"Ouch, Those Were my Genitals" and Other Safari Stories

June 29
We woke up and overheard a conversation between Karen and the staff outside. There was a big elephant poop under her window, and, apparently, the sound we heard last night was from an elephant searching for water! How cool! After a long search for Monica's hairbrush (she was sure the elephant had stolen it and we would notice the one elephant out there with excellent hair), we went for a quick breakfast. The drive to the border was relatively quick, and we off-loaded all of our things in front of the van. After filling out and filing our exit forms, we hung out and waited for the SafeRide van to take Karen and Nancy to Nairobi. For an hour, we somehow fought off the barrage of hawkers (mostly older Maasai women) who were just
about falling over each other to sell us bracelets and necklaces. Some of them waned us to raid the things we brought from the US, and one guy was especially persistant at wanting to buy Monica's hiking boots. He tried everthing from offering to trade sandals, to asking to promote him, to saying he needed them because he had no shoes
(though he was wearing brand new boots; of course, they were his "brother's"). The SafeRide van finally came and we saw them off. Jim, Monica, and I were left to fight off more hawkers. Monica met one very nice young Maasai girl, Elizabeth, who was roughly the same age as me and just stood around and chatted with her. She even gave Monica a free bracelet!

I left to grab some immigration forms from the border, lodging the offers of changing money at good rates if I wouold just follow them to their back-alley offices. After a few inquiries in Swahili, I found the office and returned with the forms. We were finally tired of fending off hawkers, so Samuel said he would watch our things and we went to look at the stores. That got old very quickly as there were only a few and they were all the same. Jim asked on of the hawkers if he could try to sell his box of wooded animals. He said yes! Jim went up to one of the vans full of waszungu and asked a poor teenage British girl if she would like the animals for $10. She was shocked and was completely unprepared for an mzungo hawker. She still politely refused and shut her window. It was quite funny! Our shuttle finally arrived and we left for Tanzania with very little clue about what were were doing other than to get to Moshi and find "Pagali". The border crossing was nice, and the driver took care of our passports. Since we have a short wait, Jim and I snuck off the bus and across the border to get much-needed biscuits to snack on.

On the road, we saw a giraffe, and boy did we see it! Nancy would have been happy as this giraffe, was so close we nearly avoided running into it. It just decided to run across the road and two vehicles were approaching from different directions! After this exciting event, not much else happened. I slept while Monica chatted with a Kilimanjaro tour guide (not ours) who was just returning from Germany where he had had the opportunity to go to several of the World Cup games. I woke up in Arusha (I also woke up a few other times when the very cute little boy next to me kept grabbing my arm and smiling), and we alighted. While Monica and Jim found a bathroom in the Mount Meru Hotel, I made sure we got all of our bags. We were supposed to transfer to another bus to Moshi, but it looked full. We managed to get the last 3 "flip-down" aisle seats. The bus was packed! All of us got into converstation: Jim with the Australian girl in front of us, Monica with the Kenyan and Zambians behind us and I met William and his wife next to me. They were returning to Zambia after visiting missions for the Church of Christ in Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, and Kenya. William was from a family of 8, though both of his parents had passed away, leaving him, the eldest to watch over the family, though, his siblings are all adults. He does a little farming and had left his 3 children at home under the care of his sisters. He spoke English and Tong'aa, a Bantu language. He said that Rwanda seemed to be healing, though, some people still mistrusted outsiders. Burundi was much different where tension is high and people do not want to speak with foreigners. It is not as friendly as Rwanda. We talked about what we grow in the US and what they eat in Zambia (mostly maize-based foods like ugali along with vegetables, etc). It was a great way to pass the time on our journey to Moshi.

When we arrived in Moshi, we were assailed by a couple of hawkers (one safari hawker was very persistant) and two people tried to say we were to go with them. Since Pagali's name was on our envelope, we decided he must be the one, and we went to the Key's Hotel Annex, a nice place a little away from the town center. We met William, our guide, there, and they gave us a nice briefing. Monica and Jim took care of the supply details with William while I went with Pagali and his driver to get money. We talked a bit in Swahili, and he was very surprised that I was a doctor. I found Monica and Jim up on the bacony staring at the clouds…but it wasn't a cloud. It was the peak of Kilimanjaro jutting up above the clouds. Dinner was quite good (and very cheap at about $12 for all of us including drinks). We sat around and plotted our course in the Kili book's map before going to our rooms to shower, pack, and go to sleep.

June 28
We woke up for breakfast and then headed off on a game drive. We saw a cute little vervet monkey, a warthog, LOTS of gnus, and then went to a hilltop that overlooks the park. The view was gorgeous and we got some good family photos at the top. We drove back to Amboseli Lodge and met a son of the chief of the Maasai manyatta we would be visiting. We drove to the mayatta and talked with Lanash as other vans of wazungu pulled up. We were welcomed by dances from the men and women (both Jim and I joined the men dancing) and then heard their prayer before going into the mayatta. They performed the jumping dance (don't know the real name for it) and took us into one of their homes to see how they live.

The roof is made of wood, goat hide, grass, and cow dung. The rains wash away the cow dung/grass which must be reapplied. There are two rooms—one room for the small children and one for the parents. There was also an area for the fire for cooking. Outside of the manyatta, we got to see them make fire. They make it by crushing elephant dung over a piece of wood; people take turns twisting another stick into the first. The resulting ash starts the fire! We learned some
interesting things about Maasai culture too.*

After visiting the dwellings, we went outside the manyatta to look at their curios. We picked up several things and went away to the "bargaining area". We bargained on the individual items (a longer process than Samuel would have liked). We paid a bit more since we knew where it went. Scott went aside with our guide's brother and after a hard bargain, he got his sword and another gift for his $7 Walgreens watch and some additional shillings.

