Nick Wadhams

Hey Mr. Rhino

One of the surprising things about 10-week-old babies is that they're highly portable, as we found out when we went to Lake Nakuru last weekend. Nakuru itself is neat but slightly depressing. The park is fenced off and bordered by a major city and a highway, so it feels more like an oversized zoo than untrammeled wilderness. I suppose that's Kenya these days (though the Mara, the Tsavos and the northern two-thirds of the country are different).

At first I was worried that we wouldn't see any rhinos, but by the end it was like, whoopdee-doo, there's another one, keep driving. We saw lots of pelicans but the flamingoes had departed for greener-algaed waters. I tried in the most minimally invasive way possible (whistles, cat-calls, insults) to get a buffalo to charge our vehicle, but no luck.

The best part by far was subjecting our daughter to only the mildest form of torture as we took her picture with as many beasts as possible. Here's the best one, taken along the southern shore of Lake Nakuru shortly before 7 p.m. The bars are the roof rack of our trusty 1989 Mitsubishi Pajero.

More pictures after the jump.

Kid discrimination

It goes without saying that there's a gender divide in Kenya _ today's newspaper, for example, featured an article which discussed whether men or women make better investors. This afternoon, I stood on the very edge of that divide myself.

Here's how it happened: Z is working at home. I take Kid (five weeks old, currently) to the inexplicably named Ya-Ya Center shopping mall to get some stuff. I enter the elevator with Kid snoozing in her stroller and exchange nods with the three other passengers. We descend two floors.

We arrive at our destination and the doors open. I begin to back out of the elevator with stroller in tow. And then, confrontation! A sharply dressed man with whom we have just shared the descent sticks his shiny-loafered foot under the wheel of the stroller, halting Kid and me in our collective tracks. He shimmies past and out of the elevator, turns around, looks me in the eye and says, "Pardon, madame... ummm... monsieur."

Ouch! It should be noted that I am currently sporting a (rather scraggly) beard. I consider delivering a swift punch to his chin but he's about six inches taller than me and I don't want to set a bad example for Kid. Also, I've never delivered a swift punch to anyone's chin anyhow.

Kenyans and parenthood

Given all that's occurred in the last week, it was impossible to resist reading a big story that appeared in Kenya's "Daily Nation" newspaper on Wednesday about child-rearing. The story discussed an amendment to Kenya's employment act that now gives women three months maternity leave, rather than two. It also gives fathers two weeks of paternity leave.

I would have expected this idea to cause some consternation in Kenya. After all, I am the source of some amusement in our apartment building for doing things like hanging laundry and carrying a baby. Our guards would never say anything to me, but they've told Z that Kenyan men just don't do that.

Kenyan Hospital

Just back from a few nights at the Aga Khan Hospital in Nairobi, and color me dern impressed. Seems to me Kenya could market itself as a top-notch destination in the birth tourism trade.

Granted, we were in a private wing of the hospital, so you'd expect the service to be pretty good. And based on stories I've heard elsewhere (expectant mothers who are taking too long to deliver are put to work mopping floors at one Nairobi hospital), our experience clearly is not shared by the vast majority of Kenyans.

But some ways in which this hospital got things right:

Et Voila

Sascha Helen Wadhams
Born at 3:37 p.m., Wednesday, February 27
8 pounds, 1 ounce, 52 centimeters long
Z doing great

The Anticipation (Part II)

Still no kid just yet. Z is at 40 weeks plus six, so the wee lassie is imminent. We are now trying to figure out whether her arrival will coincide with the achievement of a power-sharing deal or with the beginning of mass demonstrations to protest the collapse of talks aimed at  the achievement of a power-sharing deal. Kind of hoping the former.

When you get into this whole baby thing, you wade into some truly ridiculous crap. For example, the vile baby products store "Buy Buy Baby," where every purchase is laden with guilt (you're thinking the $4 bottle? What, too cheap to give your child the $20 anti-colic ozone-free super delux bottle?). And, of course, Babycenter.com, one of the most evil web sites on the planet. Today I came across its Top 100 baby names list. The name we've chosen for the little one does not appear, which I take to be a good thing. "Kaelyn?" "Bailey?" Blech. To find out what baby name is best for you, take this handy quiz.

I wonder if the incredible popularity of the boy's name Aiden is the result of Aidan Hartley's booze and drug addled tales of adventure across East Africa, as depicted in The Zanzibar Chest. Presumably not. The judgment of this book among the hoity toity press corps in Nairobi was not all that charitable, but I liked it.

The Anticipation!

The wife is due with our first kid, um, today. February 17. The little lassie has given no indication that her arrival is imminent, so we're just sort of hanging out, staring at the belly in anticipation of some sort of new development aside from the usual karate chops and back flips.

It's all very exciting. And to put Kenya's crisis in perspective: There was only one time early in the chaos, when stores in Nairobi were closed for most of the day, that I was at all concerned about our decision to have the baby in Nairobi. Our anesthesiologist canceled an appointment a couple weeks back because she had to get her kids out of school after the assassination of an ODM lawmaker. But otherwise, smooth sailing. And of course, Kenyan women happen to give birth in Kenya all the time, which puts things in even greater perspective.

An aside: All the books say to fill your head with "happy thoughts" before the birth, as if unhappy thoughts will turn your child into something out of Doris Lessing. So we've been trying to watch movies with happy endings. "The Kite Runner" and "Michael Clayton" did it for both of us, but I really, really, really would discourage expecting mothers from seeing "Pan's Labyrinth." That threw us for a bit of a loop last night. I have lobbied for the inexplicably titled "Dragon Wars: D War" as our next selection, but Z, for reasons I cannot understand, is less keen. She is arguing for "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind." I'm not quite sure what to make of that.

How to avoid dehydration

The birth of our first kiddo is just a few weeks away. In a fit of conscientiousness a while back, I signed up for emails from babycenter.com which, I am now realizing, is one of the most pernicious web sites on the planet.

The site seamlessly blends advertising and advice while exploiting the fears and anxieties of expecting parents, all in a cozy pastel patina.

"Did you make a baby name mistake?" "Seven Signs Your Child Loves You." "Buy Infants' Mylicon (because 3 out of 4 babies get painful gas)."

Today I saw one of the best discussion items: "How can I avoid dehydration while traveling during pregnancy?"

Um... drink water?

Heartbeat

We went to the doctor today for Zoe's last ultrasound. Here's what we heard.

Sounds very fast, but they assure us that this is normal. Our little daughter is currently about five pounds and her due date is now February 17. We've been only mildly freaked out about having her in Kenya, but just took a gander at the facilities at the Aga Khan Hospital in Nairobi where Zoe will give birth, and it looks nicer than most hospitals I've seen in the states.