None of these travels would be possible without
the patience, flexibility, support and companionship of my partner, Dennis
Bowman. I wrote these musings, but we both lived the adventure.
MARCH 21 AND 22, 2016: TAMPA TO NAIROBI
Penzance and its pirates are way below, along our first
landfall in Europe. Up here, 7 hours into our flight to Frankfort, folded into
steerage on this Lufthansa silver suppository, I stare down at my ‘special meal’, Hindu
vegetarian, garbanzos rolling around in a sea of dispirited spinach. To my right
is a South Asian family, bound for Bangalore, mama in jeans and tee shirt,
Grand mama wrapped in yards of bright flowers flowing over her sari. They are
Hindu, but clearly not vegetarian. My drooling and covetous glances at
their bacon and eggs are not returned.
They are
busy, bacon and eggs making a perilous arabesque journey to the moving target
of a hyperactive 2-year-old. He is cute, big eyed and wide smiled, with
cappuccino skin and eye lashes worthy of a mature giraffe. His Olympian lungs
and megaphonic vocal cords suggest that aspirations to the opera stage, or hog
calling, may be in his future. He has been practicing his operatic aria of
discontent much of the night. Still, cuteness counts, and he wins my vote.
The flight
over the Atlantic has been worthy of Bette Davis: ‘fasten your seat belts, it’s
gonna be a bumpy night’. And it is...In two languages. Frankfort airport
however is smooth, but complex and long going, up, down, and around, on
terrazzo floors, escalators, a tram and through super vigilant security. I
wince in sympathy as a most polite Herr Efficiency confiscates â bottle of
Johnny Walker Black Label from the disbelieving guy in front of me and pours it
away. Our two-hour connection time, with no checked luggage to reclaim, is
enough. Just
Frankfort Airport
is a connection hub for the world, a Star Wars speakeasy of variety. A tall
Middle Eastern man lopes by in full floor length robe, and accessorized with
the universals of the young: backpack, and baseball cap, brim to the back.
There are many women with head scarves. Are these refugees from the torment
raging to the south and east? A suited man in his seventies gently drapes a
fake fur coat and a thick towel over his prone wife, spread over several
chairs, gently arranges a pillow on her purse for her head and pats her
shoulder before walking off. She pulls her red head scarf over her eyes.
Their Aldi supermarket carry on bag says ‘it’s all about saving green’.
She sleeps.
Improbably
dressed travelers, often twanging in the accents of our side of The Pond, flap
by in various versions of Fashions by Trump: loud, vulgar, rude,
tasteless, insensitive.
There are a
few Black African faces waiting for Nairobi. The soft cadence and rippling
consonants of Africa’s contributions to the sounds of English are aural
massages softening the visual cacophony. I am so ready for Africa.
Flying over
Dubrovnik with Tirana, Albania ahead. I wonder if Albanians know that their
most famous export, Mother Theresa, is now a saint? Is she Saint Mother, Saint
Theresa…of which there are several already cluttering up the pantheon-- -or
Saint Whatever Her Birth Name Was? The burdens of beatification are many.
Special
Hindu Vegetarian lunch, SHVL on the aluminum foil cover, is anything but S,
verging on the awful, skirting indigestibility, messy to manage with the
arms-tight-to-the-sides gymnastics required on this anorexic and ancient
tunnel, Lufthansa flight 0590. It has been eons since I last flew between
continents in seats arranged in 2 narrow rows of three. My padded perch on the
aisle is cramped and a bit dangerous. Overhanging left arms are helpless
targets for the food and beverage behemoths plying the string like aisles.
There’s no relief to my right. Wedged in the middle seat is an expansive
testimony to the power of a Beer, Broth und Bratwurst diet and to protoplasm’s
ability to flow outward. He’s nice but he does balloon. And snore.
I constrict,
cover my eyes and sleep. I awake with 1700 miles to go. On the screen is a
landscape devoid of landmarks: southern Egypt from 37,000 feet. We cross the
Nile and Lake Nasser. I remember sailing silently for days on these green
swaths through the buff sand. Two days ago I made my final crossing of the
stage as a guard of pharaohs in Verdi’s fictional Egypt. Now I’m 7 miles above
the real thing.
Later, we’re
over Sudan and I see the great ‘S’ where the Nile curves back on itself.
