It all began with a fairly calm 3 days in Paris. I stayed at an old historic hotel on the Seine, the Hotel Quai Voltaire, which was somewhat dilapidated but had a wonderful view over the river and the Louvre.
The next day I flew to Nairobi and had plans to meet my Swiss friend Sabrina
at the airport, but all those arrangements had to be scrapped since my flight was delayed 6 hours and I now was arriving after midnight. Sabrina is a midwife and has done lots of work for Doctors Without Borders, so she’s an experienced Africa traveler. She’s a wonderful, gregarious person and great fun to be around. We met a few years ago in South Africa, where we were both volunteers on an Earthwatch-sponsored biodiversity survey in Hluhluwe-Imfalozi National Park there. But that’s another story...
I finally arrived in Nairobi at about midnight. Then the formalities, and a 1 1/2 hour wait for luggage. Yes, you heard right- 1 1/2 hours!! As you may remember, there was a bombing at the Nairobi airport not long ago, and the current International Arrivals terminal is housed in a parking garage. Lovely place to hang out and wait. Luckily, my hotel shuttle driver was used to the routine and waited for me. I finally arrived at the hotel I had booked, the Hotel Troy, at 2 AM. I was a bit disappointed, though I’m used to marginal hotels: my room had linoleum floors, a complicated non-functional hot water heater arrangement, nowhere to put the suitcase and a bare overhead bulb, but I fell promptly asleep, so it didn’t really matter. I was awakened only by surreal animal screaming noises, which I later found out were made by an animal called the Rock Hyrax, a kind of tree-climbing rodent/ groundhog sort of creature. Later in the trip we would return to find that by comparison to other places, it seemed luxurious! I ended up having warm feelings about the Hotel Troy. It was set well back off the road, had a beautiful garden and was run by a lovely woman and her son who treated us like family.
The next day we paid the first of what for me would be multiple visits to the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, an orphanage for baby elephants run by one of my all-time heroes, the amazing Daphne Sheldrick. She and her late husband were the founders of Tsavo National Park in eastern Kenya, and still underwrite a large portion of the park’s expenses. She founded the orphanage within Nairobi National Park, and they have expanded to provide veterinary services throughout Kenya. They rescue orphaned elephants from every remote corner of Kenya, fly or drive them to Nairobi, rehabilitate them and return them to the wild in Tsavo National Park as adults.
They are remarkably successful, and have pioneered many important methods of getting wild orphans to thrive. You can visit, touch the babies and watch them feed, and even “adopt” an orphan. The babies, of course, are indescribably cute. Each one has his or her own story. They are orphaned by poaching, falling into wells, or sometimes just found wandering alone. There is a team of wonderful, devoted keepers who stay 24/7 with the elephants, even sleeping with them.
On the way out, we saw a pair of courting Ostriches! The male was displaying in an exotic dance, fluffing his feathers and flapping his wings. The female responded in kind, and we even saw them mate!
We then visited the Giraffe Center. The people there are devoted to helping giraffes in the wild, and there are several more or less tame giraffes which one can feed. I got a great shot of myself being kissed by one of them! His name was Ed.Of course, the secret to getting kissed is to put a giraffe treat between your teeth. But don’t tell. Maybe I should try this with men?
He kept losing interest and wandering away from the feeding area, and the keepers would go chasing after him, calling, “Ed, Ed, treats!!...”.
The next morning we were to be picked up by a driver for the 6 hours plus road trip to the Samburu district, where my friend Tina lives. I met Tina in 2003 on another Earthwatch project. She is a Harvard-trained field biologist and lion researcher. When we met, she was living in Boston, teaching and hoping to get her own project. We were working on lions in the Tsavo area of Kenya, and she fell in love with a Samburu man who was working at the camp. His name is Dipa, and they were married a year later in his small village in Samburu. By then she had started her own project, the Lion Conservation Fund, and relocated for 7 months a year to the village, Lerata, situated at the base of a sacred mountain, O Lolokwe. I went to the wedding that year, and visited again in 2007. I hadn’t been back since due to political unrest in the area. The government had attempted to force the Samburu off their tribal lands to make way for “progress”, and many people were killed. In the end, the tribes had prevailed, though many were forced to relocate when the road was paved ( more about that later!).
