Flying back into Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, I felt like I was coming home. A week in Mumbai reeeeally made me appreciate Nairobi. My experience was a bit worse than the other students', but even with my bad luck taken into consideration, I don't anticipate ever returning to India for more than a short vacation. It just wasn't a place for me.
Kenya Airways royally screwed up my reservation, and I had to fight tooth and nail to get on the plane. Nearly missed the flight even though we'd arrived at the airport 3 hours early. The ambassador's son was traveling with us, though, and had his dad's secretary call the airport in a last ditch effort to get me on the flight. It wasn't necessary, but I was amused. VIP treatment. Haha.
Mumbai smelled like ocean and raw sewage, and the occasional whiff of incense. It was in the upper 90s and horribly humid, so I didn't feel properly clean until I got back to Nairobi. It didn't help that we were staying in a budget hotel for European backpackers. Suffice it to say our hotel room was not clean. The city itself was disgusting. Nairobi is dusty, but Mumbai is absolutely coated in filth and, for all that India is reputed to be full of bright colors, overwhelmingly brown.
Three of us girls stayed in Mumbai, taking the week slow, sightseeing, relaxing, eating, visiting temples, and shopping. The three boys and fourth girl went to Goa for a beach vacation. I had a really excellent time for the most part. Fantastic food that tore apart my taste buds, amazing architecture, beautiful clothing... it was also neat to be in a megalopolis with highway overpasses, traffic signals, streetlights, McDonalds softserve ice cream, and good roads. I took plenty of pictures. There were double decker buses (a delightful reminder of British rule), fleets of auto-rickshaws, packs of motorcycles and bicycles, and loads of old taxis, ALL of which honked, hooted, and rang bells obnoxiously twenty-four hours a day. It was hard to sleep the first night. At least once a day, a Bollywood casting agent asked us to be extras in movies, but we always had plans. Too bad.
We were there during Holi, the Festival of Colors, during which everyone throws powdered dye and water on each other. We made a friend who took us to celebrate with his family for a short while. They offered us beer (which we politely turned down, not wanting to put ourselves in any further danger), dumped dye on our heads, and poured water over us. There must have been 30 people standing around us, just staring at us and laughing along with us. We left the party that afternoon magenta from head to toe. It was highly enjoyable, and everyone who saw us walking back to the hotel got a huge kick out of us. My hair is still tinged red. I'm so glad we had that opportunity. It was a beautiful holiday to witness, as everyone was happy and splashed with color and in the mood to celebrate.
For every twenty men you saw on the streets of Mumbai, you would see only one woman. Wives stay at home caring for the kids and cooking for their husband. I've never been much of a feminist, but I was genuinely shocked by how badly women (especially white women) are treated in India. Reading about it is entirely different from experiencing it firsthand. Turns out I don't handle it too well.
I'm very much used to being stared at, but not the way Indian men stared at me. The other girls on the trip agreed that there is a huge difference between the innocent flirting stares we get in Kenya and the looks we got in India. After a few days of walking around the streets of Mumbai, I was sick of it. I felt offended and violated. This was compounded by the fact that I was physically groped on the streets on two different occasions (this only happened to me... hence me noting an element of bad luck). One afternoon we had a man try to follow us back to our hotel, but we ducked into a restaurant, attracted attention to ourselves, and had the staff drive him off. It was not a good experience.
I felt that we were more frequently (and more severely) exploited in Mumbai. Prices were higher and much harder to bring down, and people would voluntarily help you and ask for money afterward. There's a tremendous amount of poverty in that city. The slums of Mumbai look a bit different from those in Nairobi... shacks were stacked on top of one another and were hanging over the water in many cases. I can't imagine what happens when it floods.
The population of Mumbai is about 17 million, or half the population of Kenya. Streets were packed with people. In many areas, there were massive apartment complexes that looked dirty, old, and crowded. When I asked about them, our taxi driver said they were middle class homes. I asked where the lower classes lived and he said, “Nowhere.” Over the course of the next few days, I'd see lots of people sleeping on sidewalks, but I didn't fully understand what millions of homeless Indians meant until the night we left to return to Nairobi.
