Spring Break '09: Kenya

So I am still really behind on my posts. My 9:30 class was cancelled and my next class isn't until 2:30, so maybe I can get a few more up here. This one covers my spring break in Kenya.

Early on in the semester, I'm talking February here, Chris decided he wanted to do a Safari in Kenya for spring break. A lot of ideas had been floated about spring break ideas, and Egypt's central location on the Mediterranean made travel to just about any part of the Levant, North Africa, or Europe feasible. Most of the people I hang around with decided to loop through Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Israel/Palestine on their way back to Cairo. I had a lot of interest in this sort of trip and to be completely honest I'm a little jealous, but the opportunity to safari in Kenya arose early and I had a good think about it. The rationale behind making a whirlwind tour through the Levant was that this might be the only time we are all in the Middle East, so we better see as much of it as we can; but seeing that we are all majoring in PoliSci, IR, Middle Eastern History and the like, I doubt that this will be our only time here. In the end, I chose the safari precisely because it was different. I've never studied sub-Saharan Africa, so I thought it would be great to take the opportunity to travel to Kenya I don't know that I will have that many more chances to go on a safari. I also felt it would be little foolish to live in Africa for four months without having seen any of "real" Africa (see my conversations with Dambik and Madit in previous posts).

We flew out of Cairo on April 12th at 10:30pm. I wasn't feeling to well and had to step outside during the Easter Vigil mass the night before after eating some bad shakshouka. We arrived at 4:30am Nairobi time and the safari company, Kenia Tours and Safaris, met us at the airport and took us to our hotel. Since we had gotten in so late (or early, I suppose), Chris and Matt slept until 1 in the afternoon. I, however, woke up at 10 and couldn't get back to sleep. Instead I watched some Kenyan television. The programming was somewhat strange. I watched Diseny's Hercules from about 10 to 12, which was followed by a show that did 15 minute profiles of "Great Men in History," which was then followed by Glory, the Civil War flick starring Matthew Broderick, Denzel Washington and Morgan Freeman. In any case, we woke up late, didn't finish lunch until about 3, and were all feeling pretty lethargic. We just napped after lunch and then got dinner and a few Tuskers (Kenya's self-styled national beer) before going back to bed. We had an entire day in Nairobi and spent it in the hotel.

David, our guide for the week, picked us up from the hotel at 8:30 the next morning after breakfast. We made a quick stop in Nairobi's central district to pick up water for the week and toilet paper. Nairobi made a huge impression on us. The streets were clean and wide, the air fresh, and the architecture modern and attractive. It really contrasted Cairo, although I guess having 14 million fewer people than Cairo gives Nairobi an edge in the sanitation department. Nairobi does have its darker side though. It has two of Afirca's largest slums and walking the streets after dark is just an invitation to get mugged. But in terms of the dowtown area, Nairobi was a beautiful city. And unlike Cairo, we were pretty much ignored. As a white foreigner walking in downtown Cairo, one can exepect someone to proclaim "Welcome to Egypt!" and try to give you best price at his uncle's perfume shop at least once every two minutes. In Nairobi, even though we were the only white people in sight, no one looked at us twice. I loved it.

We finished picking up a weeks worth of water before David returned from buying food for our meals, so we got into a conversation with company's secretary who had accompanied us to the city. She asked where we were from and we explained that we were studying in Cairo until May. She asked us how we liked Cairo and, since we were reveling in Nairobi's beauty, we gave her a pretty harsh critique of Cairo and its dirtiness, pollution, overcrowding, and abrasiveness. This sparked her to respond "Is there lots of Islamic there?" We said "yes," and she replied, "This is why." She said this lightheartedly so I got the impression it was more of a joke than anything else, but it was interesting to hear after spending so much time in an Islamic country. At the same time, it could reflect political issues in neighboring states such as Sudan or Somalia where some factions are organized around Islam (to put the situations simply).