On our afternoon game drive, we saw zebra, blue heron, a secretary bird, an eagle, and we got the classic photo of elephants in front of Kilimanjaro. We had dinner and then discovered that the Maasai walking through the night before, indicated a show was about to start behind the bar area in a different room of the lodge. We watched the show together (me, Monica, Karen, and Nancy) before going to bed.

The night was trying. Some time in the night, we heard a brushing of something BIG at our window. We were a bit unnerved, realizing that the window was open and the only thing holding back whatever was outside, was a flimsy screen. I got the flashlight from Monica's bag and my newly acquired Maasai sword and crept to the window. I stood there for a few minutes sweeping my flashlight to make sure nothing would rip my arm off, then quickly closed the window and went back to bed (with my sword, of course). Though Monica went to sleep almost immediately, I kept hearing brushing against the side of the cabin. It finally went
away, and I fell back to sleep.

June 27
This morning we left Nakuru for Amboseli. We have never before been so scared for our lives. It started with normal Kenyan traffic/roads with vehicles headed straight for you, before veering off while all the vehicles swerve to avoid potholes and islands of asphalt. Monica felt car sick from the moment we started driving and had decided to lie down in the back. Every 5 minutes or so, she would hear screams from the rest of us and she became airborn 2-3 times due to the bumps!

We had a brief reprieve when we stopped in Naivasha to drop off some gifts for Ben at the KWS Training Institute. Shortly after Naivasha came, a thick fog which reduced visibility to a few car lengths. We saw a few flipped trucks and tractor trailers on the side of the road, abscured by the consuming fog. Despite no visibility, we drove the same as if there were no fog. One time, we attempted to pass a truck and almost rammed someone head-on! It was close. When we finally got out of the fog, we were close to Nairobi. Then came the second near miss. As we entered Nairobi, we narrowly missed hitting a matatu and small car (there was screeching of tires, etc. and the matatu even pulled off the road…very frightening). Thankfully, we stopped in Nairobi to pick up Karen's luggage at the SafeRide office and to get our instructions/tickets for getting to Kilimanjaro. This really consisted of: "Here is an envelope of money with a person's name on it and some bus tickets from the border; Samuel will drop you off at the border." Monica and I took the opportunity to run across the street to the Stanley Book Shop to pick up a couple of Rough Guide Swahili pocket dictionaries. After what seemed like forever, we finally went down to the van, which was being driven by another driver around the block. We spent several minutes circling and waiting for Samuel. Finally, he came after me and Jim went to get him; we had spent an hour for our "quick stop" in Nairobi.

We drove on to Amboseli, eating biscuits, crackers, and energy bars as we drove. We reached Amboseli about 5 hrs after we left Nairobi (~5pm), and we decided to do a game drive on our way to the lodge instead of getting "lunch". We saw a lot of elephants, an eagle (that perched right next to our van), and a hippo. We reached the lodge a little before 6, checked in, and settled in our rooms. The view of Kilimanjaro is amazing even if the lodge was not. Dinner was more underwhelming than the last lodge, and we realized how spoiled we were in Masai Mara. We asked for chai masala as our drink and the waitress just did not get it. We finally got regular tea and hot milk. During dinner, a line of Maasai warriors marched in and then marched right out again. We had gotten excited thinking there would be a show or something, so Scott had reached to get his camera. Unfortunately, he didn't have time, for they were already gone. We thought this must be the budget show, and we all burst out laughing. After dinner, we stopped by the shop and then made our way to bed.

June 26
We woke up early and started off for Nakuru. It was a crazy drive. Through the maps showed "major" roads, they are little more than patches of asphalt peeking above a bed of packed gravel. At least there was not much traffic. As we drove, we swerved madly to avoid the raised islands of tarmac, sometimes veering off onto dirt frontage
roads. Into the rift valley, we ran out of even gravel road and drove down a steep, red dirt road with deep, eroded gashes carved by rivulets of water. We finally stopped for a "bush" break, which everyone (except Monica, who was stil traumatized by her Uganda experience) took advantage of. When we finally reached Nakuru, we were very happy to be nearing the end. When we got through the gate, we raced for the lodge. Samuel was fixated on lunch, though, the rest of us could not think of food. We sped past all sorts of wildlife without stopping: rhinos, flamingos, etc.

Nakuru lodge is set on a hill overlooking Lake Nakuru. Keekorok had been a plush resort that reminded us of our honeymoon, but this lodge was much more mediocre, nice, but didn't compare to the first place. At Keekorok, the staff had been warm and friendly and actually seemed happy to be there, but at Nakuru, this was not the case. The lunch we raced to catch was underwhelming, but at least we could watch the baboons off the veranda in the back. The game drive in the afternoon showed us flamingos, warthogs, some tree-climbing lions, and rhinos, though, by the time we saw the lions and rhinos, it was raining pretty hard. We still managed to get very close to the rhinos and had a good time despite the rain. We arrived back for another underwhelming meal. The food is wearing on both Monica and me, and our stomachs are starting to rebel. After dinner, though, they had a show…acrobat contortionists! It was a lot like the show we saw months ago at the Comeback Club. Nancy, Jim, and Karen were highly amused! After the show, we went to see if we could spot any night time wildlife, but it was pitch black, so we went to bed.