Our flight home was at 6 AM, so we left at 2 AM to drive across the city and negotiate my ticket all over again. There were families, extended families, and sometimes whole communities sleeping on sidewalks, on the corrugated tin roofs of shacks, on the steps of restaurants and businesses, on trailer beds, on top of cars, on top of carts, under overpasses, above overpasses, and in every other conceivable place. The Holi party we attended had been on the sidewalk of a street, which I suspect was a permanent home to our friend's family. Only a few people had a blanket to cover themselves. God only knows what happens during the monsoon season. I can't comprehend it.
I'm glad I took this trip after living in Kenya. I'm not sure how I would have reacted if I had visited Mumbai after living in Overland Park and DC. Maybe I just wouldn't have understood it. I've sampled many of the slums of Nairobi this semester, visited Kibera, Eastleigh, Kawangware, Maathare, Kangemi, and seen what real poverty looks like... but honestly, Mumbai shocked the hell out of me. There's not really any other way of putting it.
Back to work. If I survive the next week of schoolwork, I can survive anything...
Wednesday, March 26
Monday, March 17
The rainy season
We went to Kibera a couple of days after the new session of Parliament began. I think KJ wanted to remind us that the deal brokered between Kibaki and Raila doesn't mean that everything has gone back to normal for Kenyans.
Kibera is an informal settlement about the size of Central Park which wraps across the southern edge of Nairobi. It's the oldest slum in the world and remains the largest in Africa. There are many other slums built on the periphery Nairobi, but none really compares to Kibera. Nobody is particularly sure how many people live there, as the government hardly recognizes the existence of its residents. Most reliable estimates put the population over one million at this point.
Kibera residents represent about ¼ of the population of Nairobi, a ratio that continues to grow as families and young girls migrate from rural areas in search of work and are forced to settle in slums when they can't afford the scarce housing in the city proper. Half of Kibera's residents live below the poverty line, but there isn't really the misery and squalor you would expect under such conditions. Many people commute downtown and work regular jobs as shopkeepers, security guards, hawkers, matatu drivers, construction workers, tailors, and domestic workers. Whether people live in small concrete structures or tiny huts made of mud or corrugated tin, they keep their living space extremely clean. This does not change the fact that living conditions in Kibera are some of the worst in the world; there is a severe shortage of space, shelter, jobs, food, sanitation, schools, and healthcare. It wouldn't be a huge exaggeration to say that this is what led me to study development and brought me to Nairobi. The slums represent a huge violation of human rights, but continue to be overlooked by national governments as well as the international community. It's the paradigmatic example of environmental injustice, where economics and anthropology meet.
Kibera is heavily populated by Luos and thus an ODM stronghold. It was the location of the worst incidents of violence against Kikuyus in Nairobi following the election (the video clips of burning cars and demolished houses in Nairobi were all taken in Kibera). Somewhere near two hundred people were killed there. At the beginning of the semester, KJ introduced us to Miriam, the Kikuyu headmistress of a nursery school called St. Vincent dePaul where AU students had interned in the past. She had fled Kibera in the middle of the night just after the violence started, as her neighbors were burning down Kikuyu houses on all sides of her home. St. Vincent's reopened in February and Miriam was recently able to return to work, although she doesn't intend to ever move back to Kibera.
The walls and fences on the road to Kibera were covered in graffiti. Half was political, and the other half called on Kenyans to stop the violence and asked for “amani na umoja” (peace and unity). Behind the shops along the side of the road, houses stretched off into the distance, and there were burned out churches and building with broken windows on both sides of the street. The narrow streets and tiny sewage ditches running between houses reminded me of Lamu, in a very creepy and distorted sense.
When we arrived at our matatu stage, neither KJ nor the students from last semester recognized it, though they'd visited St. Vincent's many times. I thought the slabs of cement along the road were uneven pieces of sidewalk until I realized the gray dust on top of the slabs was a mixture of red dirt and ash. The shops along the road had been burned down on the entire block, leaving just cement foundations. A group of men stopped us as we walked to St. Vincent's with Miriam, asking what we were doing and where we were going. They accepted Miriam's explanation and let us go, but it scared all of us. KJ has told us we can't go back to Kibera or St. Vincent's anytime soon. The school is at a high risk of being looted or vandalized because we were there, not to mention the possibility of violence against us. Miriam told KJ she wasn't sure how she would get home that evening, because the men would likely find her and question her about us. She's already targeted for being a Kikuyu and doesn't need the extra attention.