Somewhere down there is Napata, a crucial spot in Verdi’s melodic version of
Egypt. That may have been true in fact as well. If so, its importance has been
diminished by the millennia. We camped there 3 years ago, near stone pillars
asleep, like us, in the sands.
Now, we’re
above Khartoum, Sudan. The label on the screen is unnecessary. You can’t miss
the spot where the White Nile, flowing northward from Its source in Uganda
meets the Blue Nile rushing northwestward and downward from its source in the
mountains of Ethiopia. We’ve been to both birthplaces and to their meeting in Khartoum, swirls
of currents mixing water of two colors (shades of muddy, neither being white or
blue) into the one Nile. That day we saw a man draw a great fish into his log
canoe from just at the very spot where the Nile is born. I doubt he cared
whether the fish was spawned in Uganda or Ethiopia.
Most of the
fertile silt that the Nile deposits in Egypt, and which has made life in
Egypt’s desert possible for millennia, comes from the Blue Nile as its scours
the mountains of Ethiopia. And, therein lie the roots of a serious geopolitical
problem. Ethiopia wants to dam the Blue Nile to extract hydroelectric power.
Dams prevent the silt from reaching Egypt. Stalemate.
Ethiopia,
quite possibly the birthplace of humankind 6 million years ago, is also the
birthplace of Egypt. We will return there in 5 days.
A view from
7 miles above suffices for now. We’re skirting Ethiopia’s western border. Green
is overtaking dust. It rains here. Sometimes. For the first time
Ethiopian place names are on the screen. Lake Tana, source of the Blue Nile is
a smudge on the screen’s horizon.
Africa is
huge. We’ve been flying for 7 hours, most of it over Africa. Nairobi is an hour
and a half and 800 miles to the south. Several hours beyond that is South
Africa, and beyond that, Cape of Good Hope, where Africa dips its toes into the
southern oceans.
Dry sands
reappear, conquering the green, then we see the blue of one of Africa ’s
sublime immense lakes, water-filled rents of the Rift Valley.
As we drop
closer to Nairobi and the dreaded festivities associated with entry procedures
in Africa, my elegant Lufthansa plastic water cup cracks as I drink. There’s
hardly enough space for water to flow in this plane, but flow it does, down
into my shirt, over my passport and 3 of the 4 forms required to enter Kenya.
The passport shrugs. The forms shrivel. Fortunately, no one collects them and
we pass muster at the visa counter. Fifty dollars poorer, we walk into Africa.
Our driver
is not there, but we expect to wait. Nairobi traffic is horrendous. We chat
with a young guy from Tampa here to do some volunteer work with his doctor
girlfriend. In due time our driver arrives. The delicate and soft spoken
Joseph was of course caught in traffic and then in the parking mess common
here. He charms us with a radiant smile and a gentle welcome. Karibu, welcome,
he says, and one of my few Swahili words surfaces: asante, thank you.
We are in
Africa.
Asante.
MARCH 23, 2016: TO MASAI MARA
‘That’s a Masai
village and that’s the school where I teach. I teach English. Will you come to
my shop, please, and look?’
The shy,
well dressed, middle-aged man points first into hazy landscape thousands
of feet below us and off in the distance, then to a shack draped with tourist
goodies a dozen yards to our left. There are 3 here all selling the same stuff,
no buyers in any of them. It’s the low season, there are few tourists, and he
has no income. We politely refuse his invitation. He smiles sadly, shrugs a bit
and turns away. Our policy is to buy, if we buy at all, directly from the
craftspeople, hoping to put the money where it can do the most good.
Still, I
don’t feel good. This man ekes out a living perched on a ledge overlooking one
of the most stupendous views on the planet: Africa’s Great Rift Valley. People spend
more than he earns in a year for a few days living in this view. Color us
guilty.
We stop here
for milky tea and a warm breakfast chapatti on our 6-hour bumpy ride (‘African
massage’) to the Masai Mara, home to the red-draped Masai people. The Mara contains
one of the planet’s greatest concentrations of large animals, and is one of the
iconically beautiful spots in Africa. We go for all of that, and to breathe
again in the edenic perfection of Africa.
