As we stepped off the plane in Nairobi were we greeted by two tidy young men with smiles big enough to sleep in. Jophie had booked a 'meet and greet' service for us, to whisk us through passport control and sort out our visas, collect our luggage and hand us over to the driver from the Muthaiga Club. They were a welcome sight after our epic 24-hour journey from Devon to Nairobi.
I was so tired that I could hardly keep my eyes open on the drive to the club, only catching glimpses of the chaos outside the window - buses driving off the road into a ditch full of boulders and craters, just to overtake the bus in front, barefoot children playing on rubbish dumps outside shacks painted with Coca-Cola adverts, people heaving pushcarts through the tangle of cars and buses, which swerve manically around them.
Friends of my parents have very kindly agreed to have us to stay for our first two nights in Kenya. Their home is in the garden of the club, in a leafy suburb so unlike the Nairobi we glimpsed on the drive from the airport, that after a morning at their house Uma commented on how it was just like England. In the confines of the club grounds, the mayhem of the city becomes a faint background noise.
It is a comfortable place to recover from our journey, with meals, ordered from the club's menu, bought over to the house on silver trays, triumphant lawns and poolside sun loungers. The 'house boy', Joseph, a dignified looking man in his late 50's, cleans our rooms and washes our clothes in a big bucket in the back yard, while the children play with the three big dogs in the garden.
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