Journey to the Center of...Africa.

I recently had the opportunity to go on a tour of Eastern Africa for both work and leisure. There are three Doris Duke fellows scattered over Kenya and Tanzania and all three had invited me to come visit and see their work sites. However, I also had a long-standing invitation to visit a college friend who’s originally from Kenya and has been living in Nairobi since graduation. I don’t know when I’ll be in Africa next so I made the decision to take a week off, invest the nearly $1000 it cost to fly up to East Africa and go expand my horizons. It was one of the best investments I’ve made in this year abroad. That and car insurance, but that’s a story for a different post.

In planning this trip, I realized what with the time I was going to take off for family and friends’ visits, I could really only afford to take a week off work for this trip. I also quickly realized that I could only afford one ticket up there. Even though the flight up to Nairobi is only 3.5 hours, it costs upwards of $800! My theory is that this is probably due a lack of demand for intra-Africa air travel. Or maybe this is one more way in which I’m a spoiled American, in that I think one should be able to fly for 3 hours for 200 bucks or less. In any case, given the cost of airfare up there and my time constraints, I decided to spend half a week in Kenya and half in Tanzania. Crazy? I know. It was a whirlwind 10 days; I didn’t spend more than one night in any one place, except for Nairobi. That should be an explanation for why this trip is going to take two posts. This post will only cover Kenya.

Kenya. Even now, as I sit here in SOUTH AFRICA, I can’t believe I spent 5 days in Kenya. Every time I reflect about where I am this year, I have a thrill of disbelief. I began my trip in Nairobi. My friend, whom I’d last seen in cap & gown in June 2007, picked me up from the airport and took me to his flat where we reminisced over dinner. I should mention that dinner consisted of a chicken we’d bought just outside his flat, which he then cooked for me along with some fresh ugali. Ugali is cornmeal cooked in water until it reaches a dough-like consistency. It is the most common staple starch eaten in sub-Saharan Africa and is often molded into the shape of a utensil for scooping food and sauce. As my friend explained to me, you can serve someone a banquet hall’s worth of food in Kenya, but if there is no ugali, your guests will still ask you when the meal’s coming.

The next day was started with some shopping. I’d been told about the wonder of Maasai jewelry and wanted to bring some home with me. So who are the Maasai? The Maasai are a fierce group of people who still inhabit the areas around the Maasai Mara. The Maasai Mara is an enormous game reserve, and the continuation of the Tanzanian Serengeti; the name changes as you cross the border into Kenya. Even today, some Maasai choose to live in the wilderness, but you often see Maasai making a living in Nairobi. The women come to sell their famous jewelry and thatched goods in “Maasai markets” and the Maasai men are often employed as bouncers or guards. You see them posted outside expat mansions or trendy clubs dressed in their traditional garb. They are a tall, thin people but it’s easy to believe in their famous fierceness when you see them roaming around with staff in hand and large knife at the waist. They are known for being able to kill lions with nothing but these weapons. In any case, like I mentioned earlier, I was interested in their jewelry, so off we went to the Nairobi Maasai market. I spent the next two hours bartering my way through rows and rows of earrings, necklaces, bracelets and even Maasai shoes! Only when my bag was 2 kilos heavier did I finally come to my senses and stop shelling out Kenyan shillings.

After a driving tour of the city and some delicious nyoma choma for lunch (Swahili for roasted meat), it was time for my friend’s surprise for me: he’d somehow gotten tickets to Tusker Project Fame for us and a big group of his friends. According to him, Tusker is the Kenyan national beer and the official sponsor of Project Fame, which is the East African version of American Idol. So off we went to watch people hailing from all the East African countries belt out everything from traditional Swahili songs to Shania Twain. It was sort of awesome, even if one of the guards tried to confiscate our cameras when he caught us sneaking pictures.

