The Only Ice Rink in East Africa

“Did you know”, said Stephen, the taxi driver taking me from Nairobi International airport to my hotel, “That there is a hotel in Nairobi with an ice rink?”

I didn’t!

“It’s the only one in the whole of East Africa” he added.

To be honest, it would have been more amazing to me if there had been another.

 

I wondered who uses it, if indeed anyone does. 

The hotel in question faces onto Nairobi National Park, where, in exchange for a small fortune in dollar bills a tourist can watch giraffe, zebra, baboon, buffalo, wildebeest and more. Thousands of people fly in to Nairobi from all over the world hoping to catch a glimpse of the natural beauty and wildlife of this remarkable country, whether it’s the great migrations through the Masai Mara, the great rift valley lakes, made pink by flamingo’s or the elephants wondering freely in the foothills of Kilimanjaro.

One of the great pleasures of this continent is to sit and listen, to hear the sounds of the African night, knowing that, in what looks like deserted wilderness the great circle of life plays out.

I’m not sure that an ice rink is what they are really looking for.

When I left home this morning it was 3 degrees C. When I arrived in Nairobi, at 9:30 in the evening, it was 23 degrees c.

The very last place that I am going to go to is an ice rink!

I asked John, the hotel porter, what he thought, as he carried my bag to the room when I had checked in.

“We are proud” he said, “it is the only one in East Africa”.

So maybe it is the new, prosperous residents, business men and women and their young families, who have grown up with the wildlife on their doorstep, looking for new experiences, looking for fun who go there on a lazy afternoon.

Not far from the hotel in the opposite direction, towards the city centre, lie the great slums of Nairobi. Men, women and children live out their lives in desperate need, surviving below the poverty line day in, day out. I have been to the Nairobi slums on two or three occasions over the last ten years and those in Kisumu much more frequently. The difference between the two ways of life is as vast as the 4,500 mile journey from Manchester to Kenya and it seems so hard to change anything.

I sat in the hotel bar this evening, with an ice cold Tusker in one hand and the Champions league on the big screens in front of me.

And I tried my very best, given the confines of the hotel wifi, to facetime with Pam.

And I feel so very, very fortunate. Lucky to have the family, the friends, the colleagues, the work and the home that I have.

And the opportunity to choose whether to not to go to the only ice rink in East Africa.