Much had happened, and I was anxious to return.
The trip had barely begun when the entertainment began! On the way out of Nairobi we passed a Hindu temple. This led our driver to ask us about our religious beliefs. Luckily Sabrina is well-versed in dealing with this line of questioning, and I could barely keep a straight face while she told him that she belonged to the Church Of Switzerland. She described it as “kind of like Catholic” but “kind of like Pentecostal” except that in Switzerland they sit down and don’t sing as loud. You had to be there. It was priceless. I couldn’t even look at Sabrina for fear of giving the game away. Luckily, the driver believed every word.
Road trips in Kenya are anything but relaxing: Picture two lane dirt roads, heavily rutted and heavily used, with trucks belching black smoke, buses loaded to the gills, ramshackle group minibus taxis called matatus, with untrained drivers. Now add to that donkeys, goats, cows, bicycles and motorbikes loaded with all manner of things, and hundreds of people walking and crossing the road. Each village has serious speed bumps, which the vehicles drive off onto the shoulders to avoid. There are roadside markets, vendors selling huge bags of charcoal, and the roadsides are lined with tin shacks that serve as shops and businesses, many with funny names like “Jolly Butchery”; “The Storm is Over Shop”; “God is Able Boutique” and the like. I had the camera ready at all times.
We had a few errands to run besides groceries; I needed a post office and Sabrina needed a SIM card for her phone: this would become a running joke as the most impossible errand ever. The whole trip she was trying to no avail to buy a SIM card. Frustrating, but also ridiculous to the point of being funny! Tina went with her to the Safaricom ( the local provider) shop, while the driver, Sammy, came with me to the Post Office. We were on the way there when I was accosted on the very crowded sidewalk by a young boy, who started to hit and shove me and try to grab my fanny pack. Luckily Sammy was right behind me and drove him off. Sammy’s explanation was “He thought you were alone.” As if that was an excuse!! No amount of explanation could convince Sammy that even if I had been alone it would not have been acceptable. I guess a white women alone is considered a valid target.
This was the first time this had happened to me in my several trips to Kenya, and I was rattled by it. This of course could happen anywhere, but I found that things have really worsened in Kenya. There is a widespread attitude now of resentment of foreigners and we were harassed on many occasions, which you will hear about if you continue reading. The only question seemed to be how to part us from our money, legally or illegally. Corruption is rampant, up to the highest levels of government. There’s an apparent attitude of entitlement. This attitude is pervasive throughout the country, at all levels, whether it is children asking for coins, police or army demanding bribes, attempted robbery, or charging vastly inflated prices at tourist facilities and huge entry fees for foreigners at the parks. Even high-level officials have declared that it’s not important to them whether tourists come to Kenya or not, and there is no longer the facade of welcome that used to be widespread. I’m sure that tourists on expensive safari trips don’t encounter this hostility, but it is lurking directly under the surface.
We continued on our way, and while stopping for fuel in Isiolo, a sort of rough border town ( think Wild Wild West), we had our first encounter with a vendor who we would come to see many times! He had a couple of necklaces he was trying to peddle: “ 1000 shillings. No? Ok, 500. No? Ok, 200.” When he realized Sabrina and I weren’t buying, he went to Tina in the back seat. “1000 shillings. No?” as if she hadn’t heard the whole original exchange! We went through Isiolo at least 4 times more, and encountered him every time. We got to be old friends! He would come running with a huge grin on his face. The last time we actually said goodbye to him, gave him a small amount of money and shook hands all round. A peddler with a great sense of humor.
It’s really a poor idea to be on the roads after dark. There are bandits, Al Shabab members, police roadblocks to extort bribes, animals.... But this was only the first of several occasions in which we found ourselves out after the witching hour. We were lucky- the norm was to be stopped by police, who would then demand $100 for an armed “escort”. This is illegal, of course, but that has no effect. Tina even had been told that white woman were not allowed out after dark!! Unfortunately this is the new reality in Samburu, and one that Tina has to deal with daily. Life has become very difficult there, and she has even started to think about moving from Kenya to Tanzania. Not easy, since her husband is Samburu and they have so much invested in the local community.
