Nairobi stories: Corn-fed, organic and still crowing

I was woken one morning to hear a cockerel crowing right outside my window. There are plenty of curlews, hawks and monkeys in my garden, but I had not been aware that I had a henhouse too.

My watchman, Peter, solved the mystery. He had just taken a week off to visit his family in the village of Dol Dol, heart of Masai and Samburu country, and a friend had asked him to bring back a bird to feed his family for Christmas.

The economics make sense. A fresh, whole chicken costs at least 500 Kenyan shillings (£3.90) in Nairobi, and prices shoot up in the festive season. Peter could get a much better-quality bird in Dol Dol for half that. He picked out a fattened cockerel, carried it for five hours on a rickety minibus down the bumpy road to Nairobi, and stored it in my garden shed.

Owners of upmarket delis here are just back from Europe, laden down with stollen, panettone and Christmas pudding for homesick expats. Somehow, though, Peter's corn-fed, organic, hand-delivered chickens seem more appealing.

Marital excess

As summer comes to Nairobi, the streets are filled with Mercedes decorated with ribbons and tinsel. Inside sit smiling brides, laden with lace and flowers, with their equally decorated and mascara-ed bridesmaids sitting next to them.

The bridal parties have obviously taken advice from the new hugely popular bridal magazines, which eschew the concept of simplicity and urge their readers to dress themselves on their wedding day as if auditioning for a Disney film.

This is the wedding season, for several reasons. First, the beautiful southern equatorial summer weather scents the air with romance, and the sunshine filtering through the trees provides great light for photographs. But there is a more practical side; many suitors have wooed their girls with promises that they will get married "this year, I swear to God". As the year draws to a close, these coy girls and their fathers are determined to hold the men to their word. And so December rolls on, with a marquee on every lawn and a shellshocked bridegroom in every church.

Very cross dressing

Homosexuality is still illegal in Kenya, and most people still bristle at the idea of transvestites and drag queens in their midst. There are of course, enough unofficial gay bars and clubs to keep an underground culture going, but most Nairobi citizens prefer to believe nothing happens in broad daylight.

So when the police arrested a woman behaving suspiciously at a shopping centre in a Nairobi suburb, they were at a loss over what to do when a quick physical examination revealed that she was a he. Up to that point, they said, they had been fooled by his braided hair and varnished fingernails.

In the end, they decided that the man could not have an innocent reason to dress as a woman: he was either peddling drugs or "masquerading as a prostitute" - to put men at ease and steal their wallets.