Most of the students have returned to St. Vincent's by now, but quite a few of the non-Luos are still missing. The children who are there seemed extremely happy to be back and were overjoyed to have visitors to play with. Miriam said most had come back significantly thinner and psychologically shaken up, drawing pictures in art class of burning houses and policemen with guns. Most have gained back some of the weight they lost, but many have sores on their faces and patches of white hair from malnutrition. It was weird to think that the candy we brought them represented about half of their calories that day. Miriam took us to the kitchen and explained that their supply of bananas and eggs has been cut off since the violence, so the students are eating nothing but starch, beans on occasion, kale, cabbage, and, one day per week, vitamin powder mixed with sardines. When the kids get their only meal of the day at school, the lack of fruit and protein makes a big difference.
There's a free clinic in the neighborhood where the HIV-positive kids from St. Vincent's were able to get treatment before the violence started. Lea Toto is actually the organization I had wanted to work with, but all of the Kibera internships were scrapped for the semester. I can't imagine the clinic could be getting the supplies it needs if St. Vincent's can't get bananas for lunch twice a week. If KJ lets us go back into Kibera before the end of the semester, I'd like to visit Lea Toto to see what kind of resources they're working with, if any.
On the walk back to the matatu stage, we passed dozens more ash-covered foundations and the skeleton of a small shopping center that had been looted and burned out. There were strange burn patterns on the ground in the parking lot which I eventually realized were marks from burning tires. The mobs that looted and burned Kikuyu houses had pushed the families' cars to the parking lot of the shopping center to burn them.
The nephew of one of the administrators at St. Vincent's had taken videos and pictures in the days after the election. It was weird to watch a slide show of the photos and listen to the children singing and laughing in the classrooms around us. We spent our first few weeks in Nairobi complaining that we couldn't leave Westlands, and these kids were fleeing their homes in the middle of the night and watching their neighborhood go up in flames. I don't think I've ever felt so stupid.
Last Friday, KJ took us to Naivasha for class. It’s a lake town about two hours outside Nairobi famous for its animals and miles of greenhouses growing flowers for export to Europe. We also passed a huge IDP camp, which was surprising… there’s been so much talk of the good things that are happening, I hadn’t considered how many families were still living in tents. KJ said buses were going into the camp and taking refugees to work in the greenhouses. Makes you wonder how they’re being treated.
The rainy season is starting… it's been raining a bit every day and getting very muddy. I’m now getting my comeuppance for all the beautiful tropical weather we’ve had. Tomorrow, though, I’m headed off to India for a week. Tickets were cheap, and I decided I shouldn’t waste the opportunity (in case I don’t get another), so I’ll be spending Easter in Mumbai! I’ll be in touch after that. Hope everyone has had a safe and happy spring break.
Kibera is an informal settlement about the size of Central Park which wraps across the southern edge of Nairobi. It's the oldest slum in the world and remains the largest in Africa. There are many other slums built on the periphery Nairobi, but none really compares to Kibera. Nobody is particularly sure how many people live there, as the government hardly recognizes the existence of its residents. Most reliable estimates put the population over one million at this point.
Kibera residents represent about ¼ of the population of Nairobi, a ratio that continues to grow as families and young girls migrate from rural areas in search of work and are forced to settle in slums when they can't afford the scarce housing in the city proper. Half of Kibera's residents live below the poverty line, but there isn't really the misery and squalor you would expect under such conditions. Many people commute downtown and work regular jobs as shopkeepers, security guards, hawkers, matatu drivers, construction workers, tailors, and domestic workers. Whether people live in small concrete structures or tiny huts made of mud or corrugated tin, they keep their living space extremely clean. This does not change the fact that living conditions in Kibera are some of the worst in the world; there is a severe shortage of space, shelter, jobs, food, sanitation, schools, and healthcare. It wouldn't be a huge exaggeration to say that this is what led me to study development and brought me to Nairobi. The slums represent a huge violation of human rights, but continue to be overlooked by national governments as well as the international community. It's the paradigmatic example of environmental injustice, where economics and anthropology meet.
