NAIROBI

I went to Nairobi on business last week. It was a short, but tough, trip, since I flew from London overnight on Sunday and flew back overnight on Tuesday. The seats on Kenya Airways' 777 were a lot better than those on Ryanair's 737s, which is what I am used to, but it still left me with cricks in my neck and a lack of sleep.

It was my first time back in Africa since I left Tanzania at the turn of the century, and it was amazing to be able to re-experience those peculiarly African things that you don't get in Denmark. Interminable form filling at the airport; people selling newspapers on the motorway in the middle of the traffic; matatus; cold Tusker beer; mud roads in the middle of the city; the mix of Swahili and English; rubbish everywhere; ordinary people's friendliness; the blinding colour of bougainvillea and other flowers; scaffolding made from bamboo poles.

Nairobi is not cheap; the rack rate at our hotel on the road to the motorway was a whopping US$270 a night. However, because we were working with the airline, we got the crew rate, which was a more digestible US$95. They also need to do something about the traffic, which is appalling. A light railway down the middle of the motorway to the airport would be my suggestion, though I doubt that it will happen any time soon.

I haven't really spoken Swahili for 13 years. But after a couple of hours, I could feel the gears in my brain beginning to creak, and by the end I was managing a conversation with the taxi driver on the way to the airport. Enough to make me want to come back again before too long.

Walter Blotscher