Bus to Lamu

I got up early the next morning, packed, and was on a matatu headed to Malindi by 7:15, to catch a bus upto Lamu. After a brief wait I was on a bus toward Lamu by 9am...a ride I was assured would be no longer than 5hrs, even if the road was a bit bumpy.

Thinking that the road from Nairobi to Mombasa was the worst in Kenya left me ill prepared for what lie ahead on the road to Lamu. I had heard tht the road immediately ouside fo Malindi was pretty good, but that things got a bit bumpy soon after, however 2hrs into the ride (what I thought was the half way point) we were still riding smooth and I was thinking this was a piece of cake. Soon after that thought, the bumps began...

At first things were not too bad, a bit of a washboard with the occasional hard pothole. I still thought that another 2hrs of this would be no problem and even found myself smiling and chuckling to myself at the situation...not bad at all. Before too long however my neck and lower back started to disagree with me as the hits got harder and after each crunching bump I cringed at the thought that surely the next one would snap the axle, if not the entire bus, into 2 pieces.

My fears were realized around the 4hr mark when we stopped and everyone disembarked in a small town, and a welding torch was brought out and sparks started to fly from the rear under-carriage. I start to envision being stuck here overnight and having to hitch the rest of the way to Lamu, Paul Theroux style, on the back of a cattle truck, but before I could my mental scenario we were all loading back onto the bus and on our way, the 4hr mark having come and gone, the 5hr mark approaching fast.

I asked my friendly sear neighbor how far was left and he assured me not far. Around 5 1/2hrs we pulled into a slightly larger town and my neighbor started to get off and casually mentioned that I only had another 50km to go...an eternity on this road!

Upto this point we had managed to stick to the informal rule of one person per seat, a rule that was suspended at this stop; before long every free seat and the aisle-way were filled with passengers, live chickens, sacks of who-knows-what, and other assorted items. And we were on our way. With this new ballast crowding the bus and our slow speed preventing any breeze, the internal temperature soon reached sauna heat and my skin responded with an issue of sweat from every inch, which continued until I got off. Now I knew why my seat had been damp when I'd gotten on the bus that morning!

Around the same time my nose decided it could no longer handle the fine dust floating around; a volley of sneezes ensued and my snot factory started pumping out what felt like gallons of the vicsous liquid...and me with few tissues!

We continued for another 1 1/2hrs before reaching the water, during which there was at least one point, after a sneezing fit, where I wanted to jump up and yell obcenities. Fortunately I made it off and collected my bag without incident, alreadying trying to figure out how to avoid the ride back. 4-5hrs, HA! The experience left my body feeling like I'd spent the last 7 1/2 hrs in a cement mixer, my organs rearranged, my teeth ground down to nubs, and my back and neck knot ridden.

Watamu

After saying good bye to the girls, I wandered through downtown Mombasa in the vague direction I was pointed and hopefully toward the matatus to Malindi. Fortunately I was able to find one without too much trouble and was on my way only 15mins after I set out...not bad. About 10 mins into the ride the conductor starts to ask for the fare, 250 shilings, and I start to dig my money out when I hear a flurry of swahili arguments going back and forth between all the other passengers and the driver and conductor. The next thing I know we are turning around and drive all the way back into Mombasa...it turns out that the normal fare is 200 shilings.

We all pile out of the matatu and an hour after the first ride debacle I find myself on a larger bus ambling along toward Malindi. A few hours, some flooded roads, and a couple of naps later I find myself in Watamu just as its getting dark. I manage to fend off the touts and quickly make my way to Villa Veronica, my home for the next 3 nights.

My first day out I managed to find an internet cafe where I met a group of about 9 girls from all over the world working near by at an eco-concervation center called 'A rocha', all doing various research or volunteer work. They kidnapped me for the day and took me back to their place for lunch. We spent the afternoon playing pictionary, body surfing in the warm indian ocean, I fixed an email problem for them and they fed me dinner before dropping me back in town.

While I had planned to spend day two doing a bit of snorkeling, I missed the outgoing boat and ended up relaxing on the beach with my book instead. By day three I was ready to get up to Lamu Island...

Mombasa

Even though it was nice to take an extended break in Nairobi, after four and a half weeks I was a bit ready to get back on the road and see a bit more of Kenya, so last thursday I hopped an overnight bus to the city of Mombasa on the coast, a place I was anxious to see, having fond memories of Christmas there 10 years go. After a fairly bumpy bus ride, over rutted, pot-holed roads that left my neck a knotted mess, we rolled into Mombasa and its moist, sticky heat around 9am.

