"This is Not Good..."

I suppose this statement could be made about many of the quirky little things I'm discovering in and about Nairobi lately.  For instance...

• I brought my British hair dryer with me, thinking I'd finally make use of it again. Umm...think again.  Turns out that even though the plugs/outlets are the same, the voltage is decidedly NOT the same.  It worked for a week and then made the most pathetic sound you've ever heard before going completely dead.  Not good.
• I forgot my hairbrush.  Genius move.  No worries, though, right?  Just go get a new one.  Not as easy as you might think.  It took me 5 stores to find a brush.  FIVE.  Seriously, Kenya?  (And don't tell me it's because there are no white people with brush-able hair here.  The UN alone has 15,000 employees here.  There are PLENTY of white people...)
• Aaron was making fun of me the other day because I'd yet to take advantage of the gym classes taking place about 20 steps from the door of my apartment.  Nevermind the fact that this is all his fault because I usually get home from work too late to make them, but whatever...  So anyway, last Thursday, I made a point to get home in time to go to spinning.  I'm very picky about my spinning teachers, but I was determined to try it.  I rushed home, changed as fast as I could, and scrambled down to the gym to grab a bike before the class filled up.  Well...no need to panic, apparently, since I arrived to find a dark, empty room.  I went back to the front desk to see if I had an old schedule, and the (very unfriendly) girl grumbled something unintelligible, walked upstairs (I assumed I was supposed to follow her?), and handed me off to a guy who looked like Mr. T.  Mr. T then pointed, muttered something equally unintelligible, walked me over to a treadmill, and pointed again.  "What are we doing?" I asked.  "I thought we were going to spinning class."  "There is no one," he said and pointed at the treadmill again.  "Umm...ok.  Well, I don't have my knee thing, so I don't want to run on the treadmill.  I can do this by myself anyway.  Thanks."  So I spent an hour on the elliptical machine instead...while Mr. T glared at me in the mirror and attempted to fold his steroid arms across his chest.  So much for taking advantage of the classes at the gym.  And thumbs down to the duo of rude people who work there.  
• Something else I figured out on my maiden voyage at the gym: elevation in Nairobi?  NOT A JOKE.  Here I am, elliptical-ing along, thinking, "Geez, I know I've been slacking lately, but should this really be that difficult?  I just ran the Peachtree a month ago!"  Then I go back home, Google the elevation of Nairobi and learn that it's actually farther above sea-level than Denver is.  Fun times.  So high-altitude training it is!
• Sometimes, you may or may not find yourself in a situation where you've walked into one of "those bathrooms."  Some of the public bathrooms here don't have toilet paper dispensers in the individual stalls, but rather one dispenser on the wall (near the hand dryer) for the whole bathroom, where you're meant to pull the pieces as your turn comes up.  Not a bad idea, really.  Probably less paper going to waste this way, and I'm sure the person in charge of maintaining said bathroom appreciates not having to refill multiple containers, but...say you're me, and you're not aware of this rule?  You're just thankful that you keep a pack of Kleenex in your purse...  So if you're reading this and you ever visit Africa, you can't say you weren't warned!

None of these things are good.  It's true.  But the title quote comes from a funny/slightly unnerving incident that occurred on my way to work the other day.  It could have been far worse...but it wasn't, which is why I can tell you about it now and laugh. 

So, my very lovable driver, John, comes and picks me up every morning for work.  The other day, we were sitting in the car at about 8:30 am, waiting in traffic, when we got up to the always-problematic roundabout by my street and he saw something that bothered him. 

"This is not good," he said.  "This is really not good."

"What's not good?"

"See those guys?" 

He pointed to a bunch of guys dressed in fatigues holding big machine guns, walking all around, in between cars, in the middle of the road, etc.  The closest one was right outside our window.

"Yeah?"

"Those are cops.  They must be looking for someone.  I don't know if it is a robber or what, but they can shoot at anytime.  This is really not good.  The problem is, the bullet does not know that you are not the bad guy.  And the other problem is that they are not always a good shot.  So that is not good.  This is just not good at all.  This is really not good."

"Umm, ok.  So what do we do now?" 

Traffic was basically at a stand-still at this point, because the gun guys were blocking all of the traffic with all of their walking and gun-waving, and no one could go anywhere.  People were also, of course, stopping and staring in all of the parking lots and sidewalks, which wasn't helping anything.

"Well, I will get us out of here as fast as I can, but traffic is bad, so hopefully we'll get out of here before anything happens.  But if not, if they start shooting, our other choice is to lie down very flat.  Just lie down very flat and cover up our heads."

Those were my orders.  Lie down very flat and cover my head, tornado-drill-style...except I didn't have a big school book.  All I had was my Kindle.  Why are these things so small??

Well luckily, it didn't come to that.  No shooting, no street fights, not even any loud cop-yelling.  And still no idea of whether or not my Kindle is bullet-proof.

Now, you should know that I usually don't re-tell these kinds of stories until much further down the road, to keep people (i.e., my mom) from worrying, but I found John's very quiet, calmly panicked reaction to be too funny not to share.  "This is not good."  Ha.  Touche, my friend!

At any rate, potential near-death experience and all, I'm happy to report that things are actually pretty good here in Kenya.  We have a holiday tomorrow (they have a public Kenyan holiday celebrating Idd-Ul-Fitr, the end of Ramadan), so we're going hiking in the Great Rift Valley.  Hooray for mid-week getaways!