June 25, 2006
We got a wonderful night of sleep and woke up early. We found Samuel out front at 6:30 and started off. We saw herds of zebra, topi, and gazelle (usually together). There were reports of a cheetah, but no luck. We came upon 3 white-headed vultures picking at the carcass of a buffalo with a pair of jackals standing off. We saw another few lions surveying the savannah and drove to within 15 meters of them before we returned to the lodge for another feast of a buffet meal. We took showers (which could not seem to regulate—it was either very cold or scalding, though we finally got is somewhat under control). There was a lot of journal and blog writing. No one was interested in lunch, so we showed off our collection of gifts to bring home and our gorilla certificates before heading out to walk the boardwalk and see some hippos in the daylight. Its so different in the light. We watched the hippos frolic for awhile. Scott went back to the room to download photos while I went to the pool with Nancy. I said "Jambo" to a guy at the pool (staff) and after the response said, "Habari ya kushinda?". The staff guy was more surprised than most that I knew some Swahili! He proceeded to talk to me in Swahili asking me how long I had been in Kenya, where I learned Swahili who my relatives were, how long I was staying, etc. Scott meanwhile decided that it could not hurt to "look" at the lunch selection, so he went to the dining room and ran into Jim who had the same idea. Eventually, all 4 of us ended up eating plates of dessert before setting out to pick up my mom. We arrived at the air strip, an assemble of 4 simple structures: office, "waiting room" (complete with a checker board and bottle caps and a dilapidated roof), a "duty free shop" (maybe serious, maybe someone's idea of a joke?), and a bathroom. Samuel, our dirver had learned that Karen had boarded at 2:45 but it had not come by 3:15 (though another Air Kenya flight touched down in the
meantime). By 3:45 we were worried, and then finally around 4:30 it arrived! Off stepped my tearful mother! She had had a very terrible two days! We heard all about her misfortunes, not the least of which was that all of her luggage was missing! The craziness had started in Heathrow when she missed her connecting flight despite a valiant effort to get across the airport at the last second with no airport personnel or signs in sight. By the time she reached British Airways
desk the flight had just departed. American put her up in a hotel and she left on the same flight the next day (there were no other options for her). Her bags, unfortunately, did NOT make it! When she reached Nairobi, she was told her bags were lost and she had only her carry on. Things did not get better. She was driven to Safe Rides office to meet with Francis, who "held her hostage" until she paid him for extra hotel and plane ticket charges. He would not even provide her
with a receipt; he just wanted the cash. This was not easy for my mom since she had just arrived in the county, didn't have any shillings, and was not yet familiar with the conversion rate. By this time, she was in tears and was feeling pretty well screwed. She had also taken a taxi to the airport and back again (who charged her about double the proper rate) to check on her bags since calls from Oakwood had failed to reach anyone, but her bags were still lost somewhere between Chicago and Nairobi! She was escorted by Francis to ATMs until she got him the money and then the driver took her to the airport to catch her flight to Masai Mara on a VERY TINY plane!! At the airport she was told her tickets were for not today, but for tomorrow…Francis had booked the wrong date! She was in tears again and they finally let her on. Then the pilot announced there would be a few stops before landing in Masai Mara. When she finally reached us, she was quite frazzled!! Luckily, we were on our way to a fun game drive.

Our first stop was a hillside to see a lone male elephant. We continued on to see a pride of lions and a herd of buffalo, 2 leopards, and several birds (i.e. Egyptian goose, Ostrich, Guinea fowl, etc). At 6pm, we came back to the lodge. We watched the sun set and a few superb starlings joined us. We decided to look at the hippos. We brought my mom back to our room to show her some things and see if any of my clothes worked for her. She wore one of my kangas (the "mgonjwa hawalizwi dawa" one) to dinner. Scott and I were very glad to see the traditional Kenyan food of chapati and curried lentils in the buffet! They also served us chai massala. We had some tasty chocolate balls for dessert (after seeing the buffalo, Scott has been fixated on small spherical foods), which were super rich and then we went to bed. The Larium dreams weren't bad, but Scott had one where he was at a technology trade show where they were introducing Disney World: Kawaida Towers (Kawaida means usual in Swahili).

June 24, 2006
Today was an early day. Scott had finished his database project and tested his work around 3:30 this morning –about the same time that the dance clubs near the Oakwood Hotel stopped blasting their music. This also let me sleep, since I had been waking up every 20 minutes to find out whether Scott would be going to sleep soon. We woke up 3 hours later, packed our luggage, and met Nancy and Jim for breakfast at the hotel. Breakfast was tasty and western with eggs, sausage, cereal, juice, and all sorts of other things. Samuel had told us the night before that Francis would meet us at 7am, but 7:15 came and went. Finally, at 8am, Samuel showed up to collect us. By this time, we had been able to discuss with reception Karen's situation of being stranded in London and needing a room tonight. However, we had not yet done our internet stuff, since we had been waiting for Samuel, so after hauling all of our bags into the elevator and out to the safari van, Scott went to Burger Dome (fast food, burgers, ice cream, and …internet?) to upload the blog entries I had finished this morning and sent off the database to Steffen. After some problems finding a working 3 ½" floppy drive, we finished all of our computer work and all in a record of 15 minutes! By 8:35, we had all finally boarded the van and left for the Saferide office (just a block or so from the Nakumatt and where we were staying) to finalize our tirp details with Francis. The experience of seeing Francis was a bit odd. He was supposed to meet us an hour before, yet we were meeting with him late. He didn't spend any time making small talk, he immediately wanted our
money. Friendliness was not his strong suit.

Nancy and Jim watched the alien landscape of Nairobi fly by, a landscape we had become familiar with. The modern buildings contasting with the sheet metal covered shanties and makuti-roofed mud huts is a stark change from the homogeneity and order of Western cities. Then, there are the roads. Once we had turned off of the Nakuru-Nairobi road onto the road headed west to Narok, the roads got really bad. Jim and Nancy kept looking on in horror as we would swerve across the road from one side to the other in order to avoid potholes, while at the same time dodging oncoming buses and matatus. We discovered that driving in Kenya means being on the road only ¼ of the time; much of the time was spent driving on the shoulder of the road! They forgot the landscape and were probably fixed on the road, wondering which of the buses or trucks coming at us would hit and end our lives, but we were fine and Scott and I we not terribly disturbed.

