NBO - First impressions

Having never set foot in Kenya (or anywhere on the continent south of Morocco and Egypt), I had pegged my personal frame of reference to India just to give myself some sort of orientation. I knew from the get-go that this would be inaccurate, and possibly even misleading.

Having now spent all of 4 days in Nairobi, there are obvious differences with India:

• The climate is absolutely perfect for our species. My brother-in-law Matt had it right when he said that it wasn't an accident that the Rift Valley was our collective birthplace. The near- constant 20C weather makes even a traffic jam seem relatively innocuous.
• The density of population is far less than a comparable Indian city. Again, this makes everything less chaotic, and allows for a much more civil public discourse. People's manners are by-and-large quite formal. The only over-familiar interaction I've had so far was with an Australian man placing his hand on my shoulder (not unfriendly, but still unwelcome) at a lunch bar in a posh hotel - I was apparently blocking his path to the passion fruit key lime pie. Similarly, there is no need for images of holy figures in the corners of public buildings (which can be found in India, to prevent the use of such corners as spitoons).
• The sense of a new city built on a wild landscape remains. In most Indian cities (even towns), the buildings and the neighbourhoods have been in existence for hundreds if not thousands of years, and so the human settlements tend to dominate the eye. In Nairobi, which is only about 100 years old, and despite our best efforts, the default remains the forest, and the velvet cake-red soil on which abound flowers and plants that seem almost like they're showing off. Alongside the highway way out of the airport, right in the financial district, I saw tens of huge white birds, standing erect and motionless on tree-tops in the sodium-light lit darkness.