We land in Nairobi mid-movie (didn’t time it well) and exit the huge plane through the back door into the warm yet breezy Kenyan evening. A bus drove us to the international terminal and we pull up all our paperwork. Immigration was easy peasy as we did an Evisa online a couple of months prior that got approved, and we had our proof of yellow fever vaccine. Also we’re white so that helps. Our 5 pieces of luggage came out right away and we easily found the driver Bill’s colleague set up for us. We get to the AirBnB around 11pm and our host, who lives in the building, lets us in and was super nice and welcoming. Then we crash.

We wake up early Wednesday morning and walk to the Yaya Center, which is one of the many shopping malls in Nairobi. Lots of malls here, which I guess makes Nairobi the New Jersey of Kenya. Except that Nairobi is way different than Jersey so nevermind.

We do a quick lap around the mall, do a small grocery run, then sit for breakfast at ArtCaffe, a delicious Israeli cafe chain. Plus they have WiFi.

After an amazing first meal we get new SIM cards and a local phone number at the Safaricom kiosk and Bill is off to work! Jet-lagged or not, people need their solar! He walked to his office from Yaya, all of which is in the neighborhood called Kilimani. I walk back to the AirBnB to put the milk and bottled water in the fridge and look for a permanent place to live. The internet is shotty so I call an Uber to go to a much raved about French bakery in the neighborhood called Riverside. The ride cost $3.

I get the avocado toast and use their fast WiFi. It’s almost like I never left SF.There’s a huge range of real estate here, with some brand new luxury penthouses as expensive as SF. There is also a huge market of furnished and serviced apartments, though they really vary in size, newness, style and price. As an armchair residential real estate expert, I haven’t been able to make sense of the pricing despite looking at hundreds listings. Old, dingy, dark, small, and terribly furnished apartments with no elevator go for 50% more than newer, brighter, bigger apartments with similar amenities (lots of pools and gyms) in the same neighborhood. Clearly everything here is extremely negotiable. After making arrangements with several people to view available units on Saturday, I Uber to another mall. This time in the happening neighborhood called Westlands.

I walk around and look around a bit and decide to walk all the way home, which took about 3 hours. I saw a cool tree, kids playing soccer, lots of crazy traffic with crazy matatu drivers and no traffic signals, and lots of cool buildings. I took a bunch of pictures. It was a wonderful day spent exploring my new city!

Cool tree

After school soccer

Cool mall ramp

Cool building

Cool building being built

Abandoned building mid build

Cool building (and Subway less cool)

I watched/raced Bill walking home from work on a “find my friends” type app that I made him download – mainly so he can see where I am (or at least where my phone is) for my safety. Then we went to dinner at a local grill place. Maybe it was all the sun I got or maybe it was all the walking I did or maybe it was the jet lag, but I was so tired at dinner. Luckily it only took two and a half hours to get our food and luckily we sat right by the restrooms and luckily we were in the smoking section so we had a pleasant experience. Mainly we were just ready for bed.

Thursday was my first day of work at Lynk and I arrived an hour early. #overachiever #iwasscaredoftraffic My ride to work is the reverse commute so it only took about 20 minutes. More on my new job and company later, but it’s already amazing: smart people, cool technology making workers’ lives better while building cool projects, an on site workshop, a dog, a lunch chef, a cat, and lots of design and strategy work for me to do. For dinner Bill and I went to an Italian restaurant which was really good! My pasta dish cost about 10 USD while bottled water is more expensive than beer. #drinkmorebeer

Friday after work we went to a highly recommended hole in the wall joint called Burger Hut in Westlands with my colleagues. The burgers were really good and I was glad to get to know some of my Lynk coworkers better.

Saturday we looked at 11 apartments. 11. It was exhausting. We started at 8:30am and got home at 5:30pm. But we did take a 3 hour lunch break to eat delicious food at Yaya with some of Bill’s colleagues! None of the apartments were exactly perfect, but we started negotiating on two of them. We have to move in on Tuesday or Wednesday as our AirBnB is up on Wednesday. BAH!!!! Our main criteria for an apartment, in no particular order, is:

• reliable internet (no one likes waiting for Netflix to load, but mainly it’s for work)
• back up generator (power outages are a thing here)
• walking distance to a grocery store (walking at night is not encouraged, especially alone, especially if you have blond hair)
• building water supply (I enjoy showering)
• 2 bedroom furnished (for when you all visit we need a guest room!)
• washing machine
• in the Kilimani neighborhood (Unfortunately our offices are not near each other like they were in SF where it was great biking to work together everyday. In Nairobi Bill will walk to work and I will uber (about $5) in the opposite direction of traffic. If we lived near my office so I could walk to work, Bill’s 5 mile commute could take up to an hour and a half because he would be sitting in traffic.)

This morning, Sunday, we are watching the Olympics online. Then we’ll go back to our top two apartments and start the negotiations. Then we are going to a Brazilian steakhouse for dinner! Then back to the Monday grind…