Nobody warns you, before you move abroad with a partner, how lonely the first three months can be. They warn you about the traffic. They warn you about the power cuts. Someone inevitably tells you about the altitude (Nairobi sits at 1,795 metres above sea level and some people feel it). But the particular isolation of arriving in a new city where you do not have a single friend, a single colleague, a single familiar face – where you are entirely dependent on your partner’s existing social network for human contact, which puts a very specific kind of pressure on both of you – this is the thing nobody prepares you for adequately.
I know this because it happened to me, and I know from conversations with dozens of other trailing spouses in Nairobi that it happens to almost everyone. The good news is that it passes. The other good news is that Nairobi’s expat community is one of the most welcoming I have encountered anywhere, specifically because almost everyone in it has been through the same first three months.
Start with the Obvious (And Do Not Feel Embarrassed About It)
The Nairobi expat Facebook groups – Nairobi Expats being the main one – are the fastest route to real-time community information and the people who post there are generally genuinely helpful. Post an introduction. Say you have just arrived, where you are from, approximately where you live, whether you have children. The responses will be immediate and often include direct invitations from people in similar situations.
This feels awkward if you are not accustomed to making yourself visible to strangers online. Do it anyway. The person who messages saying “I just arrived from Toronto last month and am also in Karen with a seven-year-old, want to meet for coffee?” is going to become one of your closest friends in this city, and you will never meet her if you do not introduce yourself.
Use the School Community
If you have children in school, the school gate is the single most effective social infrastructure available to trailing spouses. The international school communities in Nairobi are tight-knit and actively oriented toward absorbing new families. Volunteer for something at the school – the library, an event, a fundraiser. You will meet people who become friends.
The international schools here often run social events specifically for new families, particularly at the start of the school year. These feel organised and slightly awkward and are very much worth going to. The people at those events are also new and also slightly awkward. Go anyway.
Find Your Activity
The fastest way to build a genuine social life rather than an acquaintance network is to find a regular activity that gets you out of the house and in contact with the same people repeatedly. Running clubs in Nairobi are numerous and friendly and cover every pace from competitive to “I walk quite briskly.” The Hash House Harriers have been operating in Nairobi for decades and welcome newcomers. Yoga studios in Westlands and Karen have strong regulars communities.
Book clubs, crafting groups, expat women’s networks – these exist in Nairobi in abundance and are easy to find through the Facebook groups and school notice boards. The expat community here is used to absorbing new members and most established groups are actively looking for them. The attrition rate of expat Nairobi is high – postings end, people move on – and most groups are perpetually recruiting.
Give It Time (Specifically, Three Months)
This is the most important thing I can tell you: the first three months are the hardest, and if you can get through them with your social life still under construction rather than giving up on it, everything gets better on the other side. The research on expat adjustment is consistent – it takes roughly three months for a new environment to begin to feel normal, for patterns to establish themselves, for faces to become familiar.
The International Newcomers Club Nairobi is specifically designed for this transition period – it runs events and activities targeted at people in their first year in the city and is worth joining early, before you have built much of a social life, because that is when it is most useful.
The trailing spouse experience is genuinely hard in the beginning, and anyone who tells you it is not is either very resilient or has a short memory. But Nairobi specifically is a city that rewards people who invest in it. The friends I made here – many of them trailing spouses who arrived the same year I did, who have since moved to Singapore or Washington or Kampala – are some of the best I have. Nairobi makes real friendships. It just takes a little time.