Luckily the only malevolent creatures we came across this first time were a pair of hyaenas who greeted us on our way to the camp where Tina and Dipa are based now.
The camp, called Sabache, is new since my last visit. Tina and Dipa helped the community build it, and it belongs to the people of the nearby villages. It’s in a wonderful valley between two mountains, and consists of a kitchen, a dining hall and various safari tents set in very beautiful scenery.
Our first impression was overwhelmingly positive! The views are amazing, and the area is filled with birds- resident Hornbills of various species, Golden-breasted Starlings, Purple Grenadier and many others. There’s a resident Leopard who we heard every night, and some very tame Dikdiks, a type of tiny antelope barely bigger than my cat Daphne.
The next day we made a visit to take supplies to the local school. The last time I had visited, the school consisted of one room with a mud floor, a blackboard, a single teacher and no supplies. In 2004, Tina had lobbied the government to reopen the school, which had been closed for a number of years. Before then the kids either didn’t go to school or had to travel away from home to a boarding school.
Much to my great surprise, the school had moved across the road, and was a big complex. It now has many buildings, over 200 students and many teachers. I couldn’t believe my eyes.
Much was made of this toilet! Kind of funny, given that Tina also had a very expensive borehole well drilled, was responsible for the school and the camp getting opened, and has donated countless dollars and food to the community. Tina is treated like a queen wherever she goes in the community. People flock around her, particularly children. I also saw the downside though- there was a relentless stream of people wanting something from her, asking for this and that. Being a benefactor has its plusses and minuses. When Tina first moved to the area, she had hoped to be an accepted member of the community. In some ways she is; she is truly loved. On the other hand, it’s clear that she will never be anonymous there- she is seen as a problem solver and a source of constant cash. This had taken a huge toll on her revenue for the lion project, and on her time.
On our way back to camp from the school, we encountered the first of many roadblocks.
The road itself was dirt the last time I was there, but has since been paved by the Chinese. The Chinese are all over Kenya now, paving roads, investing and starting businesses. This Chinese development has had a profound effect on Samburu, as well as other areas. In Kakamega, where I was to go later in the trip, and a long way away from Samburu, a driver complained to me that the influx of Chinese has actually taken jobs away from locals and that no Chinese money actually enters the local economy. Travel has become easier, and there is now electricity in many areas where it never existed before. On the other hand, poaching of animals has increased exponentially, and there is reason to believe that the ease of travel has enabled poachers to come from Somalia and beyond. No doubt the Chinese demand for ivory and rhino horn has fueled their interest in the area. Terrorists use the highway too. So do bandits, cattle rustlers and refugees.
When I was planning my trip, I was careful to avoid areas where the terrorist group Al Shabab, which was responsible for recent attacks on the Kenyan coast, was operating. Little did I know that, thanks to the new paved road, they are using the Samburu area to enter Kenya and to train for their attacks. Tina’s husband Dipa has come across them, and even discovered the location of a training camp. We had to be careful about where we went to scout for lions, as much of the area is now unsafe. This has led to increased security forces, and even to the pullout of British troops from the area due to safety concerns. We hoped that the camp itself was remote enough that we wouldn’t have any unexpected encounters.
We did encounter the Kenyan army, though- scary enough! To return to our story, on our way back from the school we were stopped at an army blockade. They demanded to see our passports. Since we were only a few kilometers from the camp, I was the only one who had a passport on me. Tina told them that she lived in the area and was married to Dipa, and they refused to believe her and demanded “proof of marriage”!!
They then said that they were taking Sabrina and Tina to jail. This was all a bluff, of course, an attempt to get bribes from us. If they had taken them, the police know Tina well and it all would have been a great laugh. I showed my passport, which the soldier perused with great attention. He finally handed it back, saying that since he was able to verify “the old mama”, he would let us go. That was the final insult. I was “The Old Mama” for the rest of the trip.
