Reliving the 90s in Nairobi

The drive from Nakuru to the Great Rift Valley was freezing – practically everyone was wrapped up in their sleeping bags and blankets.

But from there to Nairobi, it suddenly became warmer – and much more fun... We’d been harassing Kristy for weeks to come up the back with us for a ‘truck party’ and to send Dom up front with Nev, and she finally caved in. We decided 90s music would be appropriate for the occasion but half of the group proceeded to get as far away from the speakers as possible or got out their iPods as they “couldn’t bear listening to 90s music”. The rest of us had a great time!

Sadly (for us 90s music fans) the truck party only lasted 45 minutes until we got to Karen, an expat suburb on the outskirts of Nairobi. But we found out we could continue the 90s theme later that night with some 90s karaoke! Before that though a group of us changed into colourful African shirts and dresses and had a delicious dinner at Talisman’s restaurant. Us girls were given a charcoal fire and blankets to keep us warm. I had porcini tartlets followed by tofu vegetable coconut curry – so good.

We then went to ¿Que Pasa? for their inaugural karaoke night. As mentioned, we continued the 90s theme and were supposed to sing Vanilla Ice’s ‘Ice Ice Baby’ but another girl beat us to it – and it was only the second song of the night! We quickly switched our selection to MC Hammer’s ‘You can’t touch this’ but as it turns out, neither Karen nor I really knew the words aside from the chorus and ended up giggling for the most part! Some people were really good like a guy who performed All 4 One’s ‘I swear’ but I have to say we were abysmal. It didn’t get any better with Kris and Karen’s rendition of Bon Jovi’s ‘It’s my life’ and Kris and my rendition of La Bouche’s ‘Be my lover’. (Sorry to say it guys!!)

The only thing that impressed the locals that night was Shaun’s beard – one of them even thought he’d found Jesus!