I’ve never been a hang-out-at-the-mall kind of person.  The prices are higher than things I can find in the internets or strange alleys, the food courts unappealing, and the general level of “shiny” doesn’t really match my self-concept.

And yet, during my year in Kenya, I spent a lot of time at various malls.  When staying in Nairobi, I would find myself in a mall every other day, it seemed.  And it makes sense in retrospect: The specialist shops and on-line stores where I usually use to get my obscure electronics aren’t available in Kenya, and food safety seems a bit more reliable in the malls.  The biggest factor, though, are the coffee shops.  I spend a lot of time in coffee shops wherever I travel, unwinding thoughts and sketching proofs and sipping on a simple black Americano.  And most of the coffee shops in Kenya are in malls.

The mall I spent the most time at in Nairobi was The Junction, and most of that time was spent at Art Caffe.  It’s a space with a great slice of the mix of modern Nairobi.  Yeah, there are a lot of jackass travellers like myself plugged into their laptops, but just as many people stopping through for a business lunch, mommas chatting about their kids, young people hanging out with friends, and men from unidentifiable Eastern European countries discussing possibly shady business in an unidentifiable language.  It’s a great cross-section.

It’s also a bit of an escape.

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