Just outside the city we stopped at an overlook of the Great Rift Valley. The view was incredible. I couldn't even fathom the distances I was able to see looking across the vast plains that lay below me. It truly is natural wonder. After buying some souvenirs we continued the six hour drive to Masai Mara, the game reserve we would be spending our next three nights at. The road we followed took us down into the valley and crossed of the mountains bounding the opposite side and continued on towards the reserve. From this point on most of the roads were dirt only. About an hour away from Masaia Mara, our car broke down. David said a fuse was out and theorized that it had gotten wed after we drove through some water in the road. Nothing was around except a grove of trees and a small Masai village. David was eventually able to fix the problem, but not before six children came running up to the car to check us out. I took some funny pictures of them running at us, but they probably won't be posted since I realized later that one of the kids was bare-ass naked. An old Masai man also approached the car and put in his two cents about the car's problem, but David waved him off in Swahili, saying "I know you don't know about cars!" Matt used our unexpected break to get out some dip, which the Masai dude was fascinated by. He had been sniffing something out of a bottle and claimed it was tobacco, but it could have been anything. Matt let him have some of his tobacco and tried to explain how to spit it, but the direction were clearly lost initially and the Masai guy learned the hard way that you are supposed to spit dip. Matt politely declined the Masai guy's offer to share whatever the hell he was huffing.

Once back and running, we continued our journey and eventually arrived at our camp, just outside of Masai Mara. There is a semi-permanent Masai village, not in the traditional style, just outside the game reserve and down a road just past this is a row of camps set back into the wooded mountain side used by the various Safari companies. Ours consisted of five or six heavy canvas tents with simple beds and a mosquito net. About the tent as a tin roof. At the end of the row of tents stood a tin-roofed pavilion where divided into a kitchen and an eating area, and about fifty feet down the hill from this were two toilets and two showers. Running water came from an elevated tank, and fire beneath one of the pipes provided hot showers.

Masai Mara is the premier game reserve in Kenya. It is the Kenyan portion of the famous Tanzanian Serengeti plane and consists of 2,500 km^2 of preserved land, bordered on most sides by a grassy mountains. During August, animals migrate from the 8-times larger Serengeti to Masai Mara and it is a truly spectacular sight to witness. Although we weren't touring during peak season, we still saw most animals and they were not hard to find. One benefit of Masai Mara is that it is relatively small compared to the Serengeti and is enclosed by mountains whereas the Serengeti is one giant flat plain. This keeps the animals concentrated, making them easier to find during the off seasons than they would be in the vast plains of Tanzania.

We arrived at the camp at 3:00 and had lunch at 3:30, then left at 4:00 for a short introductory drive through the park. Masai Mara did not hold anything back on this first day. As soon as we drove through the gates (all I could thing about the whole time was Jurassic Park and the theme song was stuck in my head all week) we saw zebra, wildebeest, and two different types of deer type things (I will probably never learn the difference between antelope, gazelle, and impala). Shortly after this we saw giraffe, elephants, various types of birds, and group of about 7 female lions chilling under a tree. Two left and began to stalk a wildebeest, but they can sit still in the grass just waiting for up to two hours and the park was closing soon so we didn't stick around to see the exciting conclusion.

Back at camp we ran into two other kids from Cairo. One was working on his PhD in theater, comparing the various approaches to war taken by theater in New York, London, and Cairo. The other guy looked pretty young, like he had barely graduated before taking a job with an NGO in Cairo. It turned out that George (the grad student) and I both volunteered on the same day at St. Andrew's back in Cairo. Making the world seem even smaller, Matt and I found out during this same conversation that my dad and his mom came from the same ridiculously small town of Fowler, Indiana, and that my grandparents had bought farm implements from his grandpa's dealership, my cousin Nick had dated his cousin Melanie and that we had met each other's cousins when they were brought back to our grandparents' places at family holidays, and that my dad played on the same basketball team as his uncle.