To get there
we leave the tourist shacks and snake down the vertical face of the Great
Escarpment, the eastern edge of the Great Rift Valley, the immense 6000-mile
rupture in the Earth that is splitting Africa in two. In some places water has
filled its cracks, thus the Red Sea, and Africa’s great lakes, Victoria among
them. In others, sere and inhospitable, erosion of the walls of the Rift has
washed away eons and gifted us with the fossils of our most ancient ancestors,
hardened into rock here in humankind’s cradle.
We’ve been
in the Rift before, in Ethiopia, where the bottom sinks into the Danakil
Depression, 225 feet below sea level, lowest spot in Africa and the hottest
place on the planet, unearthly in its raw geology. Here in Kenya the flat
bottom of the Rift is almost a mile above sea level, the climate mild, the
landscape verdant and spacious, grazed by large animals more abundant and
diverse than anywhere else on the planet.
We will be
here 4 days, in good hands.
Those hands
have been arranged by Kikwetu Cultural Adventures. Earlier this morning, Kenneth
Kikwetu, energy flowing from every pore, with a smile almost as broad as Africa
itself, pummels my hand and jerks us out of jet-lagged zombie hood. ‘Jambo’.
‘Kuribu’. ‘Hello’. ‘Welcome’. His driver and cook will be in charge of us for
the next 4 days. He lays the gift I’ve brought him against his arm and his
smile broadens, reaches both coasts of the continent. The black and white plaid
shirt is perfect. So are the lime green tee shirts he gives us with the logo of
his safari company in brilliant white. We meet our crew: Jacob, a young and
muscular wraith, tightly skinned in stove pipe, waist hugging jeans, and tee
shirt, is my bet for our driver, and Peter, all traditional build, a shoe in as
cook. Wrong. Jacob learned to cook from his father, (who cooked for the
British), and ‘is living his dream’ cooking for tourists. Peter has been a
driver for 18 years. Good hands, indeed.
Eight hours
later, thoroughly massaged--- ‘for free’--- laughs Peter, as he covers the
last bumps through the trees into Mwangaza Mara, our camp for the next 3
nights. Laughing Jacinta, well on her way to a ‘traditional’ build,
abundant hips swaying a great mass of pink cloth, leads us through the
trees to our ‘tent’, a roomy house interpreted in canvas, and up the few
steps that keep the wooden floor off the ground. She bends, unzips the
door and bubbles her instructions. The huge washroom and shower are a second
room through another canvas door, dramatically unzipped with a delicious
flourish. The lady has style in spades. Hot water? Turn the tap, wait 10 minutes.
Electricity and lights? 7 to 10 at night. 6 to 7:30 in the morning. Need help?
Just ask. Then she exits with a smile, a wave, and a swirl of pink. We miss her
immediately.
We spread
out on two single beds and a double, roll up the canvas walls to let air
and light in through the screening that keeps the bugs out. And are home.
In 15
minutes we head out for a sunset drive in paradise. Gnus, Thompson’s Gazelles,
Cape Buffalo, Impala graze and ignore us. Alert black-backed Jackals do not.
Yes, we see lions, lounging, as they seem programmed to, and greeting us with a
bored yawn, quintessentially cat. The Masai Mara is stunning, worth every bumpy
mile. Tomorrow and the next day it will have many hours to seep into us.
Jacob
creates a delicious dinner, the water is hot in 5 minutes, not 10, we are
asleep in a nanosecond.
In a canvas
house.
In the Masai
Mara.
In the Great
Rift Valley.
In
Africa.
Halfway
through the night I awake. Hyenas are calling in the dark.
Kuribu.
MARCH 24 AND 25, 2016: THE MASAI MARA
Our two full days on safari begin early. We bounce at 7:30
into a burnished landscape, renaissance gold in early sunlight.
Our first
sighting is of Wildebeests, aka Gnus, in the nursery of new gnus right near
camp. Gnus never seem to be alone, but congregate in great snuffling herds.
During the Great Migrations these herds number in the millions and turn the
landscape black.
Famously
considered dim (probably erroneously, because they out breed and outnumber and
out survive all the other big guys in the Mara), they are the poster child for
unattractive antelopes with their Nicholas Cage hangdog faces and odd shape,
wrapped in unimaginative basic black. Yet…the soft slanting light of morning
shimmers on to their coats and beauty erupts. The basic gnu color now
becomes the color of burnished antique silver, throwing highlights back at the
sun. Draped over their shoulders are pennants of a darker metal, perhaps
polished iron. In the right light, the gnu is glorious. Attention paid is
attention rewarded, Gnu-wise.