Somewhere between Naivasha and Narok, we stopped to stretch our legs. Jim was quite happy to get out! We spent awhile there looking at crafts. When I entered, I made what could be considered a mistake by speaking in Swahili and letting them know I have been living here. A salesperson there would not give me an initial price for anything. He also saw my flip flops and knew that I would know how much they cost. He asked me and I told him "mia tano (500)" and he smiled and said yes, I was correct. Scott had a good chat with the same guy, Ken, who had been working as a salesperson for a supplier at food products to Uchumi, a supermarket chain in Kenya that had just gone bankrupt. After some hard bargaining (I'm beginning to like this bargaining thing), we bought a knife (Kalenjin), and Nancy and Jim bought a hippo and goblet made of ebony. We continued on to Narok, Ben's family's home, and on towards Masai Mara. At the gate, we stopped to get park passes and were mobbed by Maasai women with drilled ears and wearing their traditional dress trying to sell beads and bracelets. They were as aggressive as the peanut guys at the matatu stage in Mombasa! We ended up arriving at our lodge, Kekorok, around 3:30. It was MUCH nicer than any of us had expected (and based on what I had heard, I knew it would be nice! It was a fancy resort, and we were met with passion juice and washcloths while to porters unloaded our luggage (no small feat!) . We quickly checked in and ran off to the dinig room for a quick lunch (though big) and then went to our rooms to get our bags unloaded before meeting Samuel at 4:30 for our first game drive. We started the drive off right by seeing an elephant right outside of the lodge. This was our first indication that this was going to be good. Next, we went straight for the "hard to see animals" and saw a leopard (well…three leopards) hanging out in a small grave of trees. We forgot our disappointment from before when we had sped past herds of zebra and giraffe to rush to get to Kekorok. It was incredible! The only downside was having to jostle between about a dozen other safari vans, but I can't complain! The leopards were SO BEAUTIFUL! They were just sleeping up in the trees and didn't seem phased by us as all! Next, we drove off and found a herd of buffalo. Samuel spotted a couple of other vans about ½ km away and we realized they were watching lions! We sped off (with several other vans) to get a closer look. The lions were walking right next to some of the vans. They were observing the savanna, and the pride zeroed in on its victim, a young buffalo wandering from the herd. We sped off after they stalked off through the tall grass. As we drove, Scott spotted the lions pouncing with 1 grabbing the buffalo's muzzle in its jaws meanwhile turning the buffalo's head in order to suffocate it (apparently this is the way they always kill buffalo rather than going for the jugular). Three other lions grabbed its hind quarters. We arrived as the 4 lions were bringing the buffalo down and watched as they began first eating its genitals (sorry for the graphic description) and then ripping at its belly. Meanwhile other lions were walking right next to our van! We finally left when the sun started to set and the setting got too gruesome, but we were all very excited that we'd seen lions in the hunt. On the way back to the lodge, we saw a beautiful sunset. As we went to our rooms, we heard hippos close by. We went to investigate and found the boardwalk, a long, illuminated, elevated walkway across marshes behind the lodge. At one end was a very cool bar on stilts overlooking a waterhole with approximately 9 hippos. As darkness set in, we watched the hippos, chatted, and drank a Malibu and passion juice. Jim returned with 2 glasses of fine Irish Whiskey. We finally made it to dinner, a feast of buffet-style food, where we saw a "Jambo, Bwana" birthday procession of the staff and a traditional Maasai dance. We sampled all of the desserts and then finally went to bed. What a wonderful day!

June 23, 2006
We woke up a bit late to start our day. We quickly got ready and tried to order the total disorder in our room. The really spicy tilapia and potaoes Scott had last night did not make his stomach feel great. We had a fairly light breakfast, packed our things, and called Alfred, the taxi driver to pick us up. He arrived on time this time and we told him we would pay 300; he countered that we paid him 500 last time. We balked and said that was a mistake we would not repeat. He acquiesced, and we left for the Oakwood. When we arrived, we gave him 300 and he said it was not enough. We told him he would get no more and left; we were quite annoyed. Check-in at Oakwood went smoothly. We dropped off our bags and left to do a little shopping at Nairobi Sports House where we FINALLY found some Kenyan soccer jerseys, and Scott received a comment that his hair looked like Bill Clinton's (not sure where that came from). We then headed off to the sketchy side of town to catch a matatu to Naivasha. We finally realized that we did not know where the Naivasha stage was (we were close but there were SO MANY matatus around), so we stopped to ask a traffic cop. He looked at us like we were crazy (probably wondering
how we were still alive in that part of town), and he pointed us to the "collapsed building" (that made headlines last year). We finally got there and saw the Naivasha matatus across the street. After being approached by a manamba (who we thought was a sketchy guy trying to get us into a sketchy situation, but after asking a matatu driver, we decided to follow the manamba), who directed us to the ticket office…fancy. We we borded the matatu, we were frisked and searched with metal detector wands. They've had problems with hijackings by passengers toting pistols. The driver said he would drop us off at KWS, and we left about 15
minutes later. The ride was fine, the view beautiful, and the music good. Scott finished designing his computer program while we rode. At one point, an very old lady got out of the matatu when it was her stop. There was a large bag (likely 50+ lbs) that was hers and the man next to me was having trouble getting off the matatu. He handed it to this woman who shlepped it onto her back and began walking who knows how far to get home. Scott and I were very impressed! When we
got to KWS, the driver missed our stop, but we were quick and ended up stopping only a couple dozen meters past the entrance.