We woke up early the next morning to catch one of the earliest matatus (or minibuses) out of the city. The day started with a terrifying 10 minutes where I inadvertently locked myself into a public bathroom without a phone or a way of telling anyone I was stuck. To be fair to myself, my thought was to be safe and prevent anyone from following this obvious tourist into the empty bathroom at the end of a deserted hallway. What I didn’t realize until too late (and in retrospect, how could I have known this, really?), was that the key that let me into the bathroom did not seem to be the one necessary to let me out. I had just finished washing my hands and smugly smiling to myself in the mirror for being such a street-smart world traveler when I came to the door and realized my predicament. Thankfully, it only took, oh about 7 minutes or so before a guard heard me banging at the door, yelling for help, and came to my rescue THROUGH A WINDOW. I swear my life is a soap opera sometimes.

In any case, after this slight hold-up, we were off to Nakuru. It is the fourth largest city in Kenya, but is most famous for being home to Lake Nakuru. Lake Nakuru is the second largest and thus second most visited game reserve in Kenya (second of course to the Maasai Mara). However, it is special in that it is also one of the largest bird sanctuaries in Africa and is known for the thousands of flamingoes and geese that inhabit it. My friend’s cousin picked us up in our very own safari jeep complete with detachable roof for improved viewing. And boy was the viewing good. If you’ve read previous blogs, you’ll know that this was my second game drive. The first one was great and really set the bar high for me in terms of the animals we got to see.

However, this one was just as phenomenal in its own way. About five minutes into our drive, we were quite literally surrounded by an entire herd of zebras. It was an auspicious sign, for the next five hours were amazing. We saw entire flocks of flamingoes and gaggles of geese. Where we’d seen isolated rhinos and bison at the Umfolozi Game Reserve in South Africa, here we saw herds.

At one point, we rounded the corner and came upon an entire colony of baboons. It was late afternoon, which seems to be the time when all the grooming occurs. I could have spent hours observing the baboons paired off, picking fleas off each other. It was almost like watching two women help each other with their hair or arranging each others' dresses. Maybe off-putting for those of you not into animal behavior and such, but incredibly fascinating to me.

Sadly, it was nearly dusk so our driver headed to the game reserve exit. After a full day’s game viewing and bathroom-escaping, I lay down in the back of our jeep for a quick nap. Ten minutes later, my friends woke me to say that as we were leaving, game reserve personnel had informed our driver that a leopard and lions had been spotted not far from the entrance and we were free to go back in if we wanted to. It was as if someone turned on our internal Energizer bunnies because off we went, all renewed. Our zeal was rewarded by the sight of a sleek leopard, followed by two enormous lions of Aslan proportions (if you get this reference, I will be so impressed), all literally chilling on tree branches. It was breathtaking if only because I never expected lions to climb trees. Presiding over a rock? Fine. Overlooking a savannah? Sure. But up in a tree in a semi-dense forest? Not at all what I expected. It was very, very cool.

We spent that night at my friend’s cousin’s house, where she and her family prepared us a true Kenyan feast. Absolutely delicious and I may or may not have had three helpings. That’s all I’m going to say about that.

The next morning, we took a second matatu to Kisumu, home to two Doris Duke fellows who’d met up with us in Nairobi and had been traveling with us since then. Kisumu is the third largest city in Kenya and as such, has its own airport. We spent the day exploring the city and their work sites, using the convenient tuk-tuks for transportation. Tuk-tuks are hard to describe, but they’re essentially 3-wheeled motorized vehicles with a metal body and canvas roofing and sides. You hail them like cabs in Kisumu. They fit three in the back and one driver in front which is actually more space than a coupe, but for some reason, I couldn’t get over how adorably cute they seemed. The men driving them seemed like grown-up boys playing with toy cars and I could barely take them seriously.

It wouldn’t have been a true tour of the city, however, without a memory-making meal. In this case it was a scrumptious tilapia lunch. Kisumu was built on the banks of Lake Victoria, which is brimming with some of the largest tilapia I’ve ever seen. At the restaurants on the banks, one can pick out the fish one wants and they clean and cook it up for you in typical fried or “wet-fried” style. Wet-fried means they fry it first, then stew it with onions, tomatoes and kale, one of the predominant crops in the area. Served with chapati (sort of like roti, which evidences the Indian migration to this part of Africa as well) and ugali of course, it was delicious. Don’t worry, I didn’t eat this baby pictured on the side all by myself—three of us shared it.

