Africa Trip Part 6 – back in Nairobi

We spent our last night in Africa in Nairobi at the same hotel where we started – the Fairmont Norfolk. It was nice to get back into civilization again with a working wifi system, a TV, and a lovely place to have dinner. We retrieved our luggage containing our city clothes that we had stored there, and immediately sent a big load to be washed.

The highlight of our stay in Nairobi, and probably one of the main highlights of our whole African trip, was meeting a young Nairobi man, Pascal, for breakfast the next morning. I had heard about him through my friend and writing instructor, Ellen Bass, and our tour director, Anastasia’s Africa, helped arrange the meeting.

My husband Bob and I spent an hour with him talking about the Kenyan orphan situation – out of 30 million people in Kenya, 1.3 million are orphans caused by HIV/AIDS and cancer deaths of the parents – the economy, the Chinese poaching, and the corruption in the Kenyan government. After breakfast we walked into Nairobi’s already crowded and hot business district near the hotel as the shops were just beginning to open.

Pascal and I also exchanged information about our writing lives. He’s been writing since boyhood, and he recently had some short stories and poems published. One won a prize, which appears below. Because of his brother’s suicide death ten years ago he has been writing to heal – a subject near and dear to my heart. It always amazes me that no matter where I go or whom I speak with, I find they have or know someone who has suffered a similar loss as mine. Now I’m happy to say Pascal and I are sharing our writing and continuing our conversation through email.

Pascal is the CEO of G.R.A.C.E. Grassroots Alliance for Community Education., a not-for-profit organization that provides programs in early childhood development, orphans and vulnerable children (OVC) education sponsorship, agricultural development at its ten-acre farm in the Nanyuki district in the Mt. Kenya region, legal and social justice, and technical and financial assistance to their grassroots partners. When I first found out about this organization through Ellen about a year ago, I gave a little donation. Please join me. Here are some its donor partners in the United States.

Here is Pascal’s award winning poem:

The Flags are tattered

by Pascal Masila Mailu

Winner of 2011 Hay Festival poetry contest

The flags are tattered and stained, brethren

From Cairo to Jo'burg, Tunis to Addis.

Should we take a break from the tweeted riots

To revisit the blurred transition from OAU to AU...

From Gaddafi to the rebels......or is it NATO?

The flags are in tatters, mother

For in SA, they openly discuss the price

of old Madiba's casket

While the old icon sadly smiles

Weighed down by the impossible food and fuel prices.

And the wind…O what happened to the wind?

The powerful, revolutionary wind of change

That blew across the then green continent

in the rolling 60's and coup-infested 70s and 80s?

Have we finally replaced the Kalashnikov

with facebook?

The AK 47 with twitter?

The flags are tattered, elders

For today's youth swim in alien terminologies

coated with violence – pre and post election

tribal and clan-based

Sometimes hanging out or in

Eternally glued to giant screens,

Dying of state-induced idleness and self pity.....

The flags are tattered, children

for I anxiously await my exit - surrounded by sinking nations

Torn apart by negative ethnicity, oil-coated imperialism,

hollow political pledges and dusty manifestos

While slums mushroom in every open space....

Brother – what happened to the land we fought for?

Who stole our land and future

Leaving us cramped in Kibera, Soweto, Kawempe and Kechene?

Let’s take time brethren

To slowly mend the flags in between disputed elections

And re-inject authenticity to the national anthems

Lest the continent implodes from internal bleeding

In her mid fifties

Note we're toasting
with water and tea

Soon after our meeting with Pascal, our tour company arrived with two vans to take us to the airport. One to carry our luggage and the other to carry the four of us. While our travel mates went directly to Paris, Bob and I stopped for about twenty-four hours in Dubai before going  on to Paris for the last four days of our trip. What we all call the nadir of our trip was waiting for our flights out of Nairobi in the so-called business class lounge – hot, uncomfortable tents with porta-potties next door. It looked like the Nairobi airport still had a way to go to recover from its recent fire.

But I don’t want to end my tale of our African trip on a sour note. Again, I have to say it was a trip of a lifetime. I recommend it to everyone whether adventuresome or not. The people, animals, birds, and landscapes are breathtaking. One of these days I’m going to put out a picture book that will show you what I mean.

