This year is an especially good year for me… I’m in the middle of buying a new house with my girlfriend, just got a new puppy yesterday, and got relatively good job news from a couple of people in the family. Unfortunately not everyone is as lucky as me or most of you. And this time of year can be especially hard as its supposed to be a good time of the year. And the people that feel it the hardest? It’s the children. This is where the Save the Children organisation comes into play.

Save the Children

A Global aid organisation, its aim is to create “real and lasting change for children in need in the United States and around the world”. The organisation spans 28 national organisations and works in 110 different countries. You can read more about the organisation and its mission here. A worthy goal, no doubt about it.

What can I do?

You can donate over here of course, or if Christmas is hard for you financially, you can give to the community and let the community donate for you. The good people over at tutorial9 are running the Gift of Knowledge Giveaway where the technical, witty, and excellent writers and bloggers among you can submit entries, and give to the community, and in turn a very, very, worthy cause. It could be a very easy and excellent way to maybe help your good karma at this time of year! Their aim is to give $5,000 dollars away to this excellent charity, and I think that everyone should help, in any way that they can. Remember, it doesn’t have to be monetary, and everything helps! Even if you don’t have enough or don’t want to help in this way, there are many other charitable organisations or ways to help and in the end it will all, hopefully, help someone who needs it, especially at Christmas.

So there you go, to all those that read this – a very Happy Christmas to you and yours.

Thanks, Dan.

Box Seats?

First off the seats were arranged incorrectly so that some of the tall seats were at the front and the small seats were at the back. As long as I sat up very straight, I could just about see over the child’s head in front of me. And we didn’t want to say anything because you don’t want to upset people that you have to spend two hours in a small room with… . It meant though that whenever the child moved or sat up I had to dodge around. I managed to see all of the first act… very little of the second, and by the time the third started – the child had fallen asleep, so that made it a lot easier! Luckily enough, my girlfriend was able to see everything on her tall chair as this would have completely ruined the night!

All in all, it was a good night though, but I’d advise anyone to avoid the box seats unless you know the people you’re sharing the room with very well!

View part 1 here if you haven’t already…

The flight went well – I love flying, and its even more enjoyable with BA – and with the banter and a good book and some in flight entertainment, the nine hours seemed quite short… well as short as they could be. With the earlier delay I was heading into Nairobi quite late. It must have been half 9/10 or so. Then comes immigration where I have to pay $50 to get a holiday visa – a bit of a rip off but how and ever. Said the goodbyes to the people I’d met and wandered out to collect my luggage. Now, I’m not afraid of flying but I am afraid of what happens next – baggage collection…

So I headed towards the decidedly barren arrivals section to where the collection starts. This is always the most anxious part of the journey for me… and my fears aren’t comforted as I see the way some of the bags are being flung around. Or that there are so many people standing around. After a wait of about 15 minutes my bag comes towards me… and lo and behold there’s a piece of paper stuck to it which reads – “SORRY”, so fearing the worst I take a look at the bag. It appears that one of the back supports has been torn from the bag. Not a huge deal really and I suppose I should be grateful for the note…

Onwards to the arrivals/pick-up area without much hope of my taxi being there to collect me. I head towards the set of public phones to see if I can call them on the mobile that they have here. But a couple of shouts from the crowds mean that luckily I have a lift. I was told to meet a taxi driver named Michael who would give me a lift to the apartment that the girls had been renting while working in the hospital. But again I’m surprised to find two quite hilariously white faces waving at me from the crowd. My girlfriend, her friend Roisin and Michael the taxi driver had been waiting since I was supposed to arrive earlier. Luckily there’s a pub in the airport so they’re not short of anything to do while they wait!

Michael seems friendly and I learn he drives them whenever they need a lift at the weekends in Nairobi. He shares the taxi with another chap who brings them to and from the hospital every day, and between the two have been taking the girls everywhere at whatever time they want. Its dark now so traffic is light and we start the 15 minute drive to the city proper. About 5 minutes in though we hit an obstacle, a police checkpoint. The girls tell me not to look at the policewoman at the checkpoint as it may start something and I may have to get my first taste of Kenyan corruption. After a brief stop in which altogether too much talking is done by Michael and the policewoman, we head on our way and I get told a story.

