Nairobi Airport finally after the 8 hr nightmare that is international air travel. Wonderful picture perfect rosy tinged African dawn complete with umbrella trees coming out of the the mist across the runways with vultures perched high in the treetops. The mayhem of the arrivals in a makeshift area the old hall having burnt down last year. Temporary immigration hall with fingerprint scanners at the same desk as carbon paper handwritten visa writers. A sleepy soldier AK47 across his lap while he chats on the phone leaning back on a beaten up plastic garden chair, haggling over taxi fares and then the hottest rush hour car journey into Nairobi centre. Hollywood Hotel an oasis of calm, African village life murals and outrageous knocking-shop furniture and then sweet oblivion, face down and comatose for an hour.
April 9th - filming session one
Off to film Dr Hassan Wario- Arero, Kenyan Minister for Sport and Culture, an old friend of Kirsten from his 10 years in London and Hull first at University and then as a curator for African artefacts at The Horniman Museum. We take two graduates from the Activation programme, Julius and Lillian. Amazing to see two bright and informed twenty something's sitting in a cabinet minister's office and contributing to the process when, had it not been for the Activation programme, the chances are they would have at best been selling newspapers or peanuts in the rush hour traffic outside Kenyatta Airport and it's not even worth thinking of the worst that might have befallen them.
Following a surreal 30 minutes squeezed into the civil servants' rest room where we sat and waited while we watched a Nigerian soap in which the children were played by clones of Arnold from Different Strokes we were ushered into the Minister's offices.
After a pleasant chit chat, Dr Hassan's PA gave us exactly 10 minutes to set up and film the interview. Julius and Lillian immediately made themselves incredibly useful helping with the gear set-up and miraculously not to say mysteriously got their heads around lighting and sound equipment with the absolute minimum of guidance from me.
All done and back out into the sunshine and heading back to the hotel.
Next up an interview with the local Ururi MP, John Kobado who agreed to a meeting.
He was so inspired that he ended the conversation with a solemn promise to find a job for every single one of the Activation graduates as soon as they had finished their studies. Pie-crust promises, easily made and easily broken, however he has agreed to foot some of the bill for the workshop next Sunday in Migori as long as it is held in his constituency and seemed genuinely taken with the Activation idea.
The so called 'Jubilee' coalition government is in its early days and the MP's are still saying 'yes' to everything. There is a rumour that MP's are now being paid enough to require them less to supplement their incomes with backhanders, so despite the fact that Kenyatta Jr and cronies are still exercising the same old same old wielding of the power levers, perhaps Kenyan politics might finally be beginning to clean up its act a little. Certainly the youth of Kenya is increasingly swayed by policy rather than blind old-Skool tribal allegiances.Time will tell but all in all a good day for Kir stalking the corridors of Kenyan power.
Bed, at last.....
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