard has lasted longer than most in Nairobi. (It's not a question of durability - it's a matter of how long the company pays to advertise.)

Bloggers of the world, unite

Last night, we went to dinner with the Jamison family. They are missionaries in western Kenya. We met via the wonders of the world of blogging. Somehow we found each other's blogs and saw enough shared experiences that our sites bubbled near the tops of the old bookmarks files.

They're heading to the States for a brief "home assignment". (In missionary-speak, that used to be called a furlough.) So we managed to meet up on their way out of Kenya at Java House. That's Nairobi's chain of resturants that most closely resembles Starbucks - with a full menu. And they're the only restaurants in Kenya I know of that will give you a glass of free filtered water.

Pray for them as they re-connect with life back in Dallas and various sponsoring churches and individuals. And go to Heather's site. There's some good stuff there.

(Sorry about the poor photo quality; I sold my beloved Sony camera in preparation for leaving.)

Malu

Last week was our kids' spring break. I took off a few days so we could have out last Kenyan get-away. We left the big city for Malu - a place about 20 miles in the hills above Lake Naivasha.

We stayed in their treehouse. It's not so much a Swiss Family Robinson sort of dwelling but rather a house in the forest where you feel you're living in the trees. Incredible.

During one of our two days there, we hiked to the "plunge pool". Again, incredible. A small hot spring feeds the pool. The temp hovers around 78f - though it felt colder. They created the pool in the middle of a stream. Jay and Ben spent a lot of time swimming. It was too cold for Heather and I to spend much time in there, but it was very refreshing! If the day had been warmer, it would have been even more so.

Finally, for those planning to visit, you must plan to eat at their Italian restaurant for one meal. The way-off-the-beaten path setting makes the food even more amazing than it would be otherwise.

What do you want?

As I like people to read & view this blog, I'd like to field the question, what would you like to see here?

You know what sort of stuff I do - but what parts do you love & what parts do you hate?

Thanks, if you take time to reply.

Chris inspired me to this post.

Loved this one

I love package design. In fact, that was my minor at university.

Angel Delight is from England. (The Giles family is visiting us right now, and they brought some along.) The chocolate flavor features a different kid - but he's not nearly as charming as this little guy.

As always, I can't vouch for the product's taste.

Bomas of Kenya - Nairobi Tourist Destination?

"Bomas" is Swahili for home. (It's usually not just a singular home but a set of homes for an entire family.)

Anyhow, we finally visited the Bomas of Kenya complex. It's sort of a museum. Several traditional villages are reconstructed in a forest setting, not far from Karen (a suburb of Nairobi).

Most of the villages pretty much looked the same. The Maasai village was distinctive. It was unlike the two varieties of Maasai vilages I have visited. (We lived among the Maasai - way off the beaten path - for about 6 weeks of our intro to life here training, back in 1991.)

So yes, you can see from the photo of Heather (my first and only wife) that several of the bomas represented polygamous tribal groups.

The other pic reminds me of the inside of a giant bird's nest. Jay and Oliver climbed up to the second level inside one of the homes.

Inspired by a baobab?

This sign is great. It did make me think of Kenya's baobab trees - one of the quintessentially African plants (big African plants).

It was at the Bomas of Kenya complex. The Bomas site is the gathering place where Kenya's constitutional review group met last year. The complex has a huge auditorium that hosted the discussions. We saw a great display of traditional dances there. That alone was worth the price of admission.

My next day's post: more on the Bomas.

A chip off the old block

Rachel, at 5, arranged these little plastic guys in this pattern. My brain works just like that!

Notice that the guys from the outside perimeter are even all facing the same way: feet to butt.

By the way, Rachel turned 6 a few days ago. (Happy late birthday!)

- - -

During the next week or so, I may not be posting much. It's the kids' spring break & I'm taking a few days off to hang out with them.

The funeral

Our friend Hannah's father died. Hannah is in the back, flanked by her two daughters. Hannah's mom (and wife of the deceased) is in the front.

Heather went to the first part of the funeral and then left Hannah with a small digital camera. She was able to take a lot of pictures that we never could have. (It's hard to be a fly on the wall when you stick out as much as we do!)

Today you might remember a death about 2000 years ago - Jesus. But he didn't stay in the grave - because he rose again, we can have life too.

The good and the bad

As you have noticed, advertising is one of my interests.

As I drove through town the other day, I came across these two billboards.

Coke has a new campaign, and I really like it. I'm not sure if this bright-flowery campaign has made it to other countries. (This billboard is customized for Nairobi.)

Technology Associates - lower left- is a bit misguided with their billboard. The type is so small that you'd have to be about ten feet away to read the fine print.

Yes, it's true, Coca-Cola has a little more money to spend on their advertising than Technology Associates does. If you live here, that's obvious - the new campaign is all over Nairobi.

Milk in Nairobi

Yes, another in the rubbish art series.

Lots of people buy milk in these little plastic bags. Those provide a small burst of energy and prevent dehydration. So as usual, the spent containers end up on the side of the road... along with the straws that are poked into the corners of the packs.

If you double-click on the image, you can see it a little bigger.

Well shoot

This envelope came to me recently. The Kenya Revenue Authority is the tax-taking government branch. Neither of the two out of my three names is spelled correctly. And they are not in the right order. And my first name is not there.

But in all fairness, I have severe problems figuring out the correct order of most Kenyan friends' names. I think I have way more problem with that than some Kenyans do with western names.

(Detail people - yes, I did remove the box number, to keep whatever crazies out there who might come and pillage my castle from doing so.)

Flowers up high

As you've read here before, Nairobi has the perfect climate. Plants grow and grow and grow. This giant flowering tree is in the compound of our apartment complex. In Europe or North America, that species could have maxed out as a house-plant.