The guard at the gate was very nice and she made us comfortable in the guard office while we waited for Ben. We had a good time people watching until Ben showed up and took us up to the campus. On the way, we saw zebra crossing the road! The campus is fairly new and very nice; it was paid for by World Bank money. We were given the grand tour and met several of the other students. By the time we were headed to Naivasha, I had somehow gotten sunburned…jua kali as I felt like I had only seen the sun for 15 minutes! Our first stop was Ben's apartment where he bestowed upon us chains of cool Maasai beads (which he showed us how to put on and wear), some jingly head/neck pieces, and a rungu (club used for killing antelope). It was very cool! We showed photos of gorilla and chimps from Bwindi, then went to Naivasha town center to get lunch. We ended up at the Silver Hotel (the first place we tried was mysteriously closed), and we ordered chapati mayai with chips and a big fanta. No chapati…failed again! We had an egg sandwich and fruit salad instead. After luch, we caust a car to the KWS Lake Naivasha place next to the KWS Annex. Ben is a great tour guide and he told us how the Acacia trees only grow whee the water table is high and that at around 7, the place is filled with hyenas who have learned that the area is protected. We met the people who run that area, talked for a bit in Swahili, and paid 200ksh to go to the lake (actually Ben was very nice and treated).

We walked past Dik-Diks, zebra, diraffes, and all sorts of other wildlife. It was amazingly close! We walked towards the lake and saw a lot of birds. Along the way, we got Ben to tell us how he ended up being sponsored to attend KWS by Bob Drewes.

We had a great time talking, watching the wildlife, and identifying the poop we saw on the ground (dik-dik, buffalo, zebra, and even hippo and giraffe!). On the way out of the park, a group of children came running towards us, ran in front of us a few meters, turned towards us, and kept walking backwards just staring at us. Very weird, but not surprising! We left pretty late to get back to Nairobi and we conviced Ben to come with us. When we got to Nairobi, we headed for the airport buses and waited for Ben's friend, Saruni (really a somewhat distant Maasai cousin), to join us. We finally found him after about an hour, boarded the #34 City Hopper bus and left for the airport to collect Nancy and Jim. I had received a call earlier when in the KWS park standing next to a giraffe (what a bizarre feeling) from my mom letting me know her flight to Londo from Chicago had been delayed due to rain so she was now trapped in London waiting for the same flight the next day; she would have to join us a day late somehow.

Saruni and Ben ran into Allan (one of Saruni's co-workers, who was writing to pick up guests for a safari) and Maria Natashaa, one of Saruni's friends who works in one of the travel agencies on the second floor for the airport. They were a lot of fun and definitely made the time go by fast. Natashaa was especially funny. She wanted us to find her a large, wealthy Texan for her to marry (only someone serious; she's not looking for a boyfriend). We started to worry that Safe Ride would not arrive, since it was 30 minutes after their flight had landed and on driver! Finally, we spotted him and talked with him while Scott watched out. It was great to see them, and we talked about Nairobi and Kenya while we drove to the Oakwood. Ben and Saruni had come with us and kep helping to load and unload our luggage! We told them this wasn't their job, but they are just too nice! We finally said goodbye to them at 10:30 and tried to find dinner. We had no luck at the Oakwood, and we had a security guard take us across the street to the Stanley…no luck. We just decided to go to bed. I texted Ben to make sure he got home ok since they had been very close to the time of missing all matatus for the night. A few minutes after I texted him, he called with the shortest call ever: "Am at home in bed…bye." or something like this. I went to sleep while Scott stayed up and worked on his database project. He needed to email it to Steffen by tomorrow morning. Thus, he stayed up a LONG TIME…until 3:30am. Even the bumping night clubs had stopped blasting music by that time! It would be a short night, since the alarm was set for 6am.

June 22, 2006
Today we woke up around 6:30 after hearing the rooster over and over again. Yes, even in the suburbs of Nairobi there was a rooster! Wendy and Randy were up anyway since they had to go to school. Patience was still asleep though (I forgot to mention Patience earlier, which is quite easy to do as she was so shy we simply never saw her. She is Jonathan’s daughter, who is headed to Sweden soon.) We kept seeing a head of Wendy or Randy peak over the sheet separating our section of the room from everyone else. We wanted to see Wendy and Randy off to school so we got up around 7:15.

We were reprimanded by both Ken and Beatrice for being up so early, but when we explained that we had slept well but wanted to catch a last glimpse of their darling children, they both forgave us and broke into smiles. Wendy and Randy looked so cute in their school uniforms, I couldn’t resist taking one final picture of them. Beatrice brought out some tea, mandazi, bread and butter, and some perfectly salted popcorn for breakfast. It was a wonderful breakfast! Soon after the kids left for school, Ken also left for work leaving the two of us with Beatrice and Lydia. We got to talking about funny quirks about families and really seemed to open up with one another. They are such a nice family!

Around 10:30, we said we should get going and we going to go pack. But before we could do so, Albert, Ken’s brother, came for a visit. It was a bit difficult to strike a conversation with him and we needed to get going, so we took this opportunity to sneak off. We came back to chat for a few minutes before saying goodbye. Before we knew it, Beatrice informed us that Lydia insisted we stay for lunch. Since it was almost lunchtime and we didn’t have anything pressing to do, who could argue? How could we have known it would be 3 hours before lunch! Beatrice has us watch the movie “Diary of a Mad Black Woman”, which was surprisingly very good, full of dark drama, cheese, Christianity, and thug humor (it was a bit like a combination of “How Stella Got her Grove Back” and “Big Momma’s House”)!

Next, Beatrice said she would negotiate a cab price for us, and if we were to do so they would charge us double. I figured she had just left the apartment to get better cell phone reception when she called them, but when I didn’t see her for over an hour, Albert explained that she had walked 1km to the cab place to talk to them directly! She didn’t want us to come with her because she knew (as did we) that they would try to charge us double if they knew they were driving wazungo. When she finally returned, lunch was on the table and we had 2 new guests. (We still don’t know who they were). We ate pilau with lentils (yummy) and Fanta and waited for the cab to come. We gathered our bags and said goodbyes. (Beatrice had managed to get us a ride for 800ksh, down from 1500ksh!

