Nairobi

On tour in Nairobi with the German ambassador Margit Hellwig-Bötte.

She has discovered one of humanity’s last adventures: Driving in Nairobi. Germany’s new ambassador Margit Hellwig-Bötte almost rubs her hands together with reckless anticipation. “I just bought a car; a beige metallic Toyota Prado. It looks great, just needs a black bull bar.” But she tells me this in the discreet embassy car, which her driver Samuel steers calmly and coolly through the absolute chaos that reigns in Nairobi’s streets. Traffic rules? Stop lights? They are heeded by the fewest Kenyans.

Margit Hellwig-Bötte sees it as a challenge. “I already practiced over the weekend and traded places with Samuel.” The chauffeur smiles benignly to himself in the front of the car. A German flag flutters happily in the Nairobi smog above the right-hand headlight. “I do have to be careful,” the diplomat invokes, “I don’t want to be the victim of a kidnapping.” She is brave and curious, but not careless. In Conakry, Guinea, where she was deputy director of the German embassy in the 1990s, she also had to turn her car around at burning roadblocks.

The new ambassador is responsible for Kenya, Somalia and the Seychelles, but does not travel to Somalia at present because of the security risks. Her working day begins, not surprisingly, with e-mail and post. She receives inquiries and invitations from government representatives and from small foundations. Firms or individual businesspeople also turn to the embassy with questions or problems. But, most of the impulsive queries come from tourists, for example, who are worried about safety. “But, right now I’m still busy with inaugural visits.” And she travels across the country to get to know the people and their concerns, so that she can better assess what politicians are telling her.

The 51-year old speaks quietly, clearly, deliberately; she’s a professional. The other professional, driver Samuel, steers the automobile to his boss’s favourite place in Nairobi. “I actually have three, but this is my favourite favourite place.”

It is colourful, fragrant and quenches thirst: the River Garden Centre and Café in the district of Rosslyn. Far from the bustling hectic of the city, this is a truly contemplative place in spite of the fact that the river has long dried out.

“It was Samuel who actually found this place; I was always asking him the names of plants.” The ambassador is an amateur gardener. “My husband is even more of one.” She met him while at university. “He runs the State Library in Berlin, but took a leave of absence for the first time to be with me. I am very proud that he’s so supportive,” she says, orders a glass of mango juice and looks happily at the greenery. She divulges her favourite plant: “Bird of paradise flowers and I am blessed with them here in Kenya.” It is true, the colourful genus, also known as crane flowers, can be found in every roadside ditch in Nairobi. “They are very rare in Germany.”

Germany is where the ambassador grew up. “The most remarkable thing about my school days was that they took place in Kassel.” Kassel is the city of Documenta, one of the most important exhibitions of contemporary art worldwide. Margit Hellwig has not missed it once since 1972. “Documenta is what gave me the desire to do something international.” She is drawn to far away places. “Out of curiosity; I always want to know what it looks like there.”

First, though, she got a teaching degree for secondary schools in philosophy, history and Romance languages. “The best things about the internship were the school field trips.” After receiving a degree at the College of Europe in Bruges, she could have already gone to work at the Foreign Office but feared an “overly formalist job” for herself. Following her studies there were no teaching jobs. “The worst thing in my life so far was four months of unemployment.” She tackled it, wrote a list for the future. “At the top, then, was still the Foreign Office, driving a taxi at the very bottom.” The Goethe-Institut turned her down, the German Academic Exchange Service offered her a job, “then I was accepted by the Foreign Office, too, and I took the job.” That is how she comes to be drinking mango juice in Nairobi today. Admittedly, the story is somewhat abridged, but the drive continues to her second favourite place.

“Or should we ask Samuel to show us the other side of Nairobi?” Nairobi has an estimated four million inhabitants and the population is growing. Almost 90 percent lives in about 200 slums. That is really Nairobi.

So, we walk for fifteen minutes through a slum in the direct neighbourhood of the embassy. It is like a gash in the afternoon. No greenery, no quiet, but you become very quiet. Uneven, narrow pathways, not one metre wide, uphill, downhill, no doors, just rags hung in front of small, dark dwellings. Sand sacks lie in front of some. When it rains, the water pours into the abodes. Children sit quietly on the floor or run about and look at the visitors. Samuel strokes a young boy’s head, and then moves on. The ambassador greets, is friendly, but reserved. She is familiar with this squalor. “Do you think it looks any different in the camps of the Romani and Sinti in Eastern Europe?” How does she stand it, even in her own Toyota Prada, soon with a bull bar, when others haven’t even got a loo? “You have to accept it, you alone cannot change the world, you cannot remove all of them from their misery. But, you can help and that is what we do here, too.”

Back at the car, upon which without the head wind the German flag hangs in two small waves towards the ground, what we have just seen is sorted into the series of contradictions, sadness, facts of life.

“Let’s drive to the National Museum, Samuel.” The smaller, but prouder part, of Nairobi has us again. The National Museum is, so to say, the house in which the cradle of humanity is documented.

Nonetheless, Margit Hellwig has a project in mind rather than a place. She is a professional advertising for the work of the embassy; in this case that funds from the cultural preservation programme have helped to finance the museum’s casting building. “This is where copies are made of Lucy and the other discoveries, for example for schools.”

In the meantime, it has gotten dark and one glass of mango juice is not filling. Samuel heads towards Kengele’s Lavington Green. “There we will eat African food.” The ambassador’s (third) favourite place in Nairobi, at the fountain in the courtyard of the restaurant, is occupied. No matter. The ugali sukuma wiki is still an event. Samuel and the diplomat take small pieces of the maize mush, the ugali, form a ball with an indentation, adeptly add kale-like vegetables and beef with sauce and then put all of this to the mouth. The lady has a Tusker and the driver a Coke, not too cold. The Mzungu (European) marvelling at the two would trust herself more to drive through Nairobi without having an accident than to eat so confidently with her fingers without spilling.

Swahili of the Day: Heshima means respect.