After checking into the Beracha Guest House, I spent the first day strolling around the city and hitting the tourist spot of the old 'Fort Jesus' (an old portugese coral fort), where I got a tour from a guide who did little more than read the posted signs, point out the cannons and century towers, and ask me for more money, after which I headed for a brisk walk through the old town, which under the mid-day sun left me drenched.

That evening I made the acquaintance of 2 american girls, that had moved back to Mombasa for a year of volunteer work after being here two years ago for study abroad, and a canadian girl who was back visiting after spending some time working at a refugee camp near Turkana last year. They were kind enough to let me tag along with them the next day through the market (a darker, danker, trash strewn version of those in turkey), find some good cheap food, and a cheap but slow internet joint.

That night the girls convinced me to go with them to the local club 'Tembo' (elephant), which, after a 20 minute matatu ride where I was wedged in a hole between two middle seats, turned out to be a lot of fun. Having seen few other white people in mombasa upto that point, I was surprised at how many were at the club. A quick survey revealed that these were far from my peers: I was a few years to young, my gut several inches to small, my hair count a few million too high, and I was missing the requisite prostitute or two wrapped under each arm.

After a late night/early morning, and a hot lethargic third day, I hopped another bus to the near by town of Watamu.

Review:Dark Star Safari

Dark Star Safari by Paul Theroux is a, somewhat pessemistic, travelogue recounting his overland trip through africa from Cairo to Cape Town in 2001, 35 years after he first worked as a peace corps volunteer in Malawi and Uganda.

Admittedly, the pessimism gets tiresome at times but often leads to some interesting insight, especially concerning the role of aid and development in Africa today. Refreshingly, he is fairly well read in regards to these topics during the trip, and cites several books for follow up (which I've since added to my list).

For those interested in a high level, American travelers perspective the changing Africa, or looking for a throught provoking travelogue that's slightly less humorous than those of Bill Bryson I would highly recommend this.

Some of my favorite travel oriented quotes from the book:

• "The best travel is a leap in the dark."
• "Traveling makes one modest - you see what a tiny place you occupy in the world."
• "I had no names, no contacts, just the idle wanderer's distinct confidence that having arrived here I was available for some sort of enlightenment; that I would meet the right people, that I would be fine."
• "You visit a place and peer at it closely and then move on, making a virtue of disconnection."

Review: A Wole New Mind

One of the best, albeit only, 'business' books I've read on this trip, A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink is a must read for anyone who is wondering how to adapt to and diversify in the new economy, the 'Conceptual Age' as he calls it. Process oriented jobs that have led the economy for the past five decades are on teh wane. He tells you to ask three questions about what you're doing:

• Can someone overseas do it cheaper?
• Can a computer do it faster?
• Is what I'm offering in demand in an age of abundance?

If you answer yes to either of the first two, or no to the last then you should consider picking up this book.

After the initial background, the bulk of the book is dedicated to strengthening the less process, more creative sides of your right brain (what he calls the six senses): design, story, symphony, empathy, play, meaning. For those interested in being more creative this book is worth the price simply for the the resources, and exercises that are listed in each 'sense' area. Highly recommended!

Review: The Poisonwood Bible

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver follows the life of an American missionary, his wife and four daughters as they move to the middle of Zaire to convert the natives, and how this experience defines the rest of their lives. A great story, made more enjoyable I think by having just finished 'East Along the Equator' which gave me a good, brief history of the Congo upto and including the time that this book takes place. Kingsolver does a wonderful job of weaving history and fiction into the stories of her strong, diverse, and surprisingly relatable female characters. I think this may appeal more to the women, but a good and quick read in any case.

Fruit Salad

Since arriving in Kenya I have not been able to get enough of the fruit here! While unfortunately it isn't mango season, I've made up with copious amounts of papaya (which I usually hate in the US), super-sweet mini bananas (which I've never seen in the US), pineapple, passion-fruit, pawpaws, oranges...all either on their own or in delicious fruit-salads. Now I conciously know why I unconciously dread the American Fruit Salad: it looks like heaven but falls far short of approaching any approximation, in taste, of its African counterpart; such deception!

Old Friends

Before Sambo headed back to the states we made a few rounds of visits to check in with some of the old family friends from back in the day, most of which I hadn't seen for over 10+ years. It was a great experience to catch up with these shadowed figures from my childhood and interact with them in a bit more of a 'grown-up capacity', and have them illuminate my african past a bit to me through stories of when I was young.