The ride back was uneventful, but fast. We settled back into our rooms, did some laundry, and repacking. Scott worked on Steffen’s project while and read and wrote in our journal. Next around 7pm, we headed to dinner with our journal and work in hand, knowing it would take approximately 3 years to get our food. We were not disappointed. It was 8:30pm by the time we got our food. In the meantime, we watched the USA vs. Ghana world cup match. Once dinner was over, Scott went back to work and I decided to get some sleep. We also prepared to move into the Oakwood Hotel the next morning. Tomorrow should be fun as we plan to go to Lake Naivasha and visit Ben!

June 21, 2006
Today we slept in (as much as we could) and immediately finished up the laundry. We needed to ensure it had enough time to dry before our next move. We showered, and headed to breakfast at the hotel. I was about to get my food when I saw a familiar face. It was Tab Rasmussen, one of my favorite anthropology professors at Wash U here in Nairobi!! Better yet, he recognized me and I got to meet his wife Jen. We had a nice brief chat (although I was still a bit shocked about the whole thing) and we went our separate ways. He and his wife will be in Nairobi for about 3 weeks doing work at the National Museum nearby. They are then on to Ethiopia (and Egypt) for more research.

We ate breakfast and headed to see the sights. We walked the 3-5 km from our hotel to the city center. It wasn’t bad. There were plenty of other walkers, although we were clearly the only wazungo. It was an improvement though, as we only got the “out-of-the-corner-of-the-eye stares”, not the “open-mouthed-surround stare”.

Once in the city center, we realized just how easy it was to get around. It was very easy to find everything we were looking for and we got some fast emailing done for only 1ksh/minute. We will likely be back there! We checked out the “Oakwood Hotel” and found out they didn’t have our reservation. We corrected this, arranged for an early check-in and saw a room. The excitement happened minutes later when Scott came down the stairs and proceeded to go down “the hall”. Unfortunately, “the hall” he was going to walk down was really a mirror (he had missed the turn for the exit) and ran right into the wall! It was very funny! He first had a dazed and confused look, then a “I didn’t do anything…no one saw that” look on his face. It was great!

We finished up our shopping to the best of our abilities (we couldn’t manage to find any Kenyan jerseys o any kind—they only carry Germany, Brazil, England, Sweden, etc., go figure) and then got a text message from Beatrice. She was with Lispa and said we would all do lunch. We met at our usual spot (albeit they were a bit late) and went to “Seasons”, a place that had fish and traditional Kenyan foods…food we had been missing for several days. Scott and I had smoked Tilapia (in full fish form) with chapati and mchicha. We also tried Beatrice’s “brown ugali” (not great) and gee, basically melted butter (they don’t have regular butter here, only Blue Band.) We had a good meal and a nice chat. We even got to see soccer “in the old days” where everyone had BIG hair and SHORT TIGHT shorts! Very funny! I also shared the story of Scott and the mirror.

We left and headed to help find Lispa some bus tickets. She is headed to Kampala tonight for several days. After deciding upon “Busscar”, she bought the tickets and we bade each other goodbye. She was off to see Tsofa and Patrick and we were going back to Beatrice’s place to get our luggage.

We caught a #145 matatu, but had to switch as a police situation of some sort arose. We then caught a #45 and I chatted with Beatrice the whole time while Scott snoozed. We ran into Lydia on our walk to their place and they told us we had to find their place (it was a test). We passed the test successfully and proceeded to their apartment. Wendy and Randy were already there (Beatrice’s twins) and I got a hug from Wendy, much to my surprise. We hung out with them chatting and had to explain why we didn’t stay over the night before (the kids seemed bummed about this). We had some tea and butter sandwiches and were planning to go as soon as Ken came home (we wanted to tell him goodbye). He didn’t get home until 6:30 and they already told us we were staying for supper. We decided to stay and everyone was pleased (I think). We had a yummy meal of chapati, lentils, and spaghetti, and Moses and Ruth had to leave. I let Wendy and Randy take turns taking some pictures. They are so cute! After dinner, everyone was tired so we went to bed. They had made a very cute little space for us in their guest/kids bedroom. There were 5 of us in the room , but we all had mosquito nets and private sections separated by sheets. We said our good nights and went to bed. It had been a very good day!!

June 20, 2006
How do we get out? We had gotten dressed in the dark and repacked everything, but when we left our room, headlamps on, we saw our exit locked. I disappeared to the other side of the courtyard, following two other backpackers who were struggling to find a way out. Scott went in a different direction and apparently didn’t hear me call for him. After I found the way out and waited for Scott to follow, I realized he wasn’t coming and went back in after him. I found him still trying to find a way out, but the staff who man the desk were with him. We went outside to wait until Joseph arrived. He arrived around 6:15am and we piled in. 45 minutes later, we pulled into a gas station in Mukono and transferred over to Hassan and Jaria’s other Landrover. The drive through Uganda was nice and uneventful. We picked up a lot of fruit along the way: LOTS of bananas, 4 pinapples, a cane of sugar cane, 2 bags of mangos, and even a “sashtafele”, a small green spiky fruit the size of a softball with a soft white meat. The border crossing was uneventful as well, although it took quite awhile because the officials wanted to keep Hassan’s car registration until he returned to Uganda and Hassan wasn’t about to let them do this. We got the familiar greeting from hawkers on the Kenya side…lots of offers for samosas, cookies, sodas, etc. Soon we were back on the road.

The Kenyan part of trip was pretty uneventful with all of us reading or sleeping. Around 3pm we stopped in Eldoret for a small meal of sausage, samosas, and chips at Kenchic Inn (We’re “kuku” about chicken). The next stop was hours later in Nakuru for a bathroom. I had decided to try to plan my bathroom breaks in advance so as to avoid another embarrassing “bush stop”. Around the Naivasha area, we ran into lots of rain and even some hail! We also kept hitting some warm and cold patches of air, which was a very bizarre sensation. The road in these parts was quite bumpy. We would be weaving all over the road to avoid potholes as were the oncoming cars. At one point we saw our lives flash before our eyes as a two-way two-lane road turned into a four-lane one way road with our car approaching a solid row of four vehicles. Amazingly enough we survived…somehow. Scott wondered how they can detect the drunk drivers here from those simply trying to avoid potholes…maybe the drunk drivers are the ones who DON’T avoid the potholes and instead drive straight?

