Nairobi and Addis

I have no photos from Nairobi other than the one of the advertisement for Obama, the Musical. I'm not sure why, other than perhaps because Nairobi looks much, much more a Western city, and seemed somehow less striking. It's a very green city, and we spent an afternoon in a lovely arboretum, walking among gigantic clusters of bamboo and enormous trees of all kinds. It was beautiful, and I envied the families and groups of giggling teenage girls: there is nowhere green, quiet, and clean in Liberia to go and relax on a Sunday afternoon.

After a few days in Nairobi, we went onto Addis. Because Ethiopia is still a despearately poor country, it's somewhat shocking to visit places such as the Sheraton, where I tried (unsuccessfully) to exchange some AmEx gift checks.
From our room, we could see one of the city's largest cathedrals, beyond the dozens of construction projects.

We saw some amazing Ethiopian dancers at a restaurant. The show was a little touristy, but still pretty amazing. This clip is very dark, but at the very beginning you can make out the dancers slinging their heads around in circles in a truly amazing way.



I like the next photo because it shows two of the major factors affecting growth in Africa: 1) Western companies are increasingly realizing that developing economies have tremendous potential for growth; 2) the presence of Chinese investors, companies, and contractors.