After that, we scrambled into a minivan for a day-tour of Nairobi and surrounding towns. On first impression, Nairobi is a daunting city, a big, bustling, car-crammed and pedestrian-crammed, choking-air capital that seems to uncomfortably combine elements of the first and third worlds. On the one hand, there are shining skyscrapers, headquarters of international corporations and organizations, and businesspeople striding in sleek suits as they talk urgently on cell phones; on the other hand, there are potholed streets, broken-up sidewalks, and endless strings of people walking, walking, walking along the roadways, crossing haphazardly in the midst of perpetual-rush-hour traffic or threading a ragtag path between cars. In some places, we passed small plots of lovingly tended community gardens and bright brand-name boutiques; in others, trash fires burned where sidewalks should have been, and muddy, tin-roof shantytowns sprawled and spread. While experience tells me that a sustained stay would open up the idiosyncratic wonders of the city, on first glance Nairobi seemed an intimidating, impenetrable place.
Soon a very different Kenya revealed itself as we drove into the suburbs of Karen, past posh mansions and rambling walled estates to the gracious former farmhouse of Karen Blixen. A Danish aristocrat and coffee planter who settled here from 1914-1931, Blixen wrote the passionate memoir Out of Africa, which has probably introduced more Westerners to the country than any other single tome. On her expansive estate, Blixen lived what was considered a life of luxury, but it’s illuminating to tour the farmhouse, now a museum, and see what kinds of cooking and cleaning contraptions constituted luxury in those days.
We also drove into the green, tea-growing highlands of Limuru, where we visited Fiona and Marcus Vernon’s Kiambethu Tea Farm. This excursion presented another and even more unexpected view of Africa—lush green rolling hills of tea plants, punctuated by farmsteads with broad pastures and bright gardens. The Vernons are descendants of one of the original Kenya tea farmers, who settled here in 1910, and they opened their home to us, describing the process of tea cultivation and production in their living room and then serving a splendid lunch—featuring vegetables grown in the backyard gardens we had just toured — under sun umbrellas on their lawn.
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