Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Getting lost and getting away with it!

Once I conquered my fear of driving myself anywhere I decided to take the bull by the horns and send Brian the driver back to ferrying tourists around the game parks.

Armed with my new (well 12 year old) Nissan Wingroad I decided to drive myself to work. Now there is no point in driving a decent car in Nairobi for all the reasons previously mentioned – matatus, potholes, general chaos but I have seen some very flash Mercedes, BMW’s and Audis that look relatively unscathed. They are either extremely good at picking their way through the traffic or the local body shops have got some regular customers. The trusty Wingroad is fine for me.

After locking the door once I was inside, you never travel with unlocked doors or windows open more than an inch, I set off confident I could remember the way to work.
An hour later I found myself completely lost in the arse end of Nairobi, which is not a terribly attractive or safe place to be, without a clue where I was or which direction I should head.

Fortunately the day before I collected my shiny new i phone which has a map function on it. One press of the screen and I appear as a flashing blue dot in the middle of deepest, darkest Nairobi and after typing in the address of the office get step by step directions to get me out of trouble and where I should be – how clever is that?!

I will now quite happily endorse any Apple product FOC after being saved by my phone!

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