Geotagging Photos

Being the super-nerd that I am, after Flickr came out with their new photo map, I caved to an idea my friend Clint had suggested at the beginning of my trip and bought a small GPS unit to use in geotagging my photos, so that they will now automatically show up on the map at the exact spot that I snapped them. For anyone else interested in doing this, here is a good primer on geocoding using the same GPS receiver I picked up; for the technically inclined.

My camera caused a bit of trouble with the 'Time Zone', so if anyone does actually decide to give this a try and runs into any issues feel free to shoot me an email and I can let you know what I had to do to finally get it going.

Masai Village

While staying at the Mara Safari Lodge we also had an opportunity to go and visit a nearby Masai village. As soon as we stepped through the entrance to the village we were greeted by a wonderfully friendly little boy that followed us around for the duration. We watched the masai men do their jumping dance to the sound of their low, hypnotic song(amazing to watch), while the women sang the accompanyment. They were nice enough to let me make a fool of myself and jump with them. We toured one of the hutments, talked with the 'chief', played with the children, and wrapped things up with a visit to their market.

The Spotted Plains

Also while my father was here, he was generous enough to take me on a three day safari while he was here to the Masai Mara game reserve. I hadn't been on a 'safari' for quite a few years, and was curious to relive one of those childhood experiences I remember being so much fun if not a bit scary (with sambo behind the wheel).

After a short, but tumultuous, plane ride in a 13 seater (the smallest plan I've been in) we arrived at our accomodation, the Mara Safari Lodge, my stomach rumbling, to find a cool, minty towel and fresh mango juice awaiting us. Despite the experience consisting of sleeping in 'tents' (a very loose definition of the word) the Mara Safari Lodge would prove to be the nicest place I've stayed on this trip, with excellent food and wonderful people.

After dropping our bags we hopped into the Toyota Land Cruiser for our first drive, where we quickly saw a few lions, elephants, and an abundance of zebra and wildebeast, a fortunate trend that would continue for the next two days over the course of which we also saw lions eating a kill, a leopard and her cub roaming around on the ground (a rarity), and a bevy of other animals, only missing out on the cheetah. While the game driving was certainly a lot of fun, by the end of the second day I was definately safaried out, and tired of the clouds of ultra-fine dust continually wafting through the window to settle in my lap, mouth, eyes.

The Mara Safari Lodge also hosted a different cultural event each night after our return from a day of driving: a nature talk (did you know that hyenas are the only mammals capable of digesting bone?), a masai dance, and a masai cultural talk ( Masai meaning 'the ma speaking people' and mara meaning 'spotted plains'). The weekend was a great, relaxing, 'vacation' experience, but perhaps a bit too touristy for me at this point in my travels, despite which I still took the opportunity to snap a healthy number of obligatory animal photos; my photo numbers paled in comparison to the others in our vehicle: quality not quantity, I hope.

Photos: Masai Mara

Lake Naivasha

My father was recently in town and I had the opportunity to go with him to a conference on lake Naivasha, a large lake located about two hours north west of nairobi. It was great to be able to relax by a bit of water, have some great local food, and meet a lot of great people. One night while sitting and having dinner we were joined by two women, Lydia and Keanu. We started talking about Kenya and why we were there, and my father mentioned that we lived here for several years when I was a tike, to which they asked me what my kikuyu name was. I told them I didn't have one, so they proceeded to give me one: kamau. I asked what it meant and they said they didn't know, but with a little research I discovered that it means 'quiet warrior', an apt name as anyone who knows me would surely attest:)!

Photos: Naivasha

The Carnivore

Two fellow travelers, Kristen and Fernando, that I met back in southern Turkey on the blue cruise, were passing through Kenya this weekend on their way to a 22 day overland tour from Nairobi to Victoria Falls. I was fortunate to catch up with them and join their tour group for a great night and dinner at one of Nairobi's best restaurants: Carnivore.

What an experience! The restaurant was exactly as it had been described to me: you start the meal with a flag at the center of your table, as long as that flag is standing waiters will continue to come by offering to cut you a slice of various meat from traditional beef, chicken, lamb to ostrich, camel and crocodile, all skewered on big swords used to carry the meat and dispense from. After stuffing yourself to a point of incapacitation, the flag is lowered in 'surrender' and you're forced to make a little more room as they bring out coffee and dessert.

I think we all had a great night talking with fellow travelers, and reverting to primal instincts as serving after serving of nothing but meat was carved from big skewered slabs onto our plates. I have to say that my favorite was definitely the ostrich meatballs. I was really surprised when I finally stood up to waddle out of the restaurant, to see that it had taken us over 3 hours to finally surrender. Definitely not a place for vegetarians!