Africa Trip Part 4 - Serengeti, Tanzania

After a plane ride, a long drive in a car with a young and sophisticated woman at the wheel, careful and thorough customs checks when leaving Kenya and later arriving in Tanzania, and another plane ride, we arrived in the Serengeti. It turns out the Serengeti is located just a couple hours drive from where we were in the Masai Mara, but because of some kind of feud between the Kenyan and Tanzanian governments the nearby border was closed causing us to unnecessarily spend hours and the big bucks to get to our first Tanzanian destination. 

However, all was forgiven when our guide Nathan met us at the airport. Throughout our three-day stay there, he took us on what I thought were the most interesting game drives of our entire time in Africa – imagine seeing a mother and baby rhino before we even arrived at our next tent camp, the Olakira.

On that first drive we also saw two kinds of vultures, storks, hippos, elephants, and Masai giraffes. But the rhinos were the find of the day – perhaps even of the whole trip. Even Nathan hadn’t seen any rhinos in months.

The Olakira camp is much more traditional – without the elegant appointments of the Elephant Pepper camp. However, it does have running water into the sink making it much easier to wash out undies, a curtain separating the bath from the bedroom, and a large screened in living room outside of the bedroom. The food, however, was way worse.

As we traveled around the Serengeti with Nathan for three days, we began to call him a tracking genius. We saw leopards, lions, the Agama lizard that looks like Spiderman, many more kinds of antelopes, a very pregnant zebra, and more gorgeous birds including the woodland kingfisher, the lilac breasted roller, the gray heron, the yellow throated long claw, the gray headed social weaver, the little bee eater, and the marabou stork. 

Nathan also taught us some more Swahili words (Swahili is the language of Tanzania whereas the Kenyans speak English). “Twende” means let’s go and “Semama” means stop. Also “Pole-pole” means slowly, slowly. We used those words a lot while we were driving around. He also had his own language for asking us if we needed to stop to pee. “Do you need to “Pick a flower?” he’d ask ,and if we did he’d find us a suitable bush to hide behind.

The most exciting part of our Serengeti stay – aside from the rhino sightings – was watching the wildebeest and zebra cross the Mara River from the Kenya side to where we were in Tanzania - called the Migration. Nathan was intent. He took us back to the crossing point several times and finally when we were about to give it up we saw another game driver racing a ways up on the road we were on. Nathan followed at about 60 mph with the four of us in an open land rover without seat belts. But it was worth it. We got there just in time to see the wildebeests and a few zebras – about 500 animals in all – cross. It was like a stampede. Some were on each other’s backs. They filed down the cliff on the Kenya side, got into the water, swam, climbed over rocks, swam some more until they got to our side, and climbed out. A couple had trouble. One made it and was the last one out. The other appeared to be stuck between two rocks and couldn’t figure out how to back up to get out. Instead it kept struggling until exhausted. The croc hovering nearby never attacked. It just waited patiently for the wildebeest to die on its own. It was so sad to watch that we left before the croc got its dinner.

That afternoon, on our ride with Nathan, he miraculously found us another rhino. Out of only forty-five rhinos in the whole area, we were lucky to see three of them. And then it absolutely poured down rain the rest of the day.

Stay tuned for the next installment about Lake Manyara and the Ngorongoro Crater, also in Tanzania.

Africa Trip Part 3 - Masai Mara, Kenya

After our two nights in Samburu, we flew to the Masai Mara region in the southeast corner of Kenya. Here at 6000 feet altitude, the weather was cool. And each night while there we experienced enormous rains, such that our guide Simon insisted on rolling up the sides of our jeep and giving us ponchos to wear.

However, the animal and bird sightings there were spectacular. Even in the air before we landed we saw wildebeest, zebras, and giraffes below  - though in Masai Mara the giraffes, instead of being reticulated with patches of color outlined in white, are spotted. The zebras, the common Burchel, are smaller with wider spaced stripes than the Grevy's (my favorite because of the swirly look). Every zebra has unique stripe formations. 

Simon picked us up at the airport and was our guide during our stay. He also took us on a game drive as soon as we landed over a landscape called the Savanna – large plains with sporadic trees, mostly Acacia. And almost immediately he showed us lions – many lions – in families of thirty or more or just a few at a time. We also saw (to name a few) families of hippos in the Mara river and sleeping on the river bank, crocodiles, an attack by two cheetahs foiled by a horde of wildebeests, male water buffaloes with huge white horns that remind me of the wigs worn at the British Parliament, olive baboons, male and female ostriches, eagles, rollers, secretary birds, and the graceful gazelles (FYI, the Grant’s gazelle has a patch of white above its tail, the Thompson’s patch is underneath the tail.)

