Well it took 18 hours on planes and a half-day layover in Amsterdam (one last hurrah for the stoner in me before I stop smoking on a nearly daily basis, there’s no way I’m messing with drugs down here), but I finally made it to Africa. I arrived at the Nairobi airport in the late evening on September 7th, too tired to begin to take in my surroundings. I clutched tightly to all my worldly possessions, heeding the advice of everyone I know that’s been to Africa. I’m told that Nairobi is one of the four or five most dangerous places in the world right now, and of course, being white, I stick out like a sour thumb. Even my rattiest clothes give the impression that I’m unimaginably wealthy compared to virtually everyone I saw at the airport.
Nairobi is definitely intimidating; I can feel the gaze of dozens of Kenyans follow me wherever I walk in the city, so I’ve mainly stuck to my hotel room while in the city. But I thankfully had enough sense to book a 4-day safari to fill some of the time before my volunteer program begins. Besides being a good way to reduce my time sitting idle in Nairobi, the safari was one of the most magical things I’ve ever done in my life. I kept pinching myself to make sure I was not dreaming (I’m serious, I actually performed “reality checks,” such as pinching myself, every hour or so) because everything I was seeing was so surreal, like it was straight from the manuscript of The Lion King (AHHHHHHHHHHHH SEVENYAAAAAAAAAA!)
The first 3 days/2 nights were spent on the absolutely breathtaking Masai Mara animal reserve, in the southeast of Kenya. Well that’s not entirely true, the first day was spent just driving there through rural Kenya, occasionally drifting through what could be loosely described as cities on the worst roads I’ve ever been on (including the dreadful, winding mountainside passage that took me to Machu Picchu), and that was nearly as interesting as the safari itself. Seeing a completely different way of life was a trip for sure, and it hasn’t even hit me in full yet. I mean we’ve all seen images of Africa on the news or in those annoying Christain Children’s Fund infomercials (thanks Alex Trebek but I’m good. Sorry, what is “I’m good”), but I don’t think I need to explain that seeing it firsthand is a whole other beast. It’s actually a little bit sad to see what’s becoming of the country, and I don’t mean the environmental damage or anything like that, I mean the way that Africa seems to be adopting our western lifestyle like it’s the “right way” to live. Everyone here aspires to live the sort of life that we in the “developed” world take for granted, and I can only shake my head at the direction of the world. (Part of the blame for that goes to the book I read while on the trip and the eye-opening nature of the content contained within. It’s the follow-up to a book called Ishmael, which I beg all of you to read, it should be required reading in grade school. It’s called Mister B and is nearly as powerful as the book it follows. Seriously you guys, go read Ishmael, it’s absolutely phenomenal.)
But enough of my cookie-cutter opinions, let’s get on to the good stuff! Oh man, where to even begin. On the first day alone (which consisted of a “game-drive” of only about two hours) I saw zebras, a giraffe, a hyena scavenging some lion’s leftovers, a couple of cheeky monkeys, some hot (albeit brief) lion sex, and a gigantic pack of wildebeest (yes Hillary, they’re real). We then arrived at our lodging for the next two nights and it was magnificent. I stayed in a little straw hut with a guy named Patrick, from Brooklyn (by way of Long Island), and a guy from Egypt named Carlos. At night we drank Tusker (Kenya’s local beer) and jabbered away about our home lives and why we decided to come to Kenya of all places.
The next day was our only full day on the reserve and it would be futile for me to even try to explain how wonderful it was. I saw several packs of lions, a leopard in a tree, some vultures circling wildebeest corpses, scores of impala and gazelles, zebras, elephants, and more. But the best part of all was seeing cheetahs not ten feet from our safari van. As a kid I went through a period where I was obsessed with cheetahs. One of my early letters to Santa contained something along the lines of: Dear Santa, how are you? I am fine. I love cheetahs, they run 200 speed (yeah I thought speed was a unit of measurement, oh kids, they say the damndest things, don’t they?). So needless to say, the little kid that still lives in me was absolutely ecstatic when we approached one for the first time. I unfortunately didn’t get to see any of them take off full speed, after a pack of impala or something, but I don’t think that was ever very likely.
After lunch (mmmm a sandwich with the ham taken out of it, I told them fifty times I was vegetarian and they said it was all taken care of) we drove by a river and stopped to gawk at a pack of hippos for a while. We were hoping that the hundreds of wildebeest on the other side would eventually work up the balls to make the charge across the river, but the gigantic crocodile waiting on the shore convinced them otherwise. I don’t like seeing animals in pain or anything but it would have been awesome to have seen the croc take down one of the wildebeest as they sprinted across the river, à la every Discovery Channel special about Africa ever made.
The only animal on the reserve that we didn’t see were rhinos, and when I asked why we hadn’t seen any our guide, James, informed us that there were only about 4 or 5 left in the entire reserve because of illegal poaching. That was a bit of a downer, but I can’t exactly say I was surprised. But (spoiler alert!) don’t worry, I managed to cross rhinos of the list of “must-see in Africa” before the trip was over.