By this time we had left Nakuru, Scott and I had realized that we would not be getting into Nairobi until around 9pm—too late to stay with Beatrice. We had already sent her an SMS saying we would be staying with her the night before, but as most of these well-intentioned plans, this did not work out. Being driven to the city center, finding a matatu at night with all of our bags (we weren’t even sure they would still be running), then making the walk to her place on the other side after everyone in her family would already be asleep just didn’t make sense. We sent her a message explaining this and had Hassan and Jaria drop us off at the “Sirona Hotel”. They still had rooms available (much to our relief) and they were even the “standard” less expensive rooms. We said our goodbyes to them and took our pictures with them. Then, they headed out. It was great to be finally in a place where we would stay for 3 whole days! We decided that even though it was 9pm, we were hungry. The dining was not closed, so we ordered a chicken sandwich and chips to share. Unfortunately, I think the chicken had to hatch, grow, be slaughtered, and then finally cooked before we were able to enjoy it, for it took over an hour to get our food. That was taking “pole pole” to a whole different level! Scott had decided to get started on laundry (since it seems to take our things so long to dry) while I would wait for the dinner to arrive. Once the food arrived, we watched some of the world cup (England vs. Sweden). Then it was off to bed.

June 19, 2006
Sleeping in is wonderful and we indulged a bit today. We finally got moving and had breakfast at Backpackers : crepes, bacon, toast, eggs, fruit…very yummy. Today was for shopping and we started at the craft store at the hostel. It was nice and seemed decently priced. We grabbed a taxi (matatu) to town and looked around the market. We continued on to Access Uganda to talk with Joseph, Hassan, and Jaria. They saw us wander into the building and thought we wouldn’t find them…they found us in the hallway on the wrong floor. Hassan asked if we could stay in Mukono, but we had already paid for our room. Hassan volunteered Joseph for taxi service; Joseph was not happy-looking, but it was settled. We escaped and continued our shopping odyssey with a trip to the crafts market behind the National Theatre. We spent all of our cash…almost. We still had enough for a very late lunch (or a slightly early dinner) and proceeded to walk across Kampala in the rain towards Hotel Equatoria where we were to find a Chinese restaurant. When we reached the intersection where the hotel was, we realized crossing the street would not be easy. Finally, Scott took a cue from another guy crossing and he followed along right in front of a large bus with me trailing a bit. The bus started moving!! Before I got hit, the police officer helped pull me back and started laughing as I proceeded to blame Scott for almost getting me run over. The traffic cop then told me to wait until he gave the signal and I was able to cross the street safely. That was a close call!

When we arrived at the Hotel Equatoria, our dreams of a Chinese dinner were crushed…the restaurant was no longer there. We decided to go all the way back across Kampala to near where we had begun to find “Fang Fang” another Chinese restaurant in the city (we didn’t really have anything better to do with our time). We decided to fuel up on ice cream cones first though! J We reached the place and saw our problem—it was impossible to actually get into the Chinese restaurant. It was on the second floor and we could find no entrance, only the office entrance staffed by guards and a metal detector. We finally reached the third side of the building, a driveway to a tall automated gate and 2 guards. We finally asked how to get to the restaurant and the guards said we just go in and up; we didn’t see a door except a cargo door. The security guy escorted us in and showed us how to get there. The restaurant was very nice and we felt woefully underdressed. However, we had no choice as we had brought very few clothes with us to Uganda. Luckily, the waiter took the attention off us. He kept tripping and at the end of our meal when he brought us our caramelized bananas, he dropped a piece of silverware from his tray. When he bent down to pick it up, the whole plate of bananas went right onto the floor! We couldn’t help but laugh and the other waiters had no problem doing so quite loudly! We were pretty happy to see that they took Visa (it really is “everywhere you want to be”). We exited the restaurant out the front office door and took the guards by surprise. We walked out like we did so every day even though we could feel their stares and puzzled looks boring into our backs. They were saying to themselves, “I know we didn’t see these two poorly dressed wazungo enter this place…how did they get in here…well, I guess it doesn’t matter cuz the place is still standing and they are leaving.” We found their expressions quite priceless and were in a great mood on the way home.

We made our way back to the taxi (matatu) park and after some help we found a matatu to Natete Rd. We were a bit worried after it left since it took a path we did not recognize, weaving through dirt roads and tiny neighborhoods…in the dark. We finally came to a place we recognized. Our last problem was to cross the street. This was a VERY BUSY street and we were sure we would not be seen crossing the street in the dark. We took our break in the traffic and ran for our lives! It was much like being in the game of “Frogger”. We made it, went back to our room, and were off to bed for an early morning.

June 18, 2006
Today was much less exciting (how much more exciting could it possibly get). We elected to drive back along the less exciting (but tarmac and faster) route to Kampala. In general, we were pretty bored, mostly due to neither of us feeling well. We stopped after a few hours for a bush break. I had to go, but did not want to do so in the bush, particularly in the particular place we were at. I finally gave in when I realized I had no choice and found a place down the slope of the h ill next to the road. Just as I was about to pee, a pickup truck with several guys standing in back rounded the corner. To my horror, I realized they could see me. They started pointing and laughing. I was SO EMBARASSED!