My final day in Kenya was spent in Bondo, a tiny village about 40 kilometers outside Kisumu, and home to my friend and gracious host’s immediate family. Kisumu and a large area around it is mostly inhabited by members of the Luo tribe, and as such, my friend and his family belong to the Luo tribe. There are over 40 tribes or separate ethnic groups in Kenya, but the Luo happen to be the third largest tribe, comprising over 10% of the Kenyan population. Although they are concentrated around Lake Victoria, their homesteads extend into parts of Uganda and Tanzania, and some say even the Sudan, from whence its thought they originated.

My time in Bondo was very special. It was wonderful to meet my friend’s mother (pictured on the left), brother and cousins. His mother works as a schoolteacher and his brother is the pastor of a Christian church. They are a deeply religious family, which became obvious at once, for as soon as I arrived, they all held hands and offered up a prayer of thanksgiving for the honor of hosting such a special guest. (“Me???” I thought to myself incredulously.) Over the next 24 hours I was shocked on more than one occasion by the true warmth and emotion with which they opened their home to me. In true Luo tradition, they had killed and cooked a chicken for me upon my arrival and the next day, his mother allowed me to visit her classrooms and meet her students. They were all excited to see a mzungu in their village and desperate to have pictures taken of themselves; I gladly obliged. Mzungu is Swahili for white person and in this remote area, I was commonly greeted with excited cries of “Mzungu!!” I have to admit, it was pretty hilariously embarrassing, but I understood. To them, seeing someone with my skin color (which incidentally, is anything but white these days given the amount of sun I’ve been exposed to), is as point- and shriek-worthy as if someone green-colored walked down the streets of New York. Well, maybe New York is a bad example; you never know what you’ll find on our streets there. But you get the point, yes?

I apologize for the lengths of this post, but I’m motivated to record my memories so I’m going to push through. My first (and only) morning in Bondo, I was woken at 5 AM to milk my first cow, after which I got a tour of my friend’s homestead and their crops. They have a field full of corn, rows of the ever-present kale as well as an impressive greenhouse full of tomatoes, tomatoes which were ripe in time for my arrival. (I know because I ate three in a row when my friend showed me the heap of freshly picked ones. What can I say, I tend to eat my way through my travels.) After the tour came breakfast consisting of the milk I’d just helped milk (boiled of course) and bread with peanut butter. Kenyans love their peanut butter. It’s served next to the regular butter at every breakfast. Good thing I love peanut butter enough to lick it off a spoon, no bread necessary. After that was a walking tour of Bondo and then a boda-boda ride to see the home of Dr. Mama Sarah Obama. Yes, the same Obama family as our president. Mama Sarah Obama is President Barack Obama’s step grandmother. It was a connection intriguing enough for this easily star-struck girl to brave riding a boda-boda out to her home and the primary school that was re-named after Obama when he became senator. So what is a boda-boda? Well there are two kinds. The first is just a bicycle with a lightly padded seat attached behind the main seat. Just like the the tuk-tuks, you can hail them like taxis. I loved seeing men in suits riding behind boys in sandals, biking through town. Although I did ride one of these in Kisumu, this was not the type of boda-boda I had to ride in order to reach Obama’s family’s village. No, the one I rode was more of a….dirt bike. I’m not even sure why it’s called a boda boda when it’s really just a motorcycle, plain and simple. So. We can all laugh at my foolish decision to break my rule of never riding a motorcycle (much less without a helmet), because look at me! I survived…intact! Ok yes, I already got my ear figuratively pulled by some people, but in my defense, I can only say that a)we never went over 40 kph; b) they are the only way to reach certain villages in less than a day’s walking travel and c) I would have worn a helmet if they’d had one, I swear! So yes, perhaps not my safest decision, no I will never do something like that again, but yes I enjoyed every minute of it. It was invigorating and… absolutely enlivening… to ride through the beautiful Kenyan countryside on a gorgeous summer day. Even when the children ran to the side of the road, screaming “Mzungu” and pointing at me, all I could do was throw my head back and laugh. Laugh and live my life.

The next day I boarded a plane to Tanzania. To continue living my life.