The gnu is
the big cousin in a family of antelopes that share that basic face and
physique. But, evolution has been at work here. It has eschewed the dark subtle
stripes of the gnu when conjuring up the elegant Hartebeest, and gone in for
large haunch and shoulder patches of gun metal grey on pure copper. And then
done a nose job and gone pure unadulterated copper for the handsome Topi.
We drive
past the newly reassessed gnus, pay our fees and pass into Masai Mara.
Slight nighttime
rains, early tastes of the rainy season have washed the air into diamante
clarity. The Mara is a limitless landscape of golden grasses, blue sky, posies
of dark green tree, and, far, far away, smoky blue smudges of the cliffs
of the Rift Valley. The grasses are like linen dyed with the soft gold colors
of yellow onion peel, soft on the eye, rich to the touch.
Animals are
everywhere, though sometimes hard to spot. Even elephants can be mere black
dots on horizon, pointillist pachyderms.
Our
catalogue of favorites grows:
Impalas, the
males magisterial and elegant in great twists of horned grace. And the females!
Hornless, angelic, glorious in profile, Nefertitis of antelope kind.
Blackbacked
Jackals, all furtive scurry.
Banded
Mongoose (geese, gooses?), rippling in waves through the grass.
Immense
Elands, giants of the antelopes, brahma bull ungraceful, elusive, shy, rarely.
Seen. We see 3 up close.
Thompson’s
Gazelles, russet, black and white perfection, the puppies of the Mara,
terminally cute, tails wagging nonstop.
Topi,
slender gnu-cousins, polished Italian leather in motion, and their charming
habit of posing atop any mound of earth, statue-still for hours.
Ostriches,
silliest birds in creation, eternally frozen in my mind’s eye as the myopic
ballerinas of Fantasia, but in fact majestic, 2nd in height only to
elephants, both dwarfed by batiked towers of undulating giraffes.
Cheetahs are wire-sprung whiplashes, gorgeously mascara-ed up
close, sinuous grace from afar. We see them both ways, charmed.
And the
elephants! Again! Elephants are masses of grey shadow flowing slowly through
the grass then disappearing behind the wispiest of trees, masterful
Houdinis.
It is run up
to the rainy season. We could be awash, but luck is with us…and other tourists
are not, wary of downpours and dirt roads turned into jeep-trapping sumps. We
see few vehicles. Peter rescues two of them, mired in muck, one
filled with a large unhappy local South Asian family, parents frowning, ebony haired
kiddies into the adventure.
Our days
start under cloudless skies. By noon’s picnic lunch and nap I’m looking up at
puff clouds, spotting the blue. By 3 pm they have grown into an armada of white
gaseous galleons sailing to a rendezvous on the horizon, their bottoms darkened
with their wet burden. By late afternoon they have crashed into the horizon and
piled into massive rain clouds. The Rainy Season has arrived. In theory. No
rain falls. We stay dry. Add continue to drive thru the gold.
At the park
gate, Masai women hawk the beaded jewelry they wear with such style and grace
against their luminous black skin, draping arms full through the windows. I
negotiate for a key fob, beads surrounding a small shell. It hangs perfectly in
the knot of my bandana.
Back at the
lodge, Laughing Jacinta and her ever-smiling helpmate, Daniel, corral us for a
photo session. She grabs my hat, puts Dennis’ on Daniel. He adopts my
eyeglasses and we shoot away, print the photos, and laugh a lot. L J is indeed
a force of nature…a kind and jovial nature, rich and welcoming, Kenyan.
MARCH 26, 2016: BACK TO NAIROBI, PART ONE, OF TWO
Octopussy
Kingozi has a store off a dusty road on the outskirts of Nabok (Dirty River), Kenya.
I’ll never know what she sells behind that lurid chartreuse sign that announces
her name. I will, however, borrow her name and give her a story.
I collect
names for characters to use in novels and short stories I’ll never write.
Octopussy Kingozi joins a crowd of never-to-be literary sisters, names offered
by friends, or my own imagining, living in story lines of my own invention.
