Joel on Kenya, Three parter

This is a three-part post as it covers a lot of information and i have no earthly idea when we will be able to blog again. I have divided the post into the following chapters:

Chapter 1: Masai Village

Chapter 2: Kenya Safari

Chapter 3: Destination?????

Masai Village:

We arrived in Nairobi on Kenya Airways early in the morning, and both of us were quite groggy. Mother had taken a sleeping pill on the plane but hadn’t been able to get the requisite 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep and as a result was a walking zombie when we arrived. She swears that she does not remember picking up our baggage, going through customs or even the ride to Bernard’s house (the in-country Village Volunteers co-ordinator.)

Mercifully, Bernard had expected that we would want a day to relax and recuperate before heading to the village so we were able to sleep and relax all day. His place had a hot shower, good beds, and electrical power, so i was able to get a little bit of writing done. The next day we went to the village. The plan had been to take a bus there, but something (lunch/dinner/????) had upset both of our stomachs and mother suggested it might be better for us to take a taxi so that e could stop and do the 100 yard dash if need be. I was feeling better at this point, having dealt with my illness that night in a series of explosive demonstrations, but pleased to take a taxi and not have to brave Kenyan public transportation.

The ride was comfortable (sort of) the roads weren’t that bad, but everyone drives on the wrong side of the road like in Britain and it took a while to get used to. We arrived in the village during the heat of the day and were introduced to David (our interpreter) and Jonty Craig, an English volunteer who was working at the local school and staying with the same family as us. I think mother has already said a lot about the Masai, but there are a few things i think important to mention. First off, only a few generations ago their diet consisted solely of blood, milk, and meat. Now for the first time they are growing crops and it is a difficult transition for them. Their animals are everything to them, and its hard for them to see past that. Much like Ghana, it seems that everyone in that Masai village is evangelical Christian (Pentecostal in this case) which makes for a humorous contrast of old and new. David is a youth minister at the Pentecostal church, and a bible college graduate, his father is 72+ year old traditional Masai father with looped earlobes, four wives, and his own spear and sword. David wears western clothing. His father wears traditional red cloth. David is an interesting character. He is clearly intelligent, sensitive, and wise for his young age. Yet at the age of 26, aside from his bible college degree, he has only a 6^th grade education. He has never been outside of Kenya before, and seldom even leaves the village to visit Nairobi. He has a few questions about the outside world, but he has so little of a foundation for a discussion on that level that it is difficult to even try. Once, during a fascinating discussion about local animal and plant species, he asks me about dinosaurs. Do we have dinosaurs in Canada? I tell him that we used to, but they have been dead for millions of years. This confuses him a little, and he seems disappointed, whether because we don’t have any dinosaurs or because he doesn’t understand that the world is billions of years old, I’m not sure. But he seems put off by the answer. He will not tell me why, even if i ask him; that’s not the Masai way. The older generation seems glad that the children have free education, but they are wary of the influence it brings: love of money, desire to leave the village for the city, new customs and values. David’s father thinks that eventually the masai will end up mixed with other tribes and will lose their individualness. This upsets him, but i think he recognizes it as inevitability. He’s not trying to fight the new ways, he is embracing them where and when he can (the church, the school, the new focus on agriculture) but he seems very out of place in his own changing world.

There isn’t an awful lot to do at the village other than absorb as much of the local culture and language as we can. We try. We carry water with the children in the morning, we watch mama prepare a traditional stew. We sit in papa’s hut and listen to him talk about the old days. Time passes quickly. Before bed at night we usually say a prayer with David. The masai people are incredibly hospitable, friendly, and content. They are poor by our standards, perhaps, but not once did i see a trace of illness or sickness among them. Many of the older men don’t know how old they are, but i do not doubt that some of them are truly ancient, yet they still seem sharp and spry.

On our last morning there David takes us around to all of the wives’ huts and we are expected to buy various bead jewellery and souvenir knick-knacks from each one. This really irks me, but i try not to let my irritation show. Forced shopping is a sour way to end an otherwise wonderful sharing experience, but this, too, seems to be the way things are done here. The damage is minimal. We pay whatever is asked for a few small trinkets we have an eye for and then receive several more as gifts before we leave. Before long we are back on the bus and heading for Nairobi once again. It’s hard to believe that the four days were over that quickly. We leave with a lot of positive experiences and memories, and a few negative, but that’s life. When we arrive back in Nairobi we stop off at Bernard’s house to shuffle around our bags and pack for our safari. He then drives us down to the hotel boulevard in the tourist district and drops us off. We have dinner and a few drinks, and then head upstairs for the orientation. Our safari has officially begun.