One of the reasons we traveled in late August and September was to witness the great migration of wildebeest and zebra across the Mara River. So we spent most of our last day at the Masai Mara waiting around the banks of the river for this great event. We did see a few zebra cross – a crocodile tried to take a bite out of one’s hoof, but the zebra managed to get away and complete the cross. This was not, however, the migration of thousands we had been told about. Those hordes of wildebeests and zebras stayed on the shore looking like they were having a meeting about when, where, and if they should go. Here’s a little poem I wrote about it:

Migration

Zebra and wildebeest

march toward the Mara River.

It’s time to cross

from one side to the other

as they do every six months

in their quest for more water.

They come in droves.

hundreds of them in long straight lines.

And as they get to water’s edge

they stop, look.

A few take the chance

and swim to the other side,

outracing the waiting crocodiles.

The others discuss

in shriek-y honks about when

and at which point to go.

Even though they don’t speak

the same language

heads nod in agreement

as they walk en masse in one direction

then to the other,

deciding which is the safest spot

to outwit crocs awaiting their prey.

A few zebras,

the nominal leaders,     

step toward water’s edge.

They turn, they walk back and forth,

back and forth, and the others follow.

They return to starting point one.

to wait out the crocs again.

Another adventure was a visit to the Masai Mara Cultural Center. This was pure entertainment, for a $20 fee each. The native adults and children performed for us, showed us a typical mud hut with a fire actually burning in the kitchen area, and we saw how they build a fire with a block of wood and a stick They also gave us a huge opportunity to buy their beautifully carved and beaded handicrafts. But, alas, Our tent camp manager, Patrick, said most natives don’t live like that anymore, that this center is really just for show, like a museum.

For our three days and nights at the Masai Mara we stayed at the Elephant Pepper tent camp. I would call that experience living in primitive elegance. Upon arrival Patrick warned us about keeping our tents zipped up at all times and any prescriptions and vitamins secured in our luggage or else the monkeys would steal our clothing and eat our pills. He also taught us how to take a shower to conserve water: turn the water on as soon as a staff member standing behind the tent calls out that the shower is ready, get wet, turn the shower off, lather up, and then turn the water on again to rinse off.

The tents at Elephant Pepper are beautifully appointed with fine wood furniture and bathroom counter tops, fine metal sinks and water pitchers – one for hot and one for cold, but for me it was hard to get used to no water coming out of a faucet in the sink and only so much warm water as allotted coming out of the shower head. Plus, we had very low lighting and no heat at night, but thankfully blankets galore. Again dining together with all the tent guests was a high point of camp life with a long table set in a way that would make Martha Stewart proud. Elephant Pepper camp also had a very homey feel. Patrick, his wife Sophie, and their baby Alexi made it so.

(By the way, in case you’re wondering about Wi-Fi and electronics), Elephant Pepper had Wi-Fi sporadically in the dining and lobby tents, and Patrick took care of charging our equipment every night in his office. However, though we had charging capabilities at the other tent camps we stayed at, we were without Wi-Fi for about a week during our Africa tour. That turned out not to be so bad.)

Africa Trip Part 1 - Nairobi

Since so many people have asked about our trip to Africa, over the next few weeks I'll share some highlights at: Nairobi, Samburu, Masai Mara, Serengeti, Lake Manyara, the Ngorongoro crater, then back to Nairobi. 

Part 1 - Nairobi

We arrived at the Nairobi airport at 2 am. The place was practically deserted and that was good, since the main terminal’s welcoming hall, destroyed by a fire two weeks earlier, was nothing more than a large tent. We got our luggage quickly and met our tour group driver, Martin, outside. Since it was so early in the morning Martin said we should have no traffic, and we’d be at our hotel – the Norfolk – in about ten minutes.

By the way, I keep wondering if the airport fire was a warning from the terrorists who attacked the mall in Nairobi several weeks later. But we'll never know about that for sure, will we? 

And then almost right after we left the airport we passed a horrific accident. The car involved looked like it went through a mangler, and we learned later that someone died. With police and rescue vehicles lining the road, it took us more than ten minutes just to get around them. Then about a minute later I heard a large noise like we had run over something big and metal. It turned out the car passing us on the left – illegal with right-hand driving rules – clipped the front of our van. The car stopped, five drunken guys named “Vinny” got out and started arguing. Then they took off. Martin with us in the back seat raced after them, made them stop, and they all got out of their car again. I was scared. I really thought they were going to fight with Martin and we would end up being stranded on the road with no way to communicate with anyone. Thankfully, though they were drunk, they were not violent.