Kibera is heavily populated by Luos and thus an ODM stronghold. It was the location of the worst incidents of violence against Kikuyus in Nairobi following the election (the video clips of burning cars and demolished houses in Nairobi were all taken in Kibera). Somewhere near two hundred people were killed there. At the beginning of the semester, KJ introduced us to Miriam, the Kikuyu headmistress of a nursery school called St. Vincent dePaul where AU students had interned in the past. She had fled Kibera in the middle of the night just after the violence started, as her neighbors were burning down Kikuyu houses on all sides of her home. St. Vincent's reopened in February and Miriam was recently able to return to work, although she doesn't intend to ever move back to Kibera.
The walls and fences on the road to Kibera were covered in graffiti. Half was political, and the other half called on Kenyans to stop the violence and asked for “amani na umoja” (peace and unity). Behind the shops along the side of the road, houses stretched off into the distance, and there were burned out churches and building with broken windows on both sides of the street. The narrow streets and tiny sewage ditches running between houses reminded me of Lamu, in a very creepy and distorted sense.
When we arrived at our matatu stage, neither KJ nor the students from last semester recognized it, though they'd visited St. Vincent's many times. I thought the slabs of cement along the road were uneven pieces of sidewalk until I realized the gray dust on top of the slabs was a mixture of red dirt and ash. The shops along the road had been burned down on the entire block, leaving just cement foundations. A group of men stopped us as we walked to St. Vincent's with Miriam, asking what we were doing and where we were going. They accepted Miriam's explanation and let us go, but it scared all of us. KJ has told us we can't go back to Kibera or St. Vincent's anytime soon. The school is at a high risk of being looted or vandalized because we were there, not to mention the possibility of violence against us. Miriam told KJ she wasn't sure how she would get home that evening, because the men would likely find her and question her about us. She's already targeted for being a Kikuyu and doesn't need the extra attention.
Most of the students have returned to St. Vincent's by now, but quite a few of the non-Luos are still missing. The children who are there seemed extremely happy to be back and were overjoyed to have visitors to play with. Miriam said most had come back significantly thinner and psychologically shaken up, drawing pictures in art class of burning houses and policemen with guns. Most have gained back some of the weight they lost, but many have sores on their faces and patches of white hair from malnutrition. It was weird to think that the candy we brought them represented about half of their calories that day. Miriam took us to the kitchen and explained that their supply of bananas and eggs has been cut off since the violence, so the students are eating nothing but starch, beans on occasion, kale, cabbage, and, one day per week, vitamin powder mixed with sardines. When the kids get their only meal of the day at school, the lack of fruit and protein makes a big difference.
There's a free clinic in the neighborhood where the HIV-positive kids from St. Vincent's were able to get treatment before the violence started. Lea Toto is actually the organization I had wanted to work with, but all of the Kibera internships were scrapped for the semester. I can't imagine the clinic could be getting the supplies it needs if St. Vincent's can't get bananas for lunch twice a week. If KJ lets us go back into Kibera before the end of the semester, I'd like to visit Lea Toto to see what kind of resources they're working with, if any.
On the walk back to the matatu stage, we passed dozens more ash-covered foundations and the skeleton of a small shopping center that had been looted and burned out. There were strange burn patterns on the ground in the parking lot which I eventually realized were marks from burning tires. The mobs that looted and burned Kikuyu houses had pushed the families' cars to the parking lot of the shopping center to burn them.
The nephew of one of the administrators at St. Vincent's had taken videos and pictures in the days after the election. It was weird to watch a slide show of the photos and listen to the children singing and laughing in the classrooms around us. We spent our first few weeks in Nairobi complaining that we couldn't leave Westlands, and these kids were fleeing their homes in the middle of the night and watching their neighborhood go up in flames. I don't think I've ever felt so stupid.