The following morning we departed for a camping trip to the Masai Mara, the most famous game reserve in Kenya, but about a 12 hour drive away! Tina needed to be at a lion conference there, and they needed to get the vehicle serviced (a perpetual problem in a land of dust and rough roads). We were a bit hesitant due to the long drive, but I have been there before and it’s wonderful. I had wanted to go again, but prices at the tourist camps have risen so much over the past few years that I can no longer afford it. The first year I went I splurged at nearly $200 a night. Now? Think $800-$1200 a night!! So I jumped at the chance to get there at a more reasonable cost.
We were packing up for the trip when Sabrina noticed that the freezer in the kitchen wasn’t closing properly. There’s no refrigerator, only a solar-powered freezer. All the stuff we had bought was thawing already and the freezer was packed to the gills! Not wanting to leave it like that while we were gone, we unpacked the whole thing and much to our dismay found long-expired items, hunks of leftovers and meat unwrapped and frozen to the freezer walls, and many other unmentionables. The funny moment came when we tried to pry loose a huge gray chunk of unidentified substance from the wall. We showed it to the cook,
We eventually set out for the Mara. As is normal in the bush, we not only took a driver, but also a mechanic. Our driver had spent time in Arizona and was addicted to country music. We were incongruously treated to Dolly Parton and the like, and he played the same songs over and over and sang along!! Vehicle problems are constant. We had the usual delays, stops and other issues that meant that we were arriving in Nairobi after dark. Our driver was not experienced at driving in the city and the headlights were very dim. When you near Nairobi the highway becomes a multi-lane divided road...with pedestrian zebra crossings with no stop signs or lights!! It was frankly terrifying, but we made it.
The next day the vehicle was serviced while Sabrina and I waited.
We made it to the lion conference, which turned out to be really a community meeting/prayer session/rabble-rousing event to discuss the Masai community’s role in lion conservation. There were some odd moments: the Masai/Swahili/English interpreter was really an evangelist in disguise, with great dramatic flair!
We were all invited then to a “King’s Dinner” nearby. Well, the “King’s Dinner” turned out to be wooden tables set out in the school, with great hunks of ugali ( a stiff kind of polenta), potatoes and one or two inedibly tough and greasy chunks of goat, all to be eaten by hand without utensils. A storm had been brewing during dinner, and there was a deluge of rain which prevented us from even getting to the vehicle, much less to our intended campsite to set up tents.
Finally we woke to a beautiful morning and drove to a campsite on the Talek River in the greater Mara area and set up our tents.
The Masai Mara is the most game-rich area I have ever been to. Only Yellowstone Park compares, though the variety of species is larger in the Mara. There were loads of birds at the campsite, and I’m afraid I shirked my set-up duties and looked at birds instead!
Other campsite residents included Baboons and Vervet Monkeys. Baboons especially are very destructive and we had to be very careful with food!
We went out again the next day, and again saw many elephants, giraffe, wildebeest, hyaenas, and a wide variety of wonderfully graceful and agile antelopes: Thompson’s and Grant’s Gazelles; Topi, whose favorite is to stand like statues on top of termite hills;
Impala, Dikdik, Springbok, Hartebeest, Waterbuck, Kudu and more.
The next day we headed out back to Nairobi. We spent a few hours getting the vehicle serviced again (still no fix for the squeaky brakes), while Sabrina and I hung out in Karen, a suburb named after Karen Blixen, where there’s a large ex-pat community. There are many, many foreigners living in Nairobi, many working for NGOs. Since crime is a real problem there, most live in gated, guarded communities. They shop at stores catering to ex-pats, socialize with other ex-pats, send their kids to international schools. It’s not a bad life, but it’s a bit like living in a bubble, isolated from the crime and poverty around them. This is not said to cast blame; I would no doubt do the same thing! It’s a tough life though.