Even Bob wanted to get out of the car to see if he could speed things up, but I wouldn’t let him. What could he do? He probably couldn’t even communicate with them. Finally Martin got the information he needed and returned to the van, and we were finally on our way to our hotel. All told, it took us over an hour to get there. After a long plane ride from London, on the very uncomfortable Turkish Airlines, and our adventurous ride from the airport, I was ready to collapse.

Of course I felt much better in the morning. I got up early, went to the gym, and walked through our hotel’s beautiful grounds overflowing with flowering plants. After breakfast in the outdoor restaurant we ventured out just a little, following the music. Singers and dancers were entertaining across the street at the National Theatre. We also spoke to four young men selling their new CD, which I bought for $3 American.

We had a four-hour tour scheduled for the afternoon with our two traveling companions, again with Martin driving. However, the Nairobi traffic was so horrendous – many times worse than the Los Angeles freeways – that we only made it to two places: The Karen Blixen museum and grounds  – so much like I remember from the movie “Out of Africa” – where a museum docent gave us a private tour, and then we went on to the Nairobi cultural center to do a little shopping.

That night after eating at the hotel, we prepared our bags. We left two bags with clothes for the France part of our trip at the hotel to store and stuffed our small duffle bags with our safari clothes. We were told to pack light – no more than thirty-three pounds – and we did. Unfortunately I took the instructions much too literally. I could have added a couple more pairs of slacks and a lightweight sweater or two and no one would have complained.

The four of us left for the airport early the next morning to take our first tiny plane ride to our first safari stop in Kenya, Samburu.

The next installment is about Samburu.

Favorite trip photos

I think I’m finally over the jet lag from our trip. Last night I slept without waking at four in the morning, and I feel very well rested today. I’ve heard that it takes a day for each hour we travel away from our time zone, and at one point we were twelve hours on the other side of our clock in Dubai. So it’s close. Today it is exactly eleven days since we returned home.

Although the main intent of our trip was to go on an African safari, besides visiting Kenya and Tanzania we also spent several days in London before Africa and a night in Dubai and four nights in Paris after our African adventure. It was a trip of a lifetime. I’ll never forget it.

I’ve already posted a few of my favorite safari photos – and I promise to post more in the next weeks. However, today’s photos show some our favorite sights in London, Dubai, and Paris.

 My third time on the London Eye. 

Try it. It's a great ride.

 Stonehenge - an amazing site

 The "silver guy" in front of 

London's National Gallery

 Dubai's old city spice market

 The largest aquarium in the largest mall 

in the world - where else? Dubai

 While riding on the Seine on a cloudy 

rainy day in Paris

 Monet's lily pond at Giverny

Monet's House at Giverny

Back to work

First of all I want to thank all my friends who participated in the Choices Guest Post Festival from the end of August to mid September:

Susan Weidener

Deborah Kalan

Viki Noe

Ace Antonio Hall

Meryl Hartstein

Chanel Brenner

Eleanor Vincent

Jerry Waxler

Sherrey Meyer

Linda Joy Myers

Karen Levy

Kathy Pooler

You all certainly raised the bar over here. During the last three and a half weeks the number of views more than doubled because of your contributions.

So it’s time for me to get back to work. I need to keep the momentum going by posting myself and hosting guests as much as possible. Please let me know if you’d like to share your writing story on Choices in the near future.

On Wednesday, my guests will be Cami Ostman and Susan Tive who will share about their anthology, Beyond Belief: what happens when women of extreme religions decide to walk away. Choices is their last stop on their Women on Writing WOW blog tour. 

I’m particularly excited about this subject matter. One of my friends, Izzy Eichenstein, has written about his experience of walking away from his ultra-orthodox Chassidic Jewish roots in his memoir, The Rebel and the Rabbi’s Son. His story got me very interested in this topic. So please help me welcome Cami and Susan on Wednesday, August 25 – right here.

In the meantime, I’ll post a few photos from our recent trip on safari in Kenya and Tanzania. I love ending my blog posts with pretty pictures.

 Our first cheetah sighting in Kenya

 Looking calm and cuddly after 

a hearty meal of Wildebeest

A gorgeous lilac-breasted roller