We also met some Norwegians who were taking some time off from work. They had started off in Jordan, spent a day in Cairo, and continued on to Kenya. From Kenya they were going to Uganda and making a quick trip to Rwanda before heading back to Kampala to fly back home. The Norwegian works for a travel agency and gets good rates on travel. Talking to him further impressed upon me how truly blessed I am to have an American passport. Being Norwegian doesn't exactly restrict his travel much, but flying the United States is a nightmare. Even if you are just transferring on the way to another country (for example, flight from Norway to Australia transfer through the US), you must exit through US customs, claim your luggage, and then re-check your luggage and go back through customs. This process can take hours, and he complained that many airlines will set up flights that only have a two hour window between transfer flights and his company has to deal with people who missed their connections on a daily basis because of the amount of time it takes simply to catch a connecting flight in the US. This is all in addition to extensive questionnaire one must fill out when going through customs. If you have flown internationally, you know that most countries have you fill out an immigration card on the airplane asking such question as name, passport number, duration of stay, etc. Apparently the US card for foreigner includes questions like "do you take medication for mental illness?" "Are you or were you ever a member of the Nazi party?"

The camp has no electricity, so once it got dark it was pretty much bedtime. During the days that we had large chunks of daylight ours to kill we either read, slept, or played chess with the set I bought from the guys at the souvenir shop overlooking the Great Rift Valley. At night we simply enjoyed looking at the stars and, like the White Desert, you could actually see the Milky Way and famous constellations were harder to spot since there were so many background stars that are usually invisible in suburban America. One night some Masai men performed some traditional dances around a campfire, for the low low price of 400 Kenyan shilling of course ($5). We were a little skeptical as to whether they actually still did these but rolled with it anyway.

One morning at camp we awoke to find baboons digging through the food remnants left in the ditch at the bottom of camp. It was entreating to see the camp dog chase them away and pridefully prance back towards us, grinning from ear to ear, only to have the baboons return as soon as he turned his back! The dogs the Masai had were had beautiful golden coats and were not at all mangy like the dogs we had seen in Egypt. One afternoon a group found some small monkeys in their tent trying to get at some muffins they had brought along. They're like raccoons but craftier! They also attacked Chris, which was fun.

The safari company cooked for us our whole time in Kenya, and we had deliciously simple meals of soup, rice, stew, fish, and potatoes. The next day we took an-day game drive and picnicked out in the middle of the park. In addition to the animals we had already seen, we saw hippos, ostrich, pumbas, jacka;s, and vultures waiting to eat a buffalo carcass being closely guarded by a male lion. The following day we took an early morning drive and then an afternoon drive. We saw countless species during our stay at Masai Mara and the only animals of note that we missed were leopards and cheetah.

On Friday morning we left Masai Mara for Lake Nukuru. It was a four hour drive on the worst "roads" I have ever been on, through the back country of Kenya. It was a pretty impressive experience to see that side of the country, even though we only drove through. The city of Nukuru was much different from Nairobi, and we attracted a lot more attention and had to politely refuse offers to buy things. We picked up some snacks and beer in the supermarket. Here we found something called "Guinness Foreign Extra," made by the Guinness company It came in a 500ml bottle with no agitator, had a slightly higher alcohol content, and tasted like a decent knock-off of real Guinness. In both Kenya and Egypt beer is sold predominantly in 500ml bottles, which is pretty strange to see coming from the US. David expressed is concerns over lunch that the availability of cheap beer is leading many in the up and coming generation in Kenya to suffer from alcoholism.

Lake Nukuru Park, although small compared to Masai Mara, is notable for its flamingos and rhino. The park contains a large lake bordered by mountains and forests, and estimates of the flamingo population living there vary by the millions. We went up to a spot that looked out over the lake and you could see a pink ring around its edges representing the flamingo population. This is the only place that we saw rhino, both the rarer black and the more common white. We wondered what animals rhinos were most closely related to and David said that there really weren't any. He described them as, along with crocodiles and alligators, the last of the dinosaurs.

