Nairobi

I arrived in Nairobi, Kenya after 22 hours in transit, which is great (return will be 36 hours).   I arrived at around 10 pm, 9 hours ahead of Regina time, then stood in line for an hour or so to get a Kenyan visa ($50).  My transfer man Edwin was there holding my name on a sign.  From him I learned that the recent election has not been the cause of any violence, although the results are being contested.

I almost opened the door to jump in to his van, but would have been in the drivers seat.  Driving here is on the left.  At the hotel, the security guards sweep the undercarriage of arriving vehicles with bomb detecting devices before opening the gates.  We could bring in a gun though and they would not know….The Kivi Milimani hotel is apparently in a good part of the city, but is not a place you walk anywhere from.   Ever.

The next morning I got in touch with Freddo, a guide.  After talking to him on the phone around 9:30 to finalize plans, I met a woman from England and told her she was welcome to join my tour and share the cost.  Off we went a half hour later with Freddo.  He is a Masai, and carries a big club in the back of his ancient orange BMW. 

Our first stop was the David Sheldrick elephant orphanage.  The only time you can visit is from 11 to noon, when they feed the young elephants with soy milk in giant baby bottles.  The bigger babies, up to 3 years old, drink 24 of these giant bottles every day.  They arrive with their keepers into a muddy ring where they eat, drink, play with a soccer ball, and occasionally try to visit the crowd held back by ropes.  Their stories are heartbreaking.  Each little ellie is named according to the area they were rescued from.  Many were found near the body of a mama elephant who was killed by poachers for her ivory tusks.  The ivory is mainly sold to Chinese and used for intricate carvings.  Some were found in wells dug by local villagers.  Most were starving when found, and a couple of the most recent residents were so skinny they brought tears to your eyes.   They are very social animals and need a lot of care to survive.  The keepers sleep with the younger babies, but always a different keeper and animal together so they don`t form attachments that could hinder their return to the wild when they are about 8 years old.  I think also so the keepers dont form attachments. Now I am the proud foster mom to Barsilinga, a little guy who was found a year ago when he was only 2 weeks old beside his mother who was killed by poachers.  For $50 a year you receive a great book with pictures and are sent updates on the progress of your baby.

Next stop was the Giraffe Centre, where the endangered Rothschilds giraffe are raised and protected to increase their numbers.  You walk up to the second story of the feeding area and have the giraffes head right in there with you, so you can feed them pellets.  They grab them the food from your hands with their 20 inch long, rough, antiseptic tongues, let you pet them, and will also kiss you if you hold a pellet in your teeth for them to grab.

Then on to the Karen Blixen museum.  In the movie Out of Africa, she was the Danish woman (Meryl Streep) who fell in love with a hunter (Robert Redford).  When he died he was buried in the mountains that can be seen from the patio of the farmhouse.  The museum was closed for restoration, but we were shown the rooms in the house and the grounds, and now I have to watch Out of Africa again.

Our last stop was a zoo at the entrance to the national park right on the outskirts of Nairobi.  In this park you can see giraffes with skyscrapers or landing planes in the background which is kind of absurd.  This zoo is billed as an orphanage since most animals were rescued as babies, but they are all grown up.  My favorite was Sharon the cheetah who posed for pictures.  A zedong (cross between zebra and donkey) was there until a week ago, when lions from the park moved in and ate it.

Through this whole day we saw only nice parts of the city, but when driving back to the hotel saw the dark underbelly (from a distance).  The Kibera slum is home to about a million people in this city of 5 million, and has one pit toilet for every hundred residents.  Along a major road we saw a man beating another man with a stick, and matutus (vans used as public transport) driving wildly with smoke belching out of them.  Traffic is chaos.

The next day I went to the National Museum, and met my group in the evening.  There are 17 of us, mostly Aussies.

Tomorrow we leave Kenya and head into Tanzania.