Still reliving the Mog

It was a great weekend in Nairobi, where we're still enjoying summer weather despite the looming long rains of April. Saturday night we had dinner al fresco at Azalea, a continental restaurant that, true to its name, has a beautiful garden patio - but a weird Mexican motif, including a white stucco entryway that reminded me of a Taco Bell. The seared tuna was good, but man what I wouldn't do for a decent taco.

Last night we barbecued at the home of a correspondent for one of the British papers. It took the fire a while to get going, a fact that I blame on inferior charcoal and not my rusty grilling skills. (And why was I made in charge of the grill? Leave it to a Brit to host a barbecue without knowing how to light one.) Finally someone arrived with a plastic soda bottle filled with kerosene, and we were on our way.

I found myself answering a lot of questions about my recent trip to Mogadishu. With all the news about insurgents firing rockets at the airport, wasn't it, as someone put it last night, "pretty stupid" to fly into that city on a commercial plane? What I said, and failed to mention in the post, was that my plane was special.

It was loaded with Kenyan-grown khat - a green plant that, when chewed, acts as a mild narcotic. Khat is king in the Muslim nations of the Horn of Africa, where men spend an inordinate amount of their time and money on the habit, but most of those countries don't grow it. The best khat, so they say, comes from the highlands of Kenya and Ethiopia and arrives by the ton several times a week on commercial planes. It's a way of life, and a big business; part of the reason why so many Somalis grew annoyed with the Islamic courts leadership last year was that they banned the trade in khat for religious reasons. Now the clerics are gone and the khat is back. And there was no way that any good Somali was going to shoot down my plane loaded with the good stuff.

It got us to talking about our worst flight experiences in Africa. There was the Russian guy who sat next to me on the Mogadishu flight, which was operated by Daallo Airlines, which leases old ex-Soviet jets - and even older ex-Soviet pilots. The guy was wearing a blue jumpsuit unbuttoned to his abdomen and clutching a screwdriver, and when the plane landed at one of the many stops we made along the route, he'd jump out onto the tarmac (or dirt, as the case may be) and start tightening stuff with the screwdriver. It made me shudder.

So did talking to one of the stewardesses, who said she grew up in Siberia and joined the airline industry so she could see the world. I don't know much about Siberia, but that seemed like a bad decision.