Space

I remember my culture shock living in Germany when without hesitation, strangers would sit next to me on a park bench or on a bus. Where I grew up we gave people a wide berth. You wouldn't sit on a park bench if someone was already sitting there, even if the bench could hold 4 people and they were sitting at the other end. There were plenty of other benches, after all.

Germans seem to feel that seats are for sitting in, not for buffering you from other people. Well, Kenyans take that a step further. You may as well leave your personal space bubble at home, because in Nairobi you are entitled to the space you physically occupy when compressed, and that's it.

Thankfully, Kenyans do not smell bad. I don't know how they do it with water rationing and all, but if I have to be squished together with a bunch of strangers for several hours each day, Kenyans would be my choice.

I love the efficiency of it. Matatus are basically Toyota Vans, you know, the Japanese 1980s response to the VW bus. In America those vans seat 5, or 7 if you max them out. In Nairobi, that same vehicle seats 15 plus luggage, and a couple times we managed to squeeze 17 or 18 people in there. Very cozy. Not a good place to be big.

One of the shopping centers I went into was like a hall of walk-in closets. The ceilings were about 6 feet high, I think they converted a one story building to two stories so they could cram about 30 shops into the size of a McDonalds restaurant. At a big Walgreens-type place downtown, after you went through the checkout, you had to turn sideways and dance around the baggers to exit. The aisle was like that of an airplane. No shopping carts.

Don't get me wrong, they have spacious stores and hotels and restaurants and busses too. I'm just pointing out things we take for granted but they don't. It opens up opportunities we might otherwise miss, when people are willing to measure things in inches rather than yards (or centimeters rather than meters -- incidentally, I was surprised that many Kenyans seemed conversant in feet and degrees Fahrenheit, etc. Real estate is measured in sqft, not sq meters.).