A dogs dinner

You would have thought by now that I would have learned that the English sense of humour does not transfer all that well to Kenya, particularly with the indigenous population, and it’s best not to try and be funny.

For some strange reason, it was probably because I had been sat in one of Nairobi’s wonderful two hour traffic jams, I decided to engage in some friendly banter with one of the many retailers who ply their trade along the centre of the roads here. I have mentioned these intrepid folk before but to refresh your memories they will try and sell you anything from jump leads, air fresheners and all manner of car accessories including the wing mirrors ripped off some other poor bugger’s vehicle.

You can get pretty much any item of clothing, some of it is relatively clean, all the latest DVD’s, some of them are relatively clean too, all kinds of local crafts and artwork including those adorable pictures of dogs playing pool and having a fag (I didn’t know the artist was Kenyan). At Christmas they were doing a nice line of Christmas trees made from coat hangers, they obviously didn’t shift them all because now you can buy helicopters and motorbikes made from coat hangers that have baubles and bits of tinsel on them.

And then you get to the livestock. These blokes walk around carrying armfuls of kittens, rabbits, puppies, caged birds and tortoises all day long. I am sure these animals can’t be house trained, or arm trained to be precise, yet and if you get a whiff of one of these local entrepreneurs you get the distinct impression they are probably not but they don’t seem too fussed.

Anyway as I sat in the endless stream of cars and matatus that were going nowhere in the sweltering heat I had my window down to try and avoid the inside of the trusty Wingroad reaching any higher than gas mark 6.

This isn’t advisable in Nairobi but to be honest I think getting mugged while sitting in my car was a lesser risk than melting completely. One of the hazards other than having anything valuable like your Abba CD nicked through your open window is that it seems to be an open invitation to this intrepid band of mobile shopkeepers.

I was approached by one particularly skanky individual who offered a toothless smile and the pick of his armful of manky mutts.

I thought I would lighten the afternoon for both of us with a bit of levity and said 'No thanks, I'm not very hungry'.

He looked at me blankly and replied completely deadpan 'No, these are not for eating but I have some others over there that would be better.'

That will teach me to try and be funny and definitely put me off my tea!