This is my fourth trip to Kenya, but the first time I've
come as a tourist – I don’t count the couple of days tacked on to the end of my
first trip in 2002, when I made a rushed and half-hearted attempt to hike Mt. Kenya, or
the weekend with colleagues at Shimba Hills the following year.
The Mt. Kenya trip was way more than I could do. After a
month working on the coast, I dropped my bags in Nairobi (how did I get there?
I have a vague memory of riding a matatu from Mombasa, but I might have
imagined that) and rode a matatu up to Nanyuki, elevation 6,000 ft. There, I
rented warm clothes and a pack; guides carried food and other gear.
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| Rock hyrax from Wikipedia |
The lower slopes of Mt. Kenya were lovely. I remember wildflowers and hyrax and
plentiful, hearty food. I wanted to turn
back on the second or third day. The guides were disgusted with me; they insisted they could get me to the top, and said I was the first of their clients ever not
to go all the way. But my heart wasn't in it: I was tired, not acclimated, and
in no shape to hike this 17,000-foot mountain, Africa’s second-highest. Plus, I
had a plane to catch!
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| Someone else's photo of Mt. Kenya |
The weekend trip to Shimba Hills, a small game park in the
southeast, was my first taste of safari. Elephants came to eat food staff set
out for them, and we watched several adults and a baby from the deck of the lodge. They were
quite close, and stayed for some time. The next day we rode around in a Jeep
and looked for and at animals. My clearest memory is of giraffes, though I know
we saw others. It seemed too quick, maybe even a little perfunctory.
So, I count this as my first trip as a tourist. It was quite
a shock arriving from Lubumbashi to Nairobi a couple of days ago – the extensive paved roads, the
commercial centers, the vibrant activity. Along the Ngong Road, kilometer after
kilometer of furniture workshops with nice-looking wooden and cast-iron bed
frames, dressers, tables, and chairs, locally made (if mass-produced) baskets
and pottery. There are virtually no local handicrafts sold in Lubumbashi that
we've seen. There are some furniture makers, selling mostly wooden bed frames and some metalworking shops where gates are made and sold,
but nothing as nice as those in Kenya,
Nairobi is orders of magnitude more “developed”
(for lack of a better word) than Lubumbashi, or even Kinshasa, for that matter,
which is closer to it in size. Of course there are poor sections of Nairobi,
and Nairobi – especially the upscale Karen neighborhood where we stayed – is
not representative of Kenya as a whole.
But even outside Nairobi, there are good roads, and I was overwhelmed
when we saw all the goods at the supermarket in Narok, the last watering hole
on the way to the Maasai Mara. Somehow Congo’s extreme dysfunction was easier
to accept arriving directly from the US: of course we expected it to be
different from home, and we adjusted to the differences, taking them as much in
stride as we could. But seeing Kenya again 10 years after my last visit, and
even thinking back to the week I spent in Ghana earlier this year, throws
Congo’s scarcity into a different light. Of course, Ghana and Kenya are two of
Africa’s shining lights. Dar es Salaam, where I spent a day after a stint in a small
Tanzanian town in 2006, at that time seemed also quite unfinished.
Not that I think development qua development is always a good thing. The term means different
things to different people and in different contexts. I am not a fan of
consumerism, and don’t think that having more goods to buy necessarily equates
with progress. But I do think strong, local economies (shout out to CAGJ) are important, and I do
think all people should have work that sustains them and their families, and
goods and services that enable safe and healthy living. And education, of
course, and freedom of assembly and expression, and a government that
represents and protects them. Kenya isn't perfect – nowhere is – but being here
feels very different than being in Congo.
Anyhow, I meant for this post to be about the amazing first
day of our Maasai Mara safari. I had a prejudice, maybe from the Shimba Hills
trip, that going on safari was sort of like visiting a theme park, and I wasn't
too keen on it. Already it’s turned out to be much more than that, and we've
only spent a couple of hours in the Reserve!
Because our passports were in Kinshasa awaiting our
residence visas well past the date we were led to, or chose to, believe, our
original plan to fly out of L'shi on the 22nd to join a
“Christmaasai” safari fell through. The safari company owners very kindly
agreed to let us apply our payment to another trip, so we signed on for the New
Year’s safari. The other family that had booked it cancelled, though, and so we
were only able to go by paying extra to cover the transportation costs.
Despite the extra cost, we lucked out! [Eric: because of the extra cost.] Now it’s just the two of us and our very
friendly, very knowledgeable guide. He’s been doing this for 6 years and says
he’s never regretted it for a day – it’s his passion. He drove us down from
Nairobi, we checked into our luxury “tent” around 2 PM, had lunch, and at 4 PM
headed out onto the Mara. Lots of birds – Eric’s a great spotter – including an uncommon migrant Eurasian Roller, and also mongoose, Thomson’s gazelles galore,
zebras, warthogs (they have to kneel to graze!), and wildebeest. I don’t know
why, but I was surprised at how they mingled, unlike in zoos, where most
species are separate.
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| Eurasian Roller -- from this site; couldn't find the shot we took. |
I was glad my Swahili teacher had made us watch “The Lion
King” – a helpful primer to the wildlife. We saw a female lion, and later a
group of 3 immature males bedding down for the night, but the real amazing
sight of the evening for me was a female cheetah and her five month-old cubs.
We had a great view and watched them for at least an hour, past the mandatory
6:30 PM return time. Captivating. We saw the cubs play, nurse, hang out … the
mother didn't move much until just around the time we were leaving. Then she
led the cubs across the plain. Plovers were scolding – they must have had a
nest nearby. A lappet-faced vulture flew low over the group: our guide said it
could easily take one of the cubs.
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| Mama cheetah with 2 of the cubs. Check out our guide, James Muchina, on Facebook -- he's got tons of amazing photos! |
It was wonderful to be able to watch this family of cheetahs
and take as much time as we wanted. This wasn't “Wild Kingdom” or the Discovery
Channel, with dramatic music, cheesy voice-overs, and quick cuts to the action
shots. This was real time, slow time, all-the-time-in-the-world time. Pretty
cool! In a larger group, we wouldn't have had that chance.
Tomorrow, to the river in search of elephants and leopards!
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