About a week before this on a journey out to one of the pubs on the outskirts of Nairobi, they were stopped at checkpoint – a regular occurrence when there’s white people in the taxi… – An argument started between Michael and another policewoman in Swahili. Eventually after being stopped about five minutes the argument stopped and the taxi moved off. The girls, wanting to know what had happened asked Michael, who told them that the policewoman had demanded that Michael buy her dinner. In other words, wanted some money! Michael declined her “offer” and this is why the argument started. Now at first I was sceptical about this story but learnt that it was indeed the way of things.

So we arrived at the apartment to be let in by the apartments “askari” – private security guards who had a fire set up in the parking lot. And up to the apartment for a few litres of the local beer(Tusker Beer – So very very strong) as a kind of welcome. I doled out some of the many items that I was asked to bring with me – King/Tayto Crisps, Barry’s and Lyons Tea bags, along with an Irish Times and some magazines. Some food was also eaten before heading off to sleep quite merrily.

During the summer of 2006, due to my beautiful girlfriend working in a hospital in Nairobi, I had the chance to head out to East Africa when she was finished working so we could go on safari and do some travelling around in the region.

The trip to Kenya started in reality about 6 weeks before the flight. Sorting out flights was one thing – expensive – but the next obligation with a trip to East Africa was the injections. Yellow fever, Hepatitis A, Diphtheria, and Tetanus – (insert more killer diseases here… ). And these didn’t come cheap! In fairness I could have left one or two out but because we wanted to do some other travelling, so we needed some to prove we were immune before we travelled back into Kenya from any other country in East Africa. I got them at a new GP just down the road from where I work, which had just opened and so I was able to get them without making an appointment. I rang ahead to check if they had the stuff in stock and they said they did so off I went after work to get injected with some diseases… In off the street and back out again – immune to everything

So a couple of weeks later – there I am standing in Dublin Airport at 8AM. Check-in goes smoothly if a little long, but not long enough to bother me. Still enough time to get to my flight to Heathrow. It was an AerLingus flight which is great because the service and everything is really very good. I’ll fly AerLingus every single chance I get, rather that fly cheaply with a Ryanair type airline. So arrived in London and because I’d allowed a bit of time just in case for my connecting flight I walked around the airport without being in a hurry. Bought a few essentials for the journey – watch, sun glasses, etc. (You’d think that I would have remembered these…)

One look at the departures board though and things aren’t looking so good any more. They’ve changed the gate that my plane leaves for and its going to be delayed by 4 hours!! This is a bit of a pickle as I’ve got people collecting me in Nairobi… but what can I do? And without being able to get in touch I resigned myself to the situation, no point complaining as there’s little that can be changed. So I bought a few magazines, and set out to find as comfortable a seat as I could manage. But anyone whose spent any time in an airport knows that that’s asking a lot. Actually its impossible. So after about 15 minutes trying every different type of seat I could find I gave up and started to browse the shops again. Some twice. In the end I’m pretty sure I was considered a security risk, and my description was being circulated by security staff!

So after a couple of hours I headed down to the gate. A good long walk down to my British Airways flight at gate 25. Looking around – I’m amazed by the number of Indian people who are waiting to board the plane. Only about a dozen or so Africans. Now I know the British used Indian slaves to build the railways in East Africa, but really I don’t know anything about the countries that I’m going to fly to right now. This is possibly the worst prepared I’ve ever been heading out to a foreign country.

Boarding the plane some time later, I’m one of the first on the plane. But because I really bad at reading seat numbers on planes I sit in the wrong row. But so did the two girls that sat next to me… So when the three people came looking for their own seats they said they’d sit in our seats. No big deal. A good laugh was had by all and it looked good for the journey as everyone was jovial about the situation.

One of the other realizations that came with this trip was that people who travel on their own are either really friendly or crazy. The two girls who sat next to me were very friendly. There was some good natured banter which is always good on a flight that is going to take 9 hours. We all tell each other our names but because of the noise I hear neither or them… So like an idiot for the rest of the flight I’m too embarrassed to ask them their names. They were both solo travelers but for different reasons – One was English and on a gap year from college and heading out to teach in a school and the other was an American girl from one of the southern states who was heading out to meet her mother. So I settled down for the flight with a couple of books and some in-flight movies and a few good chats about Africa and home.

Part 2 is here for anyone who wants it…