We were picked up in Karen in late afternoon and began to drive back to Samburu. It got dark after only an hour or two of driving, and after another couple of terrifying hours in which our driver was falling asleep and there were drunks on the road, we had to stop for the night in a town called Keratina. Unfortunately, there are only 2 hotels in Keratina and they are both very marginal! Tina had stayed before at the Hotel Starbucks (!) and hated it, so we tried the Hotel Ibis, unrelated to the perfectly good international chain, I’m sure. There was a large pile of sawdust in the front entryway, to clean the mud off of your shoes.
We resumed our trip in the morning. Nanyuki was the next stop, where we made yet another stop to try to get the brakes fixed (again to no avail). Sabrina and I got a taxi to go visit the nearby Jane Goodall Chimpanzee Sanctuary, where they rescue and care for chimps from the entertainment business and from abusive owners. The sanctuary is within the Ol’ Pejeta Conservancy, a huge private conservation area in Laikipia. We only had time to visit the chimps, but when we got to the entrance, we were again charged a whopping $90 per person entrance fee to the conservancy. We drove to the sanctuary only to learn that much of the facility was closed due to construction work, and we were able to see only one lonely chimp, Poco, behind a fence. He was rescued having spent nearly his entire life in a cage too small to turn around in, and according to the keeper was suffering from PTSD. The keepers were very knowledgeable, but that was one expensive chimp!!
We once again resumed our trip, passing by our friendly vendor in Isiolo, but once again it got dark. We were stopped at a roadblock, where the police demanded $100 for an armed escort. Dipa was tired and cranky, and lost his temper. He yelled at the police while our driver and Tina tried to restrain him, since of course, the police are armed and untrustworthy. Tina’s friend Naomi got out and tried to reason with the police. In the end we had to pay a bribe to pass. We had one more roadblock to pass, so this time Sabrina and I both covered our heads so that they couldn’t see there were white people in the car. Whites=money in the corrupt Kenyan system. It worked! We went unnoticed and they let us pass. We were almost back to camp, just about 10 kilometers, when the vehicle overheated and refused to start. So there we were, after dark, stuck at the roadside. For 2 hours. Why didn’t we walk, you might ask? Leopards. Hyaenas. Bandits.
Al Shabab. Any more questions?
It was a fan belt issue. It’s a wonder how many people just materialize out of the darkness to help. Sabrina and I walked circles around the car, enjoying a beautiful full moon and the company of a local dog. Eventually we got back on the road and got back to camp, to find....
NO WATER!! Somehow, the water tank had drained in our absence, and until Tina and Dipa got back to deal with it, nobody knew what to do.
That night the leopard was very close to the tents!! We heard it barking all night.
Worried about Buci, the goat!
We had a quiet rest day at camp after all that excitement. We did go for a nature walk with one of the high school kids that was helping out at camp. He was great- he knew all the plants and trees, and we had quite a lesson on the medicinal uses of everything we encountered, including the toothbrush tree. You take a twig from this tree, roughen up the tip, and it works as a toothbrush!
The following day we hiked up to the top of Goat Mountain, where Safaricom recently installed a cell tower. That’s not why we went of course- we went for the views! We saw some lovely orchids on the way up. I did get a kick out of standing right next to the cell tower though, with my iPhone displaying “no signal”.
This hike was just a warm up for the biggie! The next day we took 4 porters/escorts and hiked to the top of the Samburu sacred mountain, O Lolokwe, or Sabache Mountain and camped there overnight.
The next day I got up early and went back to the spring to look for birds. I was able to get great looks at a rare white color morph of an African Paradise Flycatcher, with a long plumed white tail!
The next day we decided to go scouting for some of the local lions. Unfortunately the animals are widely dispersed because of the drought, but Tina had had a couple of reports from scouts. She gave us a choice of looking for some lions that had been heard on the other side of O Lolokwe, or driving several hours north to a more certain sighting in a more dangerous area. We chose the former, so we picked up a couple of moran (warriors) armed with spears, and headed out. Some of the time the moran walked in front of us looking for tracks, sometimes we all walked, and sometimes we were on top of the vehicle.