Here are some of my favorites.
Aurora B.
Umlaut, night owl Inuit detective with a talent for languages and mania for
orthographic accuracy, name courtesy of my dorm head in college 55 years ago.
Turallurah
Goldfarb, waitress and finger nail model, faux fur enthusiast, with
aspirations as a singer, and designs on the hard body of her policeman
neighbor, name courtesy of old and sorely missed friend, Ron Boccieri, 48 years
ago.
Miss
Redosier Dogwood and Miss Peacock Flabellum, spinster cohabitants of a decayed
ante bellum mansion in a bayou-sodden backwater, with a nose for crime, a taste
for bourbon laced mint juleps (light on the mint and julep, please, bless your
heart) and difficulty staying sober, names courtesy of a tree in my pasture 30
years ago and a prop I carried in Aida a few weeks ago.
Octopussy
has unseated my previous Number One, Queenzabeth Ruwenzori, who has reigned
unchallenged for 5 years, a retired Ugandan beauty queen (Miss Banana Recipes,
Cream Pie Division 2003, Miss Gorilla Trek, 2004), semi-successful tour
operator, terrible cook, mini-clairvoyant, unwilling crime solver.
Kenya is country
rich in imagination-catching names. I watch roadside stands slide by for hours
as we drive back from Masai Mara to Nairobi. But, not even Lobster Kimz,
Purveyor of Electric Supplies, can unseat her. Octopussy Kingozi reigns
unchallenged. She will reveal her story to me in time.
Spiffy
names, soft consonants and soothing rhythms aren’t the only enrichments Africa
has gifted to English. There are tasty turns of phrase spicing the linguistic
scene all along the road. ‘Ready food’ (aka a buffet), and ‘self-contained
rooms’ (aka bathroom included) are two of my new favorites. Don’t look for self-contained
rooms at a tiny establishments living under signs offering ‘Butchery and
Hotel’. These invite you to purchase cut up animals and/or stop a bit in the
attached snack shop for a spot of tea. Your choice, but no bed or bath are
available. If you want a hotel look for a sign offering ‘lodge’ or a
‘guest house’. But, hold on: a big building with a sign saying ‘hotel’ probably
is a hotel. A tiny one isn’t. Clear?
We don’t
need either kind of hotel, but we do need gas. At the same petrol station we
used in the trip up to the Mara 4 days ago, the trinket seller, who offered to
trade his beads for my bandana then, runs up to my window, waves an armful of
beaded thingies, recognizes me, greets me as an old friend…and surely an old
friend can help by buying something.
Of course, I
succumb. It’s no trade. My bandana is safe, as we haggle and banter
over his beads. Two beaded key chains with sea shells and one very worn Kenyan
bill---ten times the agreed upon price--- change owners. He gets half of what
he asked. I give only slightly more than I counter-offered. Smiles seal the
deal. It has taken 30 seconds. He has no change (no one ever seems to), rushes
off, returns with a handful of small denomination bills, wrinkled and antiqued,
thanks me, smiles, waves us goodbye, and rushes off waving trinket laden arms
at new arrivals, offering beads to go. The key fobs settle into their new life
as decorations on my hat, carrying memories.
MARCH 26, 2016: Back to Nairobi, Part Two, of two
The morning opens with a visit to a traditional. Masai
village near our lodge. To get there we pass through a somber clutter of tin
shanties, satellites to a string of bars. The village is a traditional ring of branches
enclosing 200 people. ‘All descended from the same grandfather’, red-robed
Thomas tells us as he gestures with his long wooden staff and leads us through
the branches.
We much
prefer to watch a culture unfold before us than to have it performed, but this
is all we have. The young Masai men who jump dance for us seem to enjoy this
display of their springy athleticism and our appreciation is genuine. High
jumpers have high value in the marriage stakes. Strong legs make strong men,
hunters and herdsmen both. Maybe our visit is contributing something after all,
even if just a chance to practice jumping.
We watch
women weave bead ornaments. Some notice my beaded eyeglass lanyard, and smile
politely…but skeptically …when I tell them I made it. Whispered comments and
shared glances and giggles follow. Beads are women’s work, as is house
building, cooking, child care. Men? ‘We watch the animals.’
