Kenya-month 6

Finally the day came, November 8^th. My mom, Mo and Jackie had arrived in Nairobi the night before and I left first thing in the morning to make the 10-hour trip by matatu.

My first matatu was so full I didn’t think they could fit me in, but they did - standing half bent over with a stranger’s rear end in my face, that’s how I rode for the first hour. After that my matatu rides were as comfortable as one can get in a matatu. And by early evening I was in Nairobi pounding on the gate at the guesthouse. I could hear my mom searching for someone to let me in and then Mo’s laughter. Those last five minutes waiting at the gate felt like they lasted forever, then finally familiar faces and I was smothered with hugs and it felt great.

Sunday we spent in Nairobi visiting the Giraffe Centre, David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust elephant and rhino orphanage, and the Karen Blixen Museum.

First thing Monday we left for our seven-day camping safari. The whole first day we bumped along on our way to Samburu and Buffalo Springs National Reserves. We arrived at dusk and were welcomed by an enormous bull elephant. We spent two nights in Samburu and saw many of the more rare and localized species including reticulated giraffes, Grevy’s zebras, gerenuks - gazelles that feed standing on their hind legs, and oryx.

Wednesday we spent another full day driving and by the time we made it to Lake Baringo, in the Rift Valley, the sun was already setting. We pitched our tents not far from the lakeshore, the same lakeshore the hippos use as nightly feeding grounds. As soon as we got into our tents for the night the hippos started conversing loudly. There were no actual hippo sightings on shore but they sounded close, really really close.

Then it was off to Lake Bogoria and Lake Nakuru. Both are famous for the tens to sometimes hundreds of thousands of flamingos that frequent their waters. Bogoria is a small, rarely visited, saline lake with erupting hot springs. Nakuru is a soda lake located just outside Kenya’s fourth largest city by the same name. Of all the places visited, Nakuru was my favorite. The assortment of animals congregating at the lake’s edge was spectacular: white rhino, zebra, waterbuck, pelicans, flamingos, marabou storks, spotted hyenas, and cape buffalo. Not to mention the baboons on the cliffs above the lake.

After that we headed for our final destination, the Masai Mara National Reserve. And another full day of driving, this time on slightly better roads. The Masai Mara is considered the best animal reserve in all of Kenya. Before entering the reserve we were presented with an amazing sight, a group of more than 40 Maasai giraffes migrating in a seemingly endless line of legs and necks.

Here we saw our first lions - although we heard some in Samburu - adding to our list the fourth and final of the “Big Five” we would see. The “Big Five” is a phrase that was coined by big-game hunters and refers to the most dangerous and hardest of the African animals to hunt: lion, elephant, cape buffalo, rhinoceros, and leopard. The leopard was the only specimen lacking from our own “big-game hunt.”

My roommate had gone on a safari with the same company a couple months earlier and she complained they never stopped for the baboons. I know that the primates are not what draw people to Kenya, and compared with the larger more impressive animals out there I really can’t argue, but primates are what brought me here. We did stop for the baboons as often as we saw them, probably because of me - making people appreciate monkeys, that’s what I do best.

Next on our tour of Kenya was the Lamu Archipelago. Famous for its Swahili culture, laid-back atmosphere, and donkeys, the islands are located off the coast near the Somalian border. Jackie and I went to witness a sea turtle hatching on Manda Island; between two nests we saw 208 hatchlings. It was incredible. Also included on our list of things to do while there was nothing, and I think we accomplished that quite successfully, along with a lot of shopping.

Then it was back to Western Kenya. In Kisumu we rented a car and I drove the sixty some kilometers back to Kakamega, dodging potholes and avoiding crazy matatu drivers along the way.

It didn’t take long for word to spread in the Isecheno forest station that I was back in the forest with my guests. Ernest got word of our arrival while out on Gn group and had to run over and tell Alicia on Tws. Children I have never seen before showed up at our house for prizes and continued to congregate in the yard throughout the week.

We had a huge party for my mom’s birthday and Alicia’s going away; it was so big we needed to use both houses. The entire table was covered with our feast and I thought they would never eat it all, but I was wrong. We had mandazi, chapati, githeri, baghia, pumpkin leaves, and of course birthday cake. At the end of it all we took lots of photos and many thanks were said. As I drove the assistants home in the rental car that night they all commented on my driving skills (they were easily impressed as none of them have ever driven before), what they didn’t seem to notice was with the absence of other cars on the road I had reverted to driving on the right side.

Over the course of the trip Mo and Jackie became my other moms. And it was hard to say goodbye to my three moms when I left them in Kisumu, but I had a forest full of monkeys to return to. And things around here have changed a bit with their visit, the kids now show up every other day to play with the matchbox cars they left or ask for balloons or to just hang out. With my roommate Alicia gone now I am alone in the house, but it has been very hard to feel lonely with all of the kids running around.

Besides their visit, the big excitement in the forest lately has been the arrest of a local man for poaching snakes. He has been catching venomous snakes and sending them to the coast where presumably the venom is being extracted and used in witchcraft or exported illegally. This man is nothing but trouble and we celebrated when he was taken away. The snake that did him in was a monstrous gaboon viper. This snake was thicker than my leg, it is hard to imagine that these creatures exist in the forest and make the act of bushwhacking suddenly seem terrifying. This snake met an untimely end when it escaped from the poacher’s compound and wound up near the feet of an unsuspecting woman on her way to the latrine. The villagers said it was so big they couldn’t beat it to death so they torched it. The charred snake was haphazardly thrown into the forest near the tea field. Charles escorted me to see this beast and we met a large procession of people coming from the village to do the very same thing. I later heard Kenyan Wildlife Service went out and picked it up to use as evidence. It is a shame that such a great component of the forest here was lost, but hopefully because of it this man will be put away for a long time.

The dry season is in full swing around here, it is hot, and the monkeys are thirsty. Today I caught some drinking from unusual sources around my house. I heard a pitter patter on the roof and then a drip drip drip. I looked out the window and saw a hand on the gutter. Abe found some water in the gutter left over from the last rain. Some unidentified individuals were seen dipping their hands into a small opening on one of the tanks at the house next door, one more reason to boil water before drinking it! And Pop, a lone male, took a long drink out of my dirty laundry water. I tried to stop him but in the end he scared me more than I could scare him so I left him to enjoy his soapy water in peace.