Out of Africa - the Kenyan way of doing things

After a few days of acclimatising to life in Kenya I got to sort of liking (some of) it. Certainly the people are very friendly, always helpful. But the ways of getting things done (or not as the case may be) were alien to me. Here are some of my photos, and few stock photos at the end, to illustrate.

Typical Kenyan market - note no pavement!

Jon's car was and still is continually breaking down

A local repair shop

Heading into another repair shop in Kisumu

Plenty of effort, some good mechanics, all for a few $

To get to this workshop (hardly a shop - all the work was down outside) we travelled over unpaved roads and finally a steep and rutted track up to the work area itself. Soon after our successful arrival a matatu tried to drive in but the undercarriage kept grounding. I took a video but it is long and very repetitive and it was only after I grew tired of videoing that the driver finally made it. You'd think it would be worthwhile the car repair business doing something about their drive, but I guess they cannot afford it.

Meanwhile the women folk prepare food. 

These woman were preparing and cooking food for the army of car mechanics. Note there is not a single table, or sink, or anything we would call a cooking appliance. The women are therefore hunched over double doing their work, and various containers strewn around on the dirt. Women folk in Kenyan typically have the job of carrying water on their heads, maybe 20kg without hands! Where these particular women got their water from I know not but I didn't see any taps there.

The next two pictures are from the internet, but are typical of what I saw. The outhouse below is leaning over in an alarming fashion but is none the less doubtless still in use. Inside each cubicle will be a hole in the ground. There will be no lock or even catch on the door. The "hole" might be a couple of metres deep and, I suppose, when full they simply re-build the outhouse somewhere else. Meanwhile the sewage leaches out to who knows where?

An "outhouse" aka hole in the ground, most probably in use

Typical "shops" by the side of every road

When working those many years ago for the BBC there was one department of which it used to be said (half jokingly) that their motto was the following travesty "if a job's worth doing it's only just worth doing". It almost seems like that is the way with the building trade in Kenya, albeit in this case doubtless driven by poverty and lack of decent materials.