KARIBU KENYA - UNON - the United Nations Office at Nairobi

includes damage to your vehicle caused by you or another party, liability for
another party’s injuries, and a limited amount of medical coverage for your
own passengers.
A standard domestic insurance package will usually cover your building
and its contents against theft, fire, overflowing water-tanks, storm damage and
other natural disasters. It will also provide coverage for domestic staff against
injuries at work and your liability towards other people for accidents on the
premises. In addition to the personal medical coverage provided by your
agency (see Chapter 7), employees doing a lot of travelling should also explore
options for medical evacuation coverage, which will cover the costs if you or
one of your family has to be airlifted to Nairobi – a very real possibility in the
event of a rural accident – but is not covered in most MIP and Van Breda policies.
The famous ‘Flying Doctors’ at AMREF (Tel: 315454-5) offer a very
competitively priced evacuation policy, covering flights within 500 km of
Nairobi, for Ksh 1,500 per person per year.
Transportation
Despite Kenya’s 2,800 kilometres of narrow-gauge railway, roads remain
the country’s major means of transport – and, for many areas, the only
public or cargo transportation. While a few areas are still inaccessible by
road, there are at least 64,000 km of classified public roads in Kenya, and
although only 8,800 km of these are tarmac, major donor funds have
recently gone into accelerating the tarmacing of major highways.The key
Nairobi-Mombasa highway, until recently an oft-cited barometer of the
country’s economic decline, has recently seen major upgrading, with the
500 km ‘coast run’ now taking between 4-6 hours (depending on traffic,
roadworks and weather conditions).
Travel in Nairobi
The Kenyan capital has no metro or overland train service, other than the
main rail line that runs through the city en route to Mombasa or Kisumu.All
public transport in Nairobi is by public buses (Kenya Bus), large minibuses
(Metro Shuttles), and the ubiquitous matatus that ply hundreds of routes
throughout the city. A major new campaign by the Kenyan Government has
helped to instil a greater sense of safety on Kenya’s roads, including the
mandatory use of seatbelts and speed governors by all matatus. Despite this,
CHAPTER 6: FACILITIES & SERVICES • 43