Nairobi 19 February

Jomo Kenyatta Internal Airport is looking about as tired as I am after my early morning flight from Dar es Salaam. I am a little sorry to be leaving Dar after only 4 nights, but that's for a retrospective blog in a few days.

One of the good things about arriving at JKIA is the visa process which takes about 3 minutes. They don't even look at my letter from the Vice Chancellor of Kenyatta University saying how critical it is that Dr Spaven should be allowed into Kenya to evaluate the Partnership for Higher Education in Africa's Educational Technology Initiative. All they seem to be interested in is my £20 - which I gladly hand over, wondering why they don't charge more (Nigerian visas are £90).

Unbounded joy! There's a man with my name on a piece of cardboard as I emerge from a deserted customs hall (this is not the Kenya we knew when we lived there in the 1980's - when the place was crawling with officials eager to delve into the recesses of your suitcases, looking for heaven knows what).

It's rare for pre-booked airport transport to show up at all. (I've never managed to find a pattern in this. Every excuse is different.) To show up and have my name spelt correctly is a minor miracle. Good start.

Unfortunately it's downhill from there as we swing away from the city road onto the Outer Ring Road. My hotel is on the far side of the city, and to traverse central Nairobi, even on a weekend, can take 3-4 hours, So the driver's right to take the Ring Road. but this is no well tarmaced version of the M25. It's a rutted single carriageway road that in places morphs into a track or rather a series of pot holes. Yet it's packed with minibus taxis and families in battered Toyotas out looking for bargains in the thousands of stalls that line the road/track. It's Saturday so it's shopping.

After skirting the notorious Mathare Valley slum (my hotel doesn't usually allow drivers to take guests this way so as to shield them from the slum realities faced daily by 40% of Kenyans) and a couple of miles of chaos on the Thika Road (8 lane "super-highway" under construction - doesn't seem to have progressed since I was last here 15 months ago ) we arrive at the tranquil oasis of the Safari Park Hotel. More about that tomorrow.