We stayed in a small two-bedroom, one-bath lodge at the park. It had a TV, electricity, and beds with mosquito nets. After unpacking and eating lunch after our initial arrival, we went for a drive and marveled at the number of flamingos and up close to a couple rhino. We also saw some baboons trying to work a water fountain. That night we had a good conversation with our cook about Kenyan politics. He explained the coalition government the Kofi Anan had helped broker, giving one side the presidency and the opposition prime minister, how the two did not talk to each other, how the party which held most power distributed money to his own tribal areas at the expense of others, and the current situation brewing with Uganda, which was trying to lay claim to a small island owned by Kenya in Lake Victoria.

We took one last drive through the park the next morning, ate lunch, and headed back to Nairobi. We drove past one of the slums on the way in, and it was just a sea of tin roofs tightly packed in a small valley. Over 400,000 people live there. Our last stop was the giraffe center (home of David's favorite animal. He likes them because they are tall and have great eyesight), which Chris needed to go to because he promised his niece a picture with a giraffe. It was pretty cool. We got to feed and pet a giraffe, and Chris kissed one named Colin. Twice. Because I didn't take a good enough picture the first time.

David then dropped us off at the famous Carnivore restaurant and helped us arrange for a taxi to the airport. Then we said goodbye. We really liked David and it was kind of strange seeing him go after spending so much time with him that week. I'm sure he was anxious to get back to his family though. We got to Carnivore at 4:00pm and were hoping to take a long dinner before spending the night in the airport to avoid having to pay for a hotel, only to leave at 2:00 in the morning to make our 5:00am flight. They didn't open until 6:00 so we killed time watching rugby in the bar. Dinner was amazing. Its a classy restaurant, but its all you can eat meat. They bring out bread and salad and an assortment of sauces for each meat type topped by a white flag. Once they start bringing out meat, you eat until you can't eat any more, at which point you "surrender" by taking down the flag. Then they bring out desert and coffee. They warmed us up with chicken, turkey, and pork sausage and spare ribs before bringing out the more exotic meats. Even though we were most excited about the crocodile and ostrich, chicken and turkey were grilled to perfection, and having real pork in general was treat since we were living in Cairo. The ostrich meatballs were amazing and so was the crocodile, which was sweeter and a somewhat sea-foody texture. After dinner we killed more time before our taxi arrived.

We got to the airport close to 11 and had even more time to kill before our flight. This was spent reading, chatting with some French girls who were stranded after their flight was overbooked, and window-shopping the airport's closed gift shops.We arrived back in Cairo early Sunday morning. I was dead-tired and upset that no one would exchange my shillings since I had forgotten to do so in the Nairobi airport. I also had another enjoyable experience in Egyptian customs where, as always, there are first-timers who don't understand the process. There is always a male head of the household who shows up with a handful of passports (his and the rest of his family's) who inevitably has to send for his wife and children because the customs guy needs to them to actually be present. Who knew? I also found it amusing when the passport control officer looked at a man's fully veiled wife, trying to match her face to the one in her passport photo. He didn't make her de-veil, which I didn't expect anyway. Honestly I would have felt uncomfortable if he had made the guy's wife de-veil right there in public. It was just amusing to see them go through the rituals of passport control even though both knew that matching her face to the photo was impossible.

I'm not sure how to end this story, except to say that the safari truly was a once in a lifetime experience. It was amazing to see all these animals in person that I had only seen before on TV or at the zoo. But you can't really get a feel for how an animal lives its life at the zoo. You don't see how a lioness stalks their prey; how the male lion sits and guards a carcass from vultures until he's done eating; how elephants travel in herds of 30 across open plains just grazing, like giant cows. Just as awe-inspiring as the animals was the landscape. Vast green plains and hills, random stands of trees around small creeks, beautiful equatorial sunsets. Honestly, the terrain reminded me of an exoctic version of South Dakota, with the Great Plains running into the Black Hills. I truly enjoyed it and am thankful that Chris got it together, as going on a safari for spring break had never crossed my mind.