Your Correspondent Candidate For Election! ^{[ Go to: List of Nairobi Pages]}
Nairobi #6

Another town. Nairobi ^{[slum picture]}. Midnight at Kenyatta Airport. Cheap Havanas^{[cheap Havana picture]}. I buy a $100 box of 25 Romeo and Julietta Petit Fleur. The cashier removes and crushes the price tag and types $200 on his machine. Not the way I learned to cheat in Holland! "Sorry, I inadvertently took the expensive box, let me go back and pick a cheap one".  On typing in the second box our cashier finds the 1-button and types $100. When I leave he adds slightly uneasily that he is going to find out how this 200 "came out of his system".
My taxi man Kennedy, called from my transit port Istanbul, stands ready to take me through deserted Nairobi-by-night. He can pay his parking at the parking place or at the airport gate. Late night the parking place is unmanned, When the parking place is unmanned the airport gate has no competition and adds 50% to the price. They even bought paint to make an official announcement signpost  to this effect. But Kennedy gets away with normal-price-no-ticket, and the entire fee goes in the gatekeeper's pocket. More the way I learned to cheat in Holland.
It rains cats and dogs. Mid town in the dark we see a naked man strolling. Slip only.
"Robbed?" I ask Kennedy.
"Can be" Kennedy replies.
"What else? Drunk?"
"No, some people when they are late to go home leave everything in safe hands, then walk home naked ".
Another town.

With her new car, Ann sure can show off in the Nairobi jams (Prnt Scrn from GoogleEarth)

Arrival at Anne's High End B&B^[picture]. Anne had been hunting for a pretty recent second hand Toyota Landcruiser. Japanese web sites have them on display, with an auction system attached. It took her a few months to get one with her combination of features and gadgets (leather chairs, diesel, ...), but she got it, the monster got shipped and just arrived. There is one hitch: Anne does not dare to drive in Nairobi. But Dano, housekeeper Festus and I can drive, so, as always, she has things her way in her way.

The next day, no need to say, Anne and me went straight for the golf course. For what happened there, I have to add a bit of pre-history: even though I had Anne as my turbo diesel driving force, I got a bit stuck in the ritual dance for membership of the Royal Nairobi Golf Club. With Anne's help I had jumped the important hurdle of transit from the "blue forms" - according to the distinguished membership properly called yellow, since they are only blue because yellow is regrettably unavailable at present - to the "white forms" entitling me have my pre-balloting pre-selection interview at some Thursday 1600hrs. I flew in from Uganda, was kindly seated, dressed in what in our High End B&B we call my "Ball-Costume" (picture below), at the club house veranda, but well after six I was not yet called in. My cigar being finished, considering myself now too drunk to pass, I left. A few weeks later, a short chivalrous Nairobi-Entebbe email correspondence followed:

Dear Prof hamminga, I refer to our meeting Re your application for Membership on 30 July 2010 and you had confirmed your attendance. Your name was among the list of other applicants and when your name was called ,you were not to be found in the precincts of the Club. Would you please comment.
S A Bhatti  Chairman of Balloting Committee-RNGC

................I am happy to supply the requested comment. To prepare it, could you please tell me at exactly what time my name was called?
Thank you, Prof. Bert hamminga

..................There were 18 candidates on the list. We finished the last around 8.30 pm. The meeting started at 5.00 pm and your attendance was reported to us by the Receptionist. The time you were called was probably just after 7.00 p.m. ............My apologies if you had to wait for some time. In future if you are traveling on that day you may request the Club to list you earlier.
S A Bhatti  Chairman of Balloting Committee-RNGC

.............Thank you for you information. I am now ready to supply the comment you requested: it is identical to yours. I will not be back in Nairobi before come October or November. Since I now have been able to correct my expectations concerning your team�s schedule of appointment times, and since I would not wish to inconvenience other candidates for club membership to my personal advantage, I will, in case you would do me the honour of a retry pre-ballotage appointment by that time, not need any special treatment. I will keep you posted concerning my next arrival. Thank you for your continuing interest in my membership application,
Prof. Bert hamminga

That was four months ago. Anne got air that there was another candidate hearing today and ordered me home to change for my Ball-Costume, while quickly dealing with the club's assistent secretary Liz to correct some errors and and replace, in the filed documents, some wrong signatures by the right ones with TIPP-EX white corrector to achieve the result depicted right below here:.

I am now, yes, a candidate for election (that is, it not yet been decided that I will be for election, but when you reach the stage to be a candidate for election, you can say you have penetrated deeply and may be hard to stop. "Emiritus" Professor, yes, one f on closer thought, Philosophy of Phylosophy? Let us write both, each one time (capital P of course)!

But the form did not yet sport the eight signatures on its top half, about those you will be informed below. In that state, the form was on the table of the interviewing committee, starting at 1600hrs like always, but now Anne and her friend Liz had squeezed me in the queue as Nr. #1! At four a committee member, like last time, invited me to kindly wait at the veranda, but Anne forbade me to go there and nailed me among the other waiters in the club reception. From there I got called in as early as a quarter to five! After some polite questioning, I was told that now I would have to pay the entry fee (roughly six average annual Kenyan wages), personally to collect the support signatures of at least six club dignitaries, then hang for a  month on the club's corridor notice board to facilitate members to object to my candidacy. After that, Anne and me played a game of golf. On return from the game, stepping up the veranda for some decent refreshments, the reception was still crammed with politely waiting candidates for election.

Anne told me I would have to go round for my signatures on the evening of the weekly Thursday Club Night. Since each Night elects a best dressed man and lady, and Anne herself had never yet been elected, she was determined to accompany me in a dress that would make clear to electors that enough is enough and time was ripe.

After missing Thursday's Royal Nairobi Golf Club night's Prize For Best Dressed Lady several times, Ann got fed up, went for it and won! Middle: Ann enjoying food, ...and the looks. Right: Lucy (smoking one of my cigars) ostensibly went for the prize as well (as she had done successfully), but did not mind at all ceding the prize to Ann for a time

No need to mention I got my signatures in half an hour.

Left: Lucy, me and Anne in front of one of the 20odd club wall name boards everybody wants to be on. Right: listening juicy gossip

All these charming ladies around you are not only helpful to complete the ritual dance for membership with few hitches only, but they sink you straight into the club gossip as well. So I heard that the lady caddies, introduced in the beginning of this year, increasingly are invited to accompany male members off the course (often several at one time with one member), that a female dignitary conspired to disqualify a winner to scoop the prize herself, and that some prizes donated for some competition did not get handed out because an organizing official decided to have a pick of them even before the event took place, but of course I believe nothing of it! How could all that be in a club with such a hermetic membership application as I just managed to pass only with the help of Anne and TIPP-EX?