Last Friday, KJ took us to Naivasha for class. It’s a lake town about two hours outside Nairobi famous for its animals and miles of greenhouses growing flowers for export to Europe. We also passed a huge IDP camp, which was surprising… there’s been so much talk of the good things that are happening, I hadn’t considered how many families were still living in tents. KJ said buses were going into the camp and taking refugees to work in the greenhouses. Makes you wonder how they’re being treated.
The rainy season is starting… it's been raining a bit every day and getting very muddy. I’m now getting my comeuppance for all the beautiful tropical weather we’ve had. Tomorrow, though, I’m headed off to India for a week. Tickets were cheap, and I decided I shouldn’t waste the opportunity (in case I don’t get another), so I’ll be spending Easter in Mumbai! I’ll be in touch after that. Hope everyone has had a safe and happy spring break.
Tuesday, March 11
Unafanya kazi gani?
I intern in a middle class neighborhood called Nairobi West. Amanda and I commute there every Tuesday and Thursday to spend a few hours working (plus the three hours on matatus). The organization is called the Center for Domestic Training and Development, and is a bit similar to the fantastic group I worked with last semester, ONE DC.
The Center deals with the huge number of Kenyans who are employed as cooks, laundresses, housekeepers, and childcare specialists, most of whom have moved from rural areas to Nairobi in search of work. Domestic labor is one of the biggest career fields in Kenya, but also one of the most overlooked. Half of the young women in Kibera are employed as domestic workers in Nairobi. It's an issue inseparable from urban migration, human trafficking, labor rights, and women's rights.
Many of the women who move voluntarily or are coerced into coming to Nairobi end up associating with organizations called bureaus that operate downtown. In theory, they works as agents for the women, but the reality of the situation is quite scary. The women live in horrible conditions and are often physically, emotionally, or sexually abused by men who share their living quarters (kikombas). Their agents essentially sell them to employers who often exploit or abuse them in turn.
A main project of the Center for Domestic Training is to reach out to these women. Those who were abused are taken in as rescue cases, and all others are eligible for the Center's month-long training program. They're housed at the Nairobi West compound where they learn to cook for themselves, clean their living quarters, and do their own laundry. The Center then connects the students to employers who come in search of a housekeeper, and the students leave when they're ready. If they can, they pay back the Center for their training in small installments.
The Center has about forty students at a time – they take classes on skills training, personal development, labor rights, and HIV/AIDS awareness. Because so many of the girls left secondary school to move to Nairobi and work, the Center has recently introduced a literacy program that allows students to earn their high school degrees through classes on Sundays (Sundays are required days off in the contract employers must sign with the students they hire).
I've been incredibly inspired by the people I've met at the Center. This organization gives people a chance to pull themselves up and support themselves and their children, and provides a safe place in case the women are abused or exploited in the workplace after leaving the compound. Most of the staff are former trainees who feel that the Center is their home. This is effective sustainable development at its best.
The Center has outgrown itself. Two new compounds opened last year – one is just getting running in the slum of Satellite, and one is thriving in the slum of Eastleigh thanks to a UNHCR grant, allowing hundreds of Somali refugees to receive training. The system they've worked out functions gloriously. All the Center needs is more space and the funding to continue growing.
Amanda and I have been working to organize the office, create an employer database, and create a library catalog of donated books. We've also taught a staff seminar; and Amanda intends to continue working in the classroom. I'd like to work on documenting rescue cases and ex-students who have started their own businesses, as there are a lot of forgotten success stories. I just need a translator, as most don't speak English and many don't speak Swahili.
Amanda is working to get a grant from UNIFEM to do more advocacy work, while I'm trying to expand the literacy program through the Commonwealth Education Fund or UNESCO. The Center is working with essentially no supplies right even, even though adult education is a priority of the Kenyan government and a number of development NGOs. Ideally, I can get the Center some classroom supplies, textbooks compatible with national standards, bookshelves, and computers. We'll see. The Center is a fantastic cause and is very successful thus far, so I've got my fingers crossed.