Thomas has
one wife: his father has 6, so has six houses, and many children. Thomas has
but one wife. And, therefore, but one house. We sit in its smoky
darkness. ‘My wife was expensive, cost 10 cows.’ This wife was chosen for
him after he proved he was an adult by killing a lion. He will choose future
wives. His jumping skill will be a factor.
My obvious
fairy tale of a place (the Himalayas) where one woman can have several
husbands, usually brothers, gets the response it obviously deserves: a
snort of disbelief.
Thomas
smoothes a thin twig with the sharkskin leaves of the hard sandpiper tree. Then
the men create fire by rapidly rotating this stick of the hard wood in a well
of softer wood. Friction works. Lesson learned.
We
graciously deflect a clumsy attempt to sell us industrially made trinkets at
absurdly inflated prices. Thomas tries another ploy, this time successful, and
offers to deliver the bag of pens we’ve brought for the local school. I doubt
Mr. Lenny, the only teacher there on this holiday weekend, or any of the
800 students at the school, will ever see them. When last seen Thomas was
testing the pens on a scrap of paper.
Hours later,
African massage road long behind us, we reclimb the Great Escarpment,
snaking up from the floor of the Rift Valley, leap frogging through the line of
trucks all wheezing fetid black exhaust into the cool air.
Too soon, we
say goodbye to indefatigable Peter and slyly handsome Jacob. They have been
fine safari partners, good hands, indeed.
The Nairobi
Hilton, free with hotel points from those years on the road, is gorgeous and
superbly appointed, but stifling in its generic hotelness. There will be no
screen walls, Laughing Jacinta, or hooting hyenas, no endless space, no
wildness.
East Africa
has done its magic. Again. I feel my DNA reaching out to the grasses, the
sky, the animals. It has been here before, and misses this paradise. I wonder
if, even 60 thousand years after my ancestors left Africa, they remembered.
this place dimly, as the Garden of Eden, and that leaving and long journey, as
punishment. Surely, someone once said ‘who booked this trip anyway’ and ‘uh, tell
me again why this was a good idea’. And blamed someone else.
KENYA
Return to Nairobi
May 28 and May 29, 2016
MAY 28-NAIROBI DAY 1
‘Marry me. I can make you very comfortable’.
The laughing buxom lady winks and
bounces her bountiful bosomy assets, world-class Dolly parts for sure. We’re in
Nairobi’s outdoors weekend crafts market, and she is a charming and crafty flirt…
anything to make a deal.
Bosom Lady’s other offerings (kitenge
cloth re-thought---beautifully--- as pants and tunics) are more tempting, but
we thank her. She chuckles, and bounces a farewell, as we move on. She’s a very
pretty woman.
Some of the other goodies spread on
tarps or hanging from makeshift frames are hand-crafted, genuinely of, and
from, African hands, lovely. Many are shoddy, wham, bam thank you ma’am,
pointlessly banal, artless, muzungu tourist schlock, smelling of Chinese mass
production.
It’s a colorful, but difficult, world,
this market. We browse, not serious buyers. For many, perhaps all, of the
sellers it’s a serious place, a lifeline. The prices start stratospheric (and,
why not?), can be bargained down to earth (if need be), though not too close to
sea-level for muzungu (who have so much money they can fly across the world to
get here). Most of the shoppers are locals. They know the ropes to pull the
prices lower still.
Many people pay more than they should,
rarely more than makes them happy. The sellers know their bottom price. A sale
is a market mambo, a dance of the desire of the buyer and the need of the
seller, the former cajoled into the dance by a tempting array, an engaging
spiel, or bouncing boobies.
Determined to remain wall flowers at
this dance, we eventually succumb, perhaps a bit left-footed. The damage is ten
dollars, not quite rock bottom, perhaps, but acceptable to us, welcomed by the
three women we danced with. Our trophies are two squishable soft toilet paper roll
sized baskets, decorated with a few rows of Maasai beads, one beaded eyeglass
lanyard, and yet another small fabric bag for my collection, a patchwork of
pieces of kitenge cloth, leftovers in a useful, honest, and appreciated,
reincarnation. Maybe it will replace my over-experienced passport holder (its
zipper no longer cooperative). For this trip, anyway.
