Unless a city has some particular draw for us, Tim and I try to avoid big metropolitan areas as much as we can. And since Nairobi is Kenya's capital city, and is known to be a congested industrial center famous for its slums and insane traffic, we were dead set on never going there.

But we also had some questions about visa extensions that needed to be answered, and no one in the Kenyan immigration offices were picking up their phones or responding to emails. We've learned that this is typical for Africa, and the best way to get things done is to show up in person.

Also, Nairobi has the only KTM dealership between South Africa and Egypt, and our bike's back brakes were getting soft. Some fresh brake fluid would surely make our motorcycle very happy.

So last Sunday, we headed off to Nairobi for a three day trip.

Because we didn't need any camping gear, we were able to pack light with just a back bag and a bunch of food. It felt very liberating to not have our panniers on the bike, and we could squeeze through traffic like never before. But I also realized that without our side bags, if the bike were to fall, my legs would be crushed. Kind of a scary thought. Personally, I prefer having the panniers on.

It was only a 3.5 hour ride from our home in Nanyuki to Nairobi, and we had beautiful weather and beautiful views of the countryside.

To avoid traffic, we booked an Airbnb on the outskirts of town by the airport, and I really appreciated the fact that by using Airbnb, we were able to live amongst the locals. You got to hear the children playing, the dogs barking, the TVs blaring, and the music pumping. You could definitely smell the spices of the neighbor's cooking, or the perfumes of the laundry hung out to dry. This was the real Africa, and I loved it.

When we first pulled up, a friendly gentleman came outside another apartment building to help us find where we were going (there are no addresses here), saying his daughter wanted to see what these two lost white people were doing. He seemed to know all the neighbors' names, and pointed us in the right direction. I could tell that this was definitely a tight-knit, lively community here, which made the experience of being in Nairobi even that much better.

I remember once watching a documentary on poverty that said it's a shame that so many people around the world only think of Africa as a place where children look longingly at the camera with flies on their faces. They said that we are often missing this other side of Africa, one like downtown Nairobi, which is a bustling, beautiful city full of culture, innovation, entrepreneurialism, and modern-day luxuries.

​So as I stood there on the street corner, looking up at the skyscrapers glittering in the equatorial sun, I reminded myself to keep this picture of Africa in my head.

One of my favorite things about Nairobi were the buses. These public buses are famous for being brightly colored and painted with whatever designs the bus owner wants. This often includes portraits of rappers such as Tupac, Snoop Dogg, Post Malone, or Rihanna and Beyoncé. But sometimes you'll see other weird, random things.

As far as Coronavirus went, Nairobi has strict mask-wearing rules in place, along with touch-free hand sanitizing stations and a mandatory temperature check at every door to every establishment. There's a nightly curfew in place, and restaurants have to be open to the elements, but that's easy to do here since the weather is so good.

It was a tiring day in Nairobi. Like most bureaucracy, the immigration office took way longer than we'd wanted, but we got done what we needed. And the KTM dealership did a fine job on our fresh new brakes. But at long last, we were able to get back to our cozy Airbnb and shower off all that city grime.

That evening, Tim and I were watching some TV when he went into the kitchen to grab the last of a bag of chips we'd opened earlier. He walked back into the living room with his hand in the bag when his face suddenly went white. He pulled his hand out, looked into the bag, then immediately started closing it up.

"What?" I asked.

"You don't want to know," he told me with total seriousness.

Of course, I insisted he tell me, and finally he confessed that inside the chip bag were two huge cockroaches, each about two inches long.

Yeah, he was right. I didn't want to know. All I could think of was thank God it wasn't me eating those chips.

Overall, our trip to Nairobi was a fun, interesting experience that I'm grateful for. Next week, I'll go over what African food is like.

​Until then, have a great week!

When the pandemic first hit back in March, we were in Uganda, and I was definitely freaking out. My first instinct was to go home to the US where the health care infrastructure is leaps and bounds what they have here, where the government can financially sustain a prolonged lockdown, and where most people can social distance.

Uganda, on the other hand, is the complete opposite. Extended families often live cramped together in single-room dwellings, the vast majority of people can't work from home, and the health care system... well let me just put it this way - the entire country of Uganda had three ventilators. They've since received donations of many more, but the expectation was that once Covid-19 hit sub-Saharan Africa, this region was going to be a humanitarian catastrophe.

​But strangely enough, that didn't happen.

Our Sunday Scoop

Welcome to our Sunday Scoop - a five minute escape where I will take you to an exotic land far away, a place where the last Northern White Rhinos roam.

​When we first moved to Nanyuki, Kenya a couple of months ago, we had no idea that only 20 minutes away from our house was a nature reserve with the last two Northern White Rhinos. But once we learned about Ol Pejeta Conservancy, and discovered that the park had half-off tickets due to the pandemic, we decided to rent a car for a day and head down the road to have one of the most memorable experiences of our lives.

Ever since the pandemic started, we've had to settle down as opposed to travel full-time, which means I've unfortunately been neglecting our blog. Tim and I have been stuck in Uganda and Kenya for nine months now, waiting for the world to go back to normal. And even though it might still be a while before "normal" is back for good, I realized that you don't have to be on the road every day to have interesting adventures. Living in Africa during these crazy times is an adventure in and of itself.

So I've decided to do a Sunday Scoop about our lives which will just be a short weekly update about how things are here, from the bizarre to the ordinary. And since we're all pretty much stuck at home, I'm hoping it can bring you to a far away land on the other side of the globe, even if it's just for a moment.