The noisiest creatures at the Climate Summit in Nairobi last week were not shrill environmentalists demanding urgent action to deal with global warming - though there were some of them - but randy male frogs in ornamental pools around the UN compound in Gigiri, on the northern outskirts of the city.
Silent during the day, while the equatorial sun is high in the sky, the tiny frogs call out incessantly after dark. Delegates having what the UN calls "informal contacts" over coffee at outdoor tables, under octagonal red canvas umbrellas, could barely hear each themselves amid the amphibian din. The much more numerous crickets weren't half as noisy.
The Gigiri compound houses the world headquarters of the UN Environment Programme as well as UN Habitat, which deals with cities. Together, they employ 2,000 staff and "contribute more to the Kenyan economy that coffee and tea combined", according to UNEP press officer Nick Nuttall, a former environment editor of the London Times.
Located in 100 acres of parkland opposite the new US embassy (the old one was blown up by al-Qaeda in 1998), the UN buildings are architecturally "brutalist" in style - which is not necessarily a term of abuse; Paul Koralek's Berkeley Library in TCD, a prime example of the genre, is one of Dublin's finest modern buildings.
Green Party environment spokesman Eamon Ryan TD, who was in Nairobi for the first week of the conference - his first introduction to the Byzantine complexity of UN talks on global warming - said it was "like being back as a first-year fresher in UCD". Even the buildings were like the arts block in Belfield, but with more water features.
Gigiri is part of Nairobi's diplomatic belt, which is centred on Muthaiga, an oasis of privilege where most of the houses stand on five- to 10-acre sites and the residents have servants, drivers and 4x4s as well as steel gates, alarms and security guards to protect themselves against intruders.President Mwai Kibaki's family home is also located there.
Personal security is a big concern in Nairobi. During the UN conference, four men were killed outside the Hilton Hotel in the city centre. Two of them had mugged another man when a bystander intervened. He was shot dead by one of the robbers, who then shot their original victim before the two of them were shot in turn by police.
Although Kenya is one of the few countries in east Africa which has never been to war since it won independence (from Britain in 1963), the instability in the region - notably in chaotic Somalia to the north-east - has led to a lot of guns "leaking" through the border. Apparently, you can buy a Kalashnikov in Nairobi for only $14.
There is also a huge gulf between rich and poor. Kibera, with an estimated population of a million, is probably the largest slum in Africa, with tiny shacks crammed along narrow earthen alleyways. They feed onto bumpy dirt roads lined with more shacks serving as shops alongside what look like open sewers.
The Kenyan government hasn't invested in public housing for more than 20 years - a period dominated by former president Daniel Arap Moi and his corrupt cronies. There is a stone monument to Moi, crowned by a kitsch representation of the rungu stick he always carried, in Nairobi's Central Park.
Aid agencies such as Goal are left to pick up the pieces. It provides rescue and emergency services, including a night shelter and mobile health clinic, for street children, many orphaned by Aids. Goal also runs a children's library in Makuru, another teeming slum near the Mater Hospital, as well as a HIV/Aids education programme.
Primary education in Kenya is free, but every child must bring his or her chair to school at the beginning of term. Only 10 per cent of the country's 33 million people have access to the national grid, so rural electrification is one of the main priorities of Kibaki's government, even though it still spends more on the military - a common order of priorities in Africa.
Jean Duffy, who chairs the Kenya Irish Society, does her bit for Nairobi's poorest by helping the Medical Missionaries of Mary while her husband John administers a €22 million EU-financed tourism trust fund - half of which goes to marketing Kenya internationally and the other half to developing locally-based "sustainable tourism" products.
Nairobi's main selling point for a city located just 145km (90 miles) south of the Equator is its altitude - 1,680 metres (5,500ft), nearly twice the height of Lugnaquilla in the Wicklow mountains. As a result, it's not oppressively hot. It also gets slightly chilly at night, which is a real benefit because this means there are no mosquitos or malaria most of the time.
The traffic is terrible - probably even worse than Dublin's. Most of the city's 3.5 million people travel on overcrowded mattatu, Swahili for licensed minibuses. Generally old and clapped out, they spew out a cocktail of pollutants which is bound to be lethal in large doses; you hold your breath when they pass by.
High-rise buildings are scattered randomly across the city skyline, including the 30-storey Jomo Kenyatta Convention Centre; its "flying saucer" top, an icon of modernity in the mid-1970s, is on tourist postcards. Meanwhile, billboards on the main streets loudly proclaim the city council's tree-planting and "beautification" programme. The little frogs out in Gigiri are louder, though.