Nairobi

As I told someone today, Kigali is to Nairobi as Colorado Springs is to Chicago. Kigali is hilly, dusty, and comparatively quiet; Nairobi is flat, sprawling, and has terrible roads.

I arrived Sunday afternoon, and checked into the Red Court hotel. Tried to change money, but francs might as well be denarii here. I'll have to hold on to it until I can make my way back to Rwanda, or settle for a terrible exchange rate when I get to an international airport. Which sucks, since I have about $150 tied up in Rwandan currency. Yes, I should have changed it in Kigali, but the last couple days there were pretty hectic.

I think everything at VFC is as good as it's going to be; not as much changed during my stay as I hoped, but I think they have all the right processes and training in place now. They just need to apply the proper resources to it- time will tell if anything changes.

The MFI in Nairobi, however, is quite a bit more advanced than VFC, and they have none of the problems with connectivity and translation (everything's in English!) that Rwanda has. So the week here will be more than sufficient, thanks to the three month training boot camp I went through in Kigali and the fact that we're working through things at the beginning, not five months after implementation.

So I'm expecting this week to be a good wind-down to end my time in Africa before returning home next Sunday. Maybe I'll get to go to a safari park over the weekend, and make sure that I don't return home without pictures of elephants.