Kenya Safari:

Our safari starts with an hour long orientation in which we are told that we are about to see the most amazing things ever. Our guide talks it up and for a while i’m pretty sure he’s full of it. We will get bored of lions and elephants he says. That’s how many we will see. At our first campsite, baboons will drop from the trees and steal your bags from your tents. Try to shake hands with you, and then grab your sandwich out of your hands. I’m not buying any of it.

First stop on the safari is samburu national park and we see giraffes, three kinds of gazelle, a leopard, many many many baboons, guinea fowl, elephants, gerenuks, and on and on and on. There is no end to the animals. Our safari group is broken down into three vans for the game drives and our van is shared with Vickie (travel agent from Calgary) Sam (pre-med student from Philadelphia) and Andrew (animator from Toronto). Our driver is a local man named Dickson who chain smokes cigarettes at every stop, is missing half his teeth, and find the most disturbing things funny. I think he’s great. Each of the people on our tour is unique and interesting and i could fill a post talking about each of them. My favourite was Sam. Poor naive Sam was told by our driver that he would receive a “free African Massage” on the way to our campsite. He was so excited. Then as we were bouncing around in the back of the van, our butts numb from the lopsided pothole-ridden dirt road we were driving on, he shouts up to the driver “so when do we get the African massage?” Our driver laughs. “You’re getting it right now!” That was a funny moment, and worth repeating i think.

In terms of animals, we saw everything we expected to or wanted to see. More in fact. Animals were everywhere! We saw a leopard perched in a tree with a fresh kill. We saw a herd of elephants cross a river. We saw thousands of wildebeests and zebras grazing at Masai Mara. We saw dozen hippos sleeping on the bank of a river. We saw a family of white rhinos blocking the road so that we had to drive around them. A pride of lions resting in the shade. Herds and herds of gazelles and antelopes with strange markings and unique horns. So many giraffes that we got sick of them.

Oh, and the baboons. They were everywhere! They would sneak in the windows of the van when we got out for lunch and run off with peoples’ water bottles. Twice they tried to snatch food from peoples’ hands. One let me get so close to him that i was able to take a photo of both of us together. They are so intelligent, and sneaky too! If you ever go to Samburu, make sure you lock your tent, because they will go inside to snoop around if they get the chance!

There is so much more to talk about the safari, but this post is already so long and for reasons that i will explain in the next chapter – i don’t have a lot of time! Suffice to say that the safari was one of the most unique and wonderful experiences of our trip, and that i would totally recommend it to anyone. It wasn’t what i expected at all. I thought we’d see a few animals. We saw thousands. Everywhere we looked there were animals. Exotic animals. Strange and wonderful animals. It’s like we were at the zoo, only WE were the ones in the cages watching out through the bars as the animals passed by. E got close enough to elephants, rhinos, impalas that we could have reached out and touched them. (not a good idea) It was amazing.

I won’t say anymore about it now. Hopefully i have a chance later to add to it. I’ve got over a thousand photos of the safari, so ill make sure you all get to see them when we get home.

Desination?????:

Ok. Here’s the scoop. A few things have been building up to a head over the course of the last week. The first thing is that we’ve been trying to switch around some flights to take us to Bangkok earlier than originally planned, but have been unable to check our e-mail on the safari. The second thing is that i have a problem with my left eye. I am confident that if we can get in to see an optometrist as soon as we arrive in India i will be just fine.

Well, that brings me back to our first concern. When we arrived back in Nairobi from our safari mother checked her e-mail only to discover that the village we were to be staying at in India to volunteer has been washed away in a flood. Totally gone. And the in-country co-ordinator there isn’t going to be able to accommodate us anymore (needless to say). As a result of this we have had to change our plans considerably. For one thing, we are dropping the Village Volunteers portion of our trip and will be going it alone in India and Nepal. I don’t think this will effect the timeline of our trip, but it will likely mean that we end up with more free time, more access to power, and more access to internet. I’m thrilled as this means i will be able to get some writing done. It does mean that we have to change a lot of flights around and that we are leaving in a few hours for Calcutta, where we don’t really have anything planned for ourselves. It’s going to be quite an adventure. Mother is at the travel agency office in Nairobi right now trying to re-arrange some tickets and arrange a visit to the optometrist with our travel insurance agency. I’m going to post as many pictures as i can, but the internet here is slower than Stevie Wonder with a “Where’s Waldo?”, so i can only get so many of them up.

Please wish us the best of luck as we head out to India and pray for a safe journey. If anyone has any questions for us about the Masai, the safari, or anything at all leave a comment and we will try to answer it in our next posting. There is still a lot to tell, but it’s hard to remember everything in one sitting so if i’ve left anything out, just ask and i’ll try to fill you in.

Thanks for all your good questions and comments and your continual support. We will post again as soon as we find a hotel in Calcutta that offers wireless internet. God bless.