After the game-drive (man I hate that term) that day, we went to visit a genuine Masai village. The Masai are one of the indigenous peoples of that area of Africa, and many of them still live in the same way they did centuries ago. Not these guys though, these guys were on the route of tourists and their entire livelihoods have basically been shaped around making as much money off us as possible. We had to pay $20US just for the privilege of seeing their village, and at first I said “no way, I can’t afford that” (because I can’t). But Carlos insisted that I let him pay for me, he literally would not take “no thank you” for an answer. All things considered, I’m glad he did because it’s not something to be missed. I got to walk around their village, go into one of their humble homes, and hear them explain to me their way of life. At the age of 14, a male Masai is sent out to the wilderness for something of a vision-quest. But this wasn’t just a few months in the bush to learn how to make fire and hunt, they stay there for five years, until they’re 19. Talk about hardcore, I had no idea they did this, I was shocked. Could you imagine? At the age of 19 having spent the last quarter of your life in complete isolation with nothing but the vast Kenyan landscape to keep you company? Man, we “first-world” people have it easy. Holy hell, I’d be dead in 5 weeks, never mind 5 years. After that I learned that the women do literally all the work in the village, the men do absolutely dick all. A woman’s first task after getting married? Build your new man a house, don’t worry it only takes 3 months of solid work. Oh yeah, while you’re slaving away, your new husband is likely remarrying, they’re allowed multiple wives. It seems no matter where you look, women are getting the short end of the stick. It was incredibly interesting though, being there in that village. The pressure to buy overpriced souvenirs from them made things a little uncomfortable, but I’m used to telling people they aren’t getting my money, anyone who’s travelled anywhere outside of North America is.
We got up early the next day to get a two-hour excursion in before breakfast (believe it or not people, I am capable of getting up before noon), because the morning was our best chance at seeing lions hunting. While we didn’t get to see the actual kill, we got to see three female lions rip apart a wildebeest corpse then lazily sleuth over to their watering hole. It was as awesome as it was disgusting, and man oh man was it disgusting.
The rest of the day was more of the same as the last day, I don’t say that in a bad way at all, I just won’t bother repeating all the wicked animals we saw. I was sad to leave Masai Mara, one of the most incredible places I’ve ever seen, but I wasn’t sad for long, because I was heading to another reserve at Lake Nakuru.
Lake Nakuru was much different from Masai Mara. Masai Mara was a vast, endless plain with rolling hills, but Lake Nakuru was, uh, a lake. The safari in the Lake Nakuru reserve consisted of driving around the beautiful lake, occasionally up a hill or into the forest beyond. The animals were the same except for that there were no lions, but instead they were thousands of pelicans and flamingos. Oh yeah and baboons and monkeys. Hahaha I’m literally sitting here laughing just thinking about them, baboons are awesome. They refused to get out of the road when we approached, they would only reluctantly, slowly move to the side after a solid ten seconds of our driver’s horn blaring. There were about a hundred of them walking down the road at one point and one of the other tourists asked our guide where they were going. It was Sunday and without missing a beat he replied “to church.” We all shared a hearty guffaw at that. Before we entered the park, as our guide was paying the entrance fee, a monkey attempted to get into our van through the open windows and open top of the car. When we shooed him away, he moved to the next one. He had better luck there and managed to get inside and steal some bananas that the driver had up front with him. He was irate when he got back to the car to find his lunch stolen, and I’ll be damned if the monkey wasn’t laughing at him, taunting him by wagging the bananas just out of his reach.
And yes, I saw rhinos. The first one we saw was very far away and was a bit underwhelming, but we eventually found one pretty close to the road. Holy mother of all that is good and holy, rhinos are HUGE. I guess I knew this already but my word, seeing them from about 10 metres away was crazy, I think I’d shit my pants if one of them started charging at me (pff “I think,” no man, “I know”). We sat there for twenty minutes or so, snapping pictures like a Japanese tourist whose digital SLR was about to run out of battery. At one point I started laughing hysterically to myself, remembering that scene in the one Ace Ventura movie where the mechanical rhino “gives birth” to Jim Carrey. I got strange looks from my fellow tourists, and I considered explaining what had me in stiches, but I decided against it. They probably thought I was crazy. Oh well, what do I care? I’ll never see them again.
The rest of the drive around the lake was spectacular and filled with more of the same: find some animals, stop the car, take a million pictures, repeat. I almost feel a little bit guilty posting this here for you all to see, because it was absolutely phenomenal. If you have any inkling to travel at all, I highly recommend checking out the Masai Mara and Lake Nakuru reserves; they’re sublime.
Well that’s about all I have to say about the safaris, next up for me is a 3-month volunteering stint teaching music at an orphanage on the outskirts of Nairobi. I don’t know what the internet situation will be like but I’ll try to get an update out in the next couple of weeks. I hope you’re all well. I miss home terribly but the nervousness of being in dirty, poor Africa is starting to be replaced by the excitement of being in vibrant, culturally rich Africa.
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