Photos: Nairobi

The Matatu

For the past week I've been staying about 20-30 mins out of town in a suburb of Nairobi called Karen and have been using local mini-buses, known as matatus. The matatu is the primary mode of transportation in and around Nairobi as far as I can tell. I remember matatus from my previous visits as being large, elaborately decorated 'buses' of sorts with passengers standing in the aisles and hanging from the doorways. Apparently the government realized that this type of arrangement posed significant safety risks and in recent years has clamped down and started enforcing regulations regarding number of passengers (14 max), licensed drivers, and uniform appearance (white with a yellow stripe) of the matatus.

Despite the threat of said regulations I think it's still safe to say that you're taking your life in your hands when you hop onto a matatu. Each matatu has a driver and 'conductor' of sorts responsible for calling a stop to pickup/drop off passengers as well as collect the fare. I've noticed on all of the matatus I have ridden that both the driver and conductor invariably have tear filled, blood shot, glassy eyes and offer a blank, zombie start that doesn't exactly inspire confidence. They also often appear to chew some kind of grassy looking material which I have been told is to help them stay awake for long hours of driving.

Being that these small mini-buses lack any 'next-stop' buzzer to tell the driver to stop, the conductor and driver use a complex system of either tapping a coin against the window, a harsh, piercing sound meaning 'stop' to pickup/drop off, or a few bangs against the outside door to signal 'go time' accompanied by a running jump back into the matatu as it gets rolling. Another common practice I was somewhat caught off guard by is that of filling up at the gas station with the engine still running!

What the matatu lacks in western safety standards and practices, it makes up for in fun, cheap experience. It is a great, cheap way to get around; bones and bus rattling in unison along eroded, pot-holed roads, with music blasting from small, tinny speakers, a friendly kenyan with a big, bright smile squeezed in next to you, and a warm breeze in your face.

Baby Elephants

After leaving the Masai Market, Michelle was kind enough to invite me along on a day of site-seeing with her and her brother that coming Friday. We started the day with a trip to an elephant orphanage, where we waited behind a small rope in anxious anticipation for the animals to come get their milk. Before long they all came running out of the bushes near by and made a b-line for the milk bottles. We were able to get up close and personal with about a dozen baby elephants ranging from a few months to a couple years in age. All of the elephants at the orphanage are babies who have been rescued from the wilderness for one reason or another, often because their parents have been the victims of poaching. The elephants are taken care of and brought up to be reintroduced into the wild at a suitable time. It was really fun to be so close and watch these 'kids' splash around in the mud, eat their leaves, and exhibit their individual personalities as they played around with each other.

From the orphanage we caught a ride over to the Giraffe Center, where we were able to climb a platform and hand feed several giraffe, even getting coaxed into giving one a 'kiss'. They had obviously been through the exercise many times before and just shot out their incredibly long, sticky, purple tongues as soon as you got close and vacuumed up the feed pellets. I thought I heard one of the employees say something about them being on a diet, and to feed sparingly, but that was obviously lost in the crowd. We apparently showed up on school field trip day and were soon joined by a large group of elementary school kids.

After making sure we had a good layer of sticky giraffe saliva on our hands and my face we headed over to 'Bomas of Kenya', a performance of local music and dances from around Kenya. Apparently this was another stop on the field trip, and elementary school kids started filling the hall soon after we arrived. The performance lasted roughly two hours and exhibited nine different dances, capped off with an acrobatics show that was certainly the favorite of the school kids.

Masai Market

During my first week in Nairobi, while I was still trying to figure things out a bit, I was fortunate to be introduced to a fellow traveler, Michelle, that now lives in Nairobi and goes to school here. She mentioned that she and her mom were going to be visiting the masai market on the following Tuesday if I wanted to join them. Since I hadn't really gotten into the city I jumped at the chance and rose early Tuesday, caught a ride into town and met Michelle and her mom on a street corner near the market, and we headed into the market.

The market consists mainly of a series of small, square, low dirt mounds, where goods are laid out, with narrow pathways between each mound to allow people just enough room to squeeze by each other. Although on a much smaller scale, the atmosphere was very similar to the grand bazaar in Istanbul in terms of people trying to get your attention and show you to their stall, however, with a slightly more laid back demeanor. Since I wasn't in the market to buy that day, I found that 'I'm not buying today' was a pretty good deterrent.

We wandered around for about an hour and a half laughing and joking with stall owners, with Michelle driving some hard bargains for a few select items of her mom's choosing from the vast array of wood carvings (both animals and masks), brightly colored beaded jewelry, wall hangings, spears and knives, sarongs, and more. While I didn't pick anything up this time around, I will certainly be making another trip back to the market to find a few things that caught my eye.