We both tried to keep our minds off our stomachs by reading. A little after noon we stopped at the Hotel Agip. I was terribly excited because they had a bathroom without a truckload of men watching! Scott’s face wore a look of dread—not food. As Joseph fueled the car, Scott and I had a heartfelt discussion about our feelings—we agreed that we felt like our intestines were being clamped by barbed tweezers. I felt like I had been inflated just before the point of my stomach exploding. Eating was the last thing on our mind, but we ordered some ham sandwiches anyway. We saved the plain one and ate the grilled sandwich. Erik was traveling through and we chatted a bit before heading out. We also stopped at the Equator to take some photos and watch a Coriolles Effect experiment of water about a sink. Basically, it demonstates that water flows in one direction if North of the Equator and in the reverse direction if South of the Equator. How fascinating! We also kept stopping to pick up fruit (a Ugandan pastime), and we even got a jack fruit. When we finally reached the Backpacker’s Hostel, we brought in the jackfruit much to everyone’s amusement. They warned us about how stinky and sticky it was and had us take it out to the outside kitchen to split it open (on a piece of cardboard). We soon found out why: It is filled with a viscous, milky substance that sticks to you like tar. We ate a little of it, shared it with the stuff and the people we saw around, then tried washing the stickiness off our hands. It would not come off with soap or alcohol. I found our carmex, which finally did the trick. We ate dinner while everyone else watched the Australia/Brazil game. Then we used the internet to catch up on a little email and send Dad a Happy Father’s Day message.

June 17, 2006
Today we woke up early again, ate a bit of breakfast (we are both eating light to avoid getting sick), and went to registration to track gorillas (Scott ended up borrowing a pair of my socks since his were still not dry). We got registered and briefed on what would take place. There would be 3 groups of 6-8 people trekking 3 habituated groups (our group was group “R”). Finding them would take anywhere from 30 min to 10 hrs so we must be prepared to hike through some difficult terrain and be patient! We picked out hiking sticks (some paid for porters too), met Moses, our guide, and met the guard who would be with us with a machine gun!

We started off on a nice trail with little difficulty. We then veered off the trail with our guide and the guard bushwhacking. It was awkward to move through this, but I found it to be quite similar to the job we were used to doing every day. The forest was different though and very mysterious and beautiful. After only 40 min, we came upon “the trekkers” who had been communicating with Moses about the gorilla group’s whereabouts. Apparently, we had already found them! We went into a lush vine-filled clearing (quite close to where we had begun, making us wonder if they had simply taken us the “long” way to make the experience more exotic). There we could see the bushes moving. At some point we came close enough to see them. They were VERY big and SO BEAUTIFUL! They didn’t mind our presence at all and just sat or lay there eating leaves with peaceful contented looks on their faces. Soon we were approximately 7 meters from them and could see their babies playing. It was incredible and almost brought tears to my eyes! After about 40 min of viewing several females with their infants, we went looking for the silverback. We found him nearby and managed to get about 7 meters from him also. He just sat there eating and ignoring us. A few times individuals came walking right towards us and we had to stay still and avoid eye contact. Finally, with about 1 min of our allotted hour to go, the silverback got up and walked away (right past us, approximately 4 meters away)! What an adrenaline rush! It truly was an experience of a lifetime, yet since it had been so easy to find them, it almost seemed like a dream!

We walked back to registration, received certificates for completing the gorilla trek, bought a photo sheet of our group, and tipped our guide. Before heading to our room, we talked with one for the people who had gone on our trek. Erik Patel turned out to be a post-doc at Yerkes Primate Center and had been working with sifakas in Madagascar for several years. He had done his undergrad degree at Earlham College after transferring from Wash U’s Business School (after 1st semester). He had also done some work at UC Berkeley, so I asked his advice regarding possible San Francisco mentors. He quickly mentioned a few professors and graduate students to contact as well as their projects. We had not discovered them because they are now in the Environmental Science Plant Management (ESPM) department and not Integrated Biology nor Anthropology. This gave me some hope that all is not lost even though Nina is leaving SFSU and I might be able to pursue my own project with an outside advisor. If paying to see the gorillas gets me a mentor, it would in itself be worth the trip!

We headed back to our room where Scott rested a few minutes to let his stomach pains ease and then we headed into the town of Bwindi. Though we had gone to buy souvenirs, the experience was completely different from that in Kenya where they constantly pressure you to buy things. The people in Bwindi were very polite and let you look around. We eventually returned laden with a few fun things, including our silverback statue (which we love)!

We decided to eat our packed lunches finally around 3pm. Scott was not feeling well again (but at least better than yesterday). First, we checked on going for a hike through Bwindi, but it was too late and would cost extra; unfortunately, we had spent our last Ugandan schilling in Bwindi earlier. We napped instead, and I did a little journal writing while Scott slept more. The drumming from the village reminded us of Gede. Sleep did Scott well and we decided to go out and take a walk to the internet place about 2 km down the road. Yes, they have a wireless internet place in Bwindi! On our way, we got some great scenery photos. The internet café was truly in the middle of nowhere, and everything was powered via a solar array with a broadband connection provided via satellite. It was very impressive! The café’s staff was very friendly and they showed us around and told us about their mission. The café is part of the Conservation Through Public Health (CTPH) project in Bwindi (ctph.org). We were introduced to Moses (yet another one!) who showed us around the affiliated infectious disease gorilla lab, added in 2002. It was designed by a Scottish vet and funded by Bayer, US Fish and Wildlife, and others and is partnered with UWA to monitor the gorillas. Moses was VERY ENTHUSIASTIC, as he explained how they analyze parasites (in gorilla poo). The also have some sort of partnership with Cornell University. What a cool place! Basically, the have the guides at Bwindi (and other sites) collect the samples, noting GPS UTM location and individual type (e.g. adult mail, adult female, etc), in special containers. Moses collects these weekly and analyzes them for parasites before entering the results in paper forms and again in the computer. If the results indicate a problem a team is called in to help, allowing for rapid evaluation and treatment of disease. It is very interesting stuff!

We found Joseph at the internet place and caught a ride back to camp. We both took a (very cold) shower and had a nice lantern-lit dinner. We finished our meal of tomato soup, pasta, and crepe and returned to our room to write postcards and sleep. It was an exciting day, and we were in mild shock at all of the things we experienced!