The Center deals with the huge number of Kenyans who are employed as cooks, laundresses, housekeepers, and childcare specialists, most of whom have moved from rural areas to Nairobi in search of work. Domestic labor is one of the biggest career fields in Kenya, but also one of the most overlooked. Half of the young women in Kibera are employed as domestic workers in Nairobi. It's an issue inseparable from urban migration, human trafficking, labor rights, and women's rights.
Many of the women who move voluntarily or are coerced into coming to Nairobi end up associating with organizations called bureaus that operate downtown. In theory, they works as agents for the women, but the reality of the situation is quite scary. The women live in horrible conditions and are often physically, emotionally, or sexually abused by men who share their living quarters (kikombas). Their agents essentially sell them to employers who often exploit or abuse them in turn.
A main project of the Center for Domestic Training is to reach out to these women. Those who were abused are taken in as rescue cases, and all others are eligible for the Center's month-long training program. They're housed at the Nairobi West compound where they learn to cook for themselves, clean their living quarters, and do their own laundry. The Center then connects the students to employers who come in search of a housekeeper, and the students leave when they're ready. If they can, they pay back the Center for their training in small installments.
The Center has about forty students at a time – they take classes on skills training, personal development, labor rights, and HIV/AIDS awareness. Because so many of the girls left secondary school to move to Nairobi and work, the Center has recently introduced a literacy program that allows students to earn their high school degrees through classes on Sundays (Sundays are required days off in the contract employers must sign with the students they hire).
I've been incredibly inspired by the people I've met at the Center. This organization gives people a chance to pull themselves up and support themselves and their children, and provides a safe place in case the women are abused or exploited in the workplace after leaving the compound. Most of the staff are former trainees who feel that the Center is their home. This is effective sustainable development at its best.
The Center has outgrown itself. Two new compounds opened last year – one is just getting running in the slum of Satellite, and one is thriving in the slum of Eastleigh thanks to a UNHCR grant, allowing hundreds of Somali refugees to receive training. The system they've worked out functions gloriously. All the Center needs is more space and the funding to continue growing.
Amanda and I have been working to organize the office, create an employer database, and create a library catalog of donated books. We've also taught a staff seminar; and Amanda intends to continue working in the classroom. I'd like to work on documenting rescue cases and ex-students who have started their own businesses, as there are a lot of forgotten success stories. I just need a translator, as most don't speak English and many don't speak Swahili.
Amanda is working to get a grant from UNIFEM to do more advocacy work, while I'm trying to expand the literacy program through the Commonwealth Education Fund or UNESCO. The Center is working with essentially no supplies right even, even though adult education is a priority of the Kenyan government and a number of development NGOs. Ideally, I can get the Center some classroom supplies, textbooks compatible with national standards, bookshelves, and computers. We'll see. The Center is a fantastic cause and is very successful thus far, so I've got my fingers crossed.
Thursday, March 6
Finally, the new year
For most of the last two months, nobody was keen to wish anyone a happy 2008. The new year has finally arrived in Kenya, and we couldn't be happier to hear it. Raila and Kibaki signed an agreement to set up a coalition government, creating the post of prime minister and two deputies, dividing the cabinet between the two parties, and sharing power in Parliament. MPs from both parties have agreed to push through necessary constitutional changes and get this thing rolling. From the way Raila, Kibaki, and the MPs are talking, this is really going to happen. Soon.
Yay!
As things really calm down around Kenya, police presence is returning to Nairobi. We're expecting hawkers to be driven out of the city center any day now, as MPs no longer need their votes and the police aren't busy keeping chaos from breaking out. Yesterday morning, right after stepping onto the USIU bus in city center, Amanda and I heard shouting and looked out the window to see men with signs running past us, away from clouds of tear gas. The few of us on the bus shut all the windows and watched. They had been protesting for Maina Njenga, a Mungiki leader who was just rearrested. The police really aren't fooling around. There have also been clashes with hawkers who don't want to vacate the downtown district.
So a bit about my recent trip!
Although I can't help feeling that my heart is and will always be in Lamu, Maasai Mara was one of the most incredible places I've ever been. I had made up my mind to not enjoy myself on the trip because I'm too proud to let myself be treated like a tourist... and when you're on safari, you can't escape the “Jambo”s. But wow. What a place.