We headed back, only to be stopped again at an army checkpoint. It was the same guy as before, but he pretended not to remember us. This time they had a sniffer dog- a very friendly spaniel, who kissed us all over and was certainly the friendliest member of the team. The made all the white people get out of the car and turn over our passports. All the Samburu locals were permitted to stay. Once again my passport was scrutinized meticulously, and he tried to accuse me of not having the correct visa stamp. I did have it, of course, and eventually he handed back my passport and said “Welcome to Kenya”. That just about sums it up, don’t you think? The whole thing is done under the pretext of looking for Al Shabab. It’s intensely annoying. Most Al Shabab members who have been caught in the area have been impersonating Samburu, not impersonating female blonde tourists!
That was out last day in Samburu, and we headed back to Nairobi the next day. We picked up the same driver/mechanic as before, and headed out. We stopped for a farewell lunch at the Trout Tree in Nanyuki again, and I was able to feed a tame hyrax!
We bade a fond farewell to our friend the vendor in Isiolo, too. We had another breakdown on the roadside. This time the car was overheating again, and needed oil. Our driver disappeared on someone’s motor scooter to go get oil, while we waited with the vehicle. Back on the road. Suddenly in Keratina, our driver stopped. He looked awful, red-eyed, sweaty and said he had a terrible headache. We waited a while. He seemed angry and upset that Tina insisted we continue to Nairobi. Once again we found ourselves approaching Nairobi in the dark with an unhappy and ill driver. You would think we would have learned! Once again, we were all petrified, but somehow got there without further incident. We said a hasty farewell to Tina and took a cab back to our friends at the Hotel Troy.
The next day was Sabrina and Stefan’s last. he hadn’t been to the Sheldrick orphanage yet, so we went again in the morning. After that we hired a cab to go meet family friends of Sabrina’s, who had just moved to Nairobi. The husband, Fabian, works on security issues in South Sudan, and his wife Irene is a writer. They took us with their 2 kids to Karuma Forest in Nairobi. We walked there, and I really enjoyed it. If I were ever to live there, it would be a regular haunt. Lots of birds. We then went for an early dinner at a restaurant specializing in food from all the various regions of Kenya. We had a 7 course tasting dinner, which started out with fried Flying White Ants ( actually termites). Not nearly as bad as it sounds! Nutty and crunchy.
In the morning, I headed to the airport to fly to Kisumu, which is right on Lake Victoria and is the jumping off spot to get to Kakamega Forest, the last remnant of tropical rainforest in Kenya. It has many species more common in the western rainforests. But I’m getting ahead of myself. The trip to the airport was crazy! The traffic was horrendous, so many cars and trucks were switching to the wrong side of the divided highway, and driving against oncoming traffic! For miles!! Made my flight though, a quick 45 minute jaunt. I was supposed to be met by a driver from the Retreat where I was staying, but he didn’t show up, so I had to take a ramshackle taxi. The roads were awful and under construction (Chinese), and the transmission didn’t work properly, so we lurched and detoured our way there for 2 hours plus. Once there, I was happy. It’s a gorgeous place, a real leftover remnant of the British Colonial era. Its now a religious retreat owned by a very proper and stern older British couple. Luckily, no proselytizing.
There are various buildings set amongst lawns and gardens, with trails running right into the rainforest. The dining room is communal, very formal, and dinners are candlelit.
The grounds themselves have great birds and monkeys. Black-and-white Colobus are common, as are Blue Monkeys and White-nosed Red-tailed Monkeys. Ross’s Turaco was nesting on the grounds, as was an African Crowned Eagle.
One day he was booked with a Dutch couple, so I joined them. The husband was hauling a huge video camera/tripod setup, and every time we saw even a butterfly, he would take 10 minutes setting this thing up to video the insect sitting on a leaf. Glad I don’t have to watch! It was their 11th trip to Kenya. I talked to them a bit about their lives in Rotterdam. They immediately launched into a diatribe against Muslim immigrants. I’ve encountered this before in Europe, and it makes me intensely uncomfortable. I was sorry I had asked.
Another day we hiked up a nearby hill to an abandoned mine, where there were Leaf-nosed Bats roosting. I had seen many more of them on my previous visit, and I hope they are not suffering from the White-nose fungus that has killed so many bats in the US.