Dinner is a dozen tender chunks of
teriyaki chicken with spicy fried noodles and veggies, more meat than we’ve
eaten in our 68 days on the road. We wash it down with pineapple-mint juice,
swampy green, but tasty, tasty, tasty.
Dined, if not wined, we pass once
again under the smile of the welcoming security guard in front of the barrier
that separates the hotel from the street, empty our pockets for the friendly
guards at the door, get beep-beep scanned by one more happy, uniformed security
guy, and enter the hotel.
I flopped into bed at about 03:00am
this morning after the flight from Rwanda and was awake at 07:00. Coma begins
to jelly my legs by 8pm.
Bed.
MAY 29-NAIROBI DAY 2 AND OUR LAST DAY IN AFRICA
‘Where do you come from’?
‘What is your name’?
‘Do you want a safari?
‘How long will you be in Kenya’?
‘Take my card’.
‘Come to my shop’.
‘I give you good price’.
The Nairobi street routines don’t vary
much. And they pop out of nowhere every few feet. A polite answer or smile, or
nod, is agreement to continue the conversation, a mistake if we want any peace
on our walk. Not reacting doesn’t work: ‘Why you don’t like to speak to
Africans.’
I hit upon an awful solution. I place
my hand on my ear and indicate I can’t hear. That gets me an expression of
sympathy, a smile, a wave, and some relief. A few instant street ‘friends’ whip
out a pad and pen, ever at the ready. That gets them a laugh. But I walk on alone.
I apologize to all who are genuinely
hearing challenged.
I can't resist another pass through
the Maasai Market. Once again, I am seduced into the market mambo and dance
away with beaded, camel leather sandals, destined to walk the walls of the
guest room, not the streets, and, inevitably, another bag, both bought for half
the original asking price, so below stratospheric, and perhaps not too far
above sea-level.
Life is better in Kenya than in many
places in Africa. Muzungu flock here for the herds of large mammals. We are a
source of income, famously voracious for services. But, we have to be tapped,
and the competition is tough. I have to keep that in focus. And, as is true all
over Africa, genial affability is the rule.
Nairobi is notoriously chaotic.
Security is tight for a reason. Armed guards scan luggage and bodies every time
we enter the hotel. The first level of guards stands at the street. He tells us
not to walk to the right. It doesn’t look any different from what we see down
to the left, but we do turn left and head for a late breakfast
It’s Sunday and the streets are quiet.
Charity, the waitress at our coffee shop, delivers fresh mango juice and
delicious cappuccino to both of us, 2 fried eggs to me, and an omelet with
toast to Dennis. 1200 Shillings is $12. The other customer chows down on her
‘African Breakfast Special’, lots of carbos, and red beans that smell
delicious. The young and smiling owner asks if we like the coffee. We do. He
beams.
Nairobi eaters are a varied bunch,
with eclectic tastes. On this street, grazers can and do chomp on pizza, fast
food chicken, (local or KFC), ‘Japan Teriyaki’, traditional food, and top them
with gummy ice cream extravaganzas from Coldstone Creamery, or go healthful
with fresh fruit juices (mango, passion fruit, pineapple, mint, or a mix)
available at any of them. The local physiques, tending towards the robust and
‘full figured’, suggest business is good.
Traditional dress is rare among the
women, tights and short skirts not. Alas. Western dress is expensive for both
sexes, but especially for women. Their mothers, aunties, and grannies can wrap
head to foot in graceful meters of cloth, both beautiful and affordable.
Nairobi’s sophisticates dress in bits and pieces, all expensive. Style costs,
fashions change, wardrobes become ‘so last year’. And not every figure is
enhanced in tightness.
I’m not sorry that 1.5 days in Nairobi
is our last image of Africa. It reminds us of how extraordinary the preceding
66 days have been.
We’re already planning our return.
May 30, 2016
We're home
Folks,
Yes, we're home.
Last night at some time after 11, but
not quite midnight, Roger and Greg dropped us home. It had been over 30 hours
since we got on the plane in Nairobi and 43 or since we woke up there on May
29.
Thanks for your patience with my daily
blabs, er, uh, blogs, yes blogs.
If plans work out there may be more
from Africa at the end of the year. It's a big continent, we've only been to 15
of the 50+, and we want to see a few more before our Sell by Date. Our clock is
ticking....
Bob
and Dennis
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