Our camp, Tipilikwani, was more of a resort than a camp. The owner was fantastic, and his wife is the chef I aspire to be. They also had two pet mongooses that liked nothing better than biting my toes under the dinner table. My cabin-tent hybrid overlooked the Talek River, on the other side of which stretched the Mara, so at night I could hear lions and hyenas crying to one another. They do wander into the camp on occasion, so after sunset you have to call a Maasai askari to escort you around the camp. Anyway, KJ put me in a four-person suite with a clawed foot bathtub by myself, which I thoroughly enjoyed (weird story of the trip – I was so excited to have my own room for a change, I slept in my underwear the first night. Bad news is, temperatures in the Mara plummet overnight, so I woke up for our sunrise game drive around 5:30 and froze my ass off running across the cabin to my bag. Bad choice, Rachel). But I really can't remember the last time I felt so completely and totally relaxed and altogether spoiled. I can see the appeal of the safari life.
Sunrise and sunset of both days, we went on game drives. It was pretty fascinating to see the animals, but it was really the scenery that killed me. Kenya's Maasai Mara is Serengeti Park on the Tanzanian side of the border, if that gives the name a little more meaning. We're talking rolling grassland, beautiful streams, lone acacia trees on hilltops, rainshowers in the distance... heavenly. The safari trucks would go flying back to camp at sunset, and you could smell the rain on the wind. Anyway, we didn't find any rhinos (the rarest) or cheetahs (though we looked and looked), but we saw plenty of gazelle, topis, impalas, zebras, giraffes, elephants, lions, hyenas, hippos, jackals, hares, foxes, crocodiles, lovely birds, and one very very rare leopard. We also splurged for a night safari where we saw spring hares, mongooses, and an aardvark (also extremely rare), in addition to an unbeLIEVable amount of stars. That poor aardvark. It got chased at very high speeds by two massive Range Rovers, which then crashed through the brush where it took cover, pursuing it for another ten minutes or so. I bet the poor thing will never recover from that experience.
The really glorious part of the trip was that we were in the middle of nowhere. We flew into a little airstrip and drove an hour to reach Talek, the Maasai village near our camp. Maasais are the quintessential African tribe that you see on the cover of National Geographic because they look so exotic. Now their villages are supported mainly through cultural tourism. I don't particularly enjoy being part of that exchange, and I did somewhat regret my decision to go visit a village on our last day there. It felt very intrusive and uncomfortable, though I learned quite a bit. Out in the middle of the Mara, the Maasai lifestyle means paying a bride price of seven cows to marry a circumsized girl of about 14, then buying more wives for your compound as you accumulate cows. Minimal freshwater and minimal electricity in all of Talek... mostly just Maasais in bright red kikois herding cattle. It makes for an intensely beautiful, intensely quiet place.
Anyway, after visiting the Maasai village on Monday morning, we were running a bit late, then stopped to check out a huge herd of elephants on our way to the airport. When we saw the plane flying over us on the way to the airstrip, we took off flying across the bumpy savanna at about 60 miles an hour. As I was sitting in the very back seat of the open-sided Range Rover, this was a mildly terrifying experience, but mostly hilarious. I took a video on my little camera that I'll have to show you all when I'm home. Anyway, we got on the plane and took off about three minutes later. Bit of a close call.
These past few days in bustling Nairobi have been even tougher than the return from Lamu. The fact that I'm buried beneath schoolwork doesn't help, but I really miss that clawed foot bathtub and the feeling of driving across a washboard in a Range Rover at 50 miles an hour. I wouldn't mind too much going back sometime, I must say.
Yay!
As things really calm down around Kenya, police presence is returning to Nairobi. We're expecting hawkers to be driven out of the city center any day now, as MPs no longer need their votes and the police aren't busy keeping chaos from breaking out. Yesterday morning, right after stepping onto the USIU bus in city center, Amanda and I heard shouting and looked out the window to see men with signs running past us, away from clouds of tear gas. The few of us on the bus shut all the windows and watched. They had been protesting for Maina Njenga, a Mungiki leader who was just rearrested. The police really aren't fooling around. There have also been clashes with hawkers who don't want to vacate the downtown district.
So a bit about my recent trip!
Although I can't help feeling that my heart is and will always be in Lamu, Maasai Mara was one of the most incredible places I've ever been. I had made up my mind to not enjoy myself on the trip because I'm too proud to let myself be treated like a tourist... and when you're on safari, you can't escape the “Jambo”s. But wow. What a place.
Our camp, Tipilikwani, was more of a resort than a camp. The owner was fantastic, and his wife is the chef I aspire to be. They also had two pet mongooses that liked nothing better than biting my toes under the dinner table. My cabin-tent hybrid overlooked the Talek River, on the other side of which stretched the Mara, so at night I could hear lions and hyenas crying to one another. They do wander into the camp on occasion, so after sunset you have to call a Maasai askari to escort you around the camp. Anyway, KJ put me in a four-person suite with a clawed foot bathtub by myself, which I thoroughly enjoyed (weird story of the trip – I was so excited to have my own room for a change, I slept in my underwear the first night. Bad news is, temperatures in the Mara plummet overnight, so I woke up for our sunrise game drive around 5:30 and froze my ass off running across the cabin to my bag. Bad choice, Rachel). But I really can't remember the last time I felt so completely and totally relaxed and altogether spoiled. I can see the appeal of the safari life.
Sunrise and sunset of both days, we went on game drives. It was pretty fascinating to see the animals, but it was really the scenery that killed me. Kenya's Maasai Mara is Serengeti Park on the Tanzanian side of the border, if that gives the name a little more meaning. We're talking rolling grassland, beautiful streams, lone acacia trees on hilltops, rainshowers in the distance... heavenly. The safari trucks would go flying back to camp at sunset, and you could smell the rain on the wind. Anyway, we didn't find any rhinos (the rarest) or cheetahs (though we looked and looked), but we saw plenty of gazelle, topis, impalas, zebras, giraffes, elephants, lions, hyenas, hippos, jackals, hares, foxes, crocodiles, lovely birds, and one very very rare leopard. We also splurged for a night safari where we saw spring hares, mongooses, and an aardvark (also extremely rare), in addition to an unbeLIEVable amount of stars. That poor aardvark. It got chased at very high speeds by two massive Range Rovers, which then crashed through the brush where it took cover, pursuing it for another ten minutes or so. I bet the poor thing will never recover from that experience.
The really glorious part of the trip was that we were in the middle of nowhere. We flew into a little airstrip and drove an hour to reach Talek, the Maasai village near our camp. Maasais are the quintessential African tribe that you see on the cover of National Geographic because they look so exotic. Now their villages are supported mainly through cultural tourism. I don't particularly enjoy being part of that exchange, and I did somewhat regret my decision to go visit a village on our last day there. It felt very intrusive and uncomfortable, though I learned quite a bit. Out in the middle of the Mara, the Maasai lifestyle means paying a bride price of seven cows to marry a circumsized girl of about 14, then buying more wives for your compound as you accumulate cows. Minimal freshwater and minimal electricity in all of Talek... mostly just Maasais in bright red kikois herding cattle. It makes for an intensely beautiful, intensely quiet place.
Anyway, after visiting the Maasai village on Monday morning, we were running a bit late, then stopped to check out a huge herd of elephants on our way to the airport. When we saw the plane flying over us on the way to the airstrip, we took off flying across the bumpy savanna at about 60 miles an hour. As I was sitting in the very back seat of the open-sided Range Rover, this was a mildly terrifying experience, but mostly hilarious. I took a video on my little camera that I'll have to show you all when I'm home. Anyway, we got on the plane and took off about three minutes later. Bit of a close call.
These past few days in bustling Nairobi have been even tougher than the return from Lamu. The fact that I'm buried beneath schoolwork doesn't help, but I really miss that clawed foot bathtub and the feeling of driving across a washboard in a Range Rover at 50 miles an hour. I wouldn't mind too much going back sometime, I must say.
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