Quick, Everyone out of Kenya!

9/30/09: Nairobi Kenya to Arusha, Tanzania

[Editor's note: We have finally found some decent (and I use that word loosely) wi-fi, so pictures have been added to all blogs posts. Thanks for reading!]

I can think of the names of four people that we knew in Kenya but weren’t making the trip with us to Tanzania: Pamela, Tracy, David and Two Tooth (the last two being our drivers in the Masai Mara National Reserve). Pamela flew out of Nairobi back home to Italy, and David probably didn’t know enough about anything to leave the country (no offense to him, because he was a really nice guy, but we were just hoping that he’d teach us more about the animals on our game drives, but it was clear that he did not know a lot).

Today we left Kenya for the greener pastures of Tanzania, and we weren’t the only ones. We ran into both Two Tooth and Tracy at the border – that’s 50% of the people we knew in Kenya that were trying to escape.

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Is it too late to go back to Kenya?

Tanzania is the dustiest, dirtiest, hottest place we have been to yet (and I would venture a guess that it is the dustiest, dirtiest, hottest place in the entire world). I have yet to see anything resembling the color green. This is probably not necessary to add here, but even my boogers are brown, as I’ve sucked in more dust that a vacuum on the beach. Every tree visible from the road has a dust coating thicker than a fine New England clam chowder. After twenty minutes in this country, Zhou rubbed her fingers through her hair and came out with nice brown French-tipped fingernails.

I don’t want you to get the wrong impression of Tanzania, as we’ve only just begun our visit here and we still have to look forward to Serengeti game drives and seeing Mount Kilimanjaro. But if there’s no post tomorrow, you’ll know Zhou and I are passed out from inhaling too much dust.

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Picture of the Day: Dust storms here are more common than Starbucks in America

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The Carnivore’s Dilemma

9/27/09: Nairobi, Kenya

This little flag at the table was our “more meat please” indicator

Tonight we ate at Carnivore. Though it doesn’t call itself a Brazilian steakhouse, that’s pretty much what it is. Kevin ate his body weight in meat, and I ate just a tad more. We had: sausages, spare ribs, steak, turkey, chicken gizzards, chicken wings, chicken legs, pork chops, more pork, lamb chops, more lamb, and ostrich meatballs. And then! We had dessert. Strawberry sorbet for me, chocolate ice cream for Kevin.

[Side note: I never realized how cheap Kevin really was until today, when I literally had to take his fork and knife away from him as he kept sawing through his last piece of steak, simultaneously chewing and announcing to the table, “I think I’m going to barf.” He was that determined to get his money’s worth. Disgusting, and yet, somehow admirable.]

All the different meats roasting behind us, back when we were each 10 pounds lighter

I also had a Sprite, which means that my soda intake for this year has doubled since we started the trip. Ok, ok, fine, I admit it. I had a Coke in Jinja. Ok, two. And maybe I split a Coke with Kevin earlier today. So really my soda intake for this year has quintupled since we left. I don’t feel guilty. No, not at all. That’s why I’ve spent the last five sentences talking about a subject you care nothing about – because I don’t feel guilty at all.

Anyway, our three-course meal (we started out with some kind of soup that came in a cup with two little handles – very cute) plus a drink each plus tax and tip and whatnot came out to the shockingly low price of $62. That means once we finally finish digesting all of this food sometime next year, we’ll be back.

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Picture of the Day: This is for all you New Jersey-ians – there’s ShopRite in Uganda!

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Dazed and Confused and Soaking It All In

9/26/09: Nairobi, Kenya

It all started out simply enough…

We were leaving the market after our elephant adventure, and we just needed to get a cab to take us ten minutes down the road. There were seven of us, all walking toward the street with grocery bags and other souvenirs in hand. We were expecting to walk up to the next van cab in line, negotiate a price (maybe 500 Kenyan shillings, roughly $7) and take the easy drive home.

As soon as the cab drivers on the street saw us Mzungus (white people) walking out with our bags, our lives were changed forever. (Well, not forever, but for the next half hour. It sounds better if you exaggerate a little.)

Cabbies approached us from every angle, and amidst the shouting and the pulling, I heard several of the girls we were with shouting, “Talk to Kevin! He’ll sort it all out!” Wait, I’m Kevin! I’m the Kevin that will negotiate a higher price to pay for souvenirs! I don’t want to get involved in this!

But it was too late – they all hit me at once. The next minute was a blur, but I remember somehow getting us all dragged to a van for 40 shillings apiece (about half of what we were expecting). It wasn’t because I was a good negotiator – I’m pretty sure one guy said 40 per head, the next guy agreed to the same price, and while the first guy was getting his cab the second pulled us into his. That’s all I remember.

When I awoke from my stupor, we were all in this pimped out (I don’t like saying “pimped out” but cannot find another adequate expression here) van – purple on the outside with a crazy Minnesota Timberwolves logo on the back windshield, orange and black on the inside with the roof looking like the bottom of a worn out leather couch. Rap music was blasting (the music video playing on the TV in the first row); otherwise I would have thought I was in some 70s disco club in California.

There were 13 seats in the van, and there were about 131 people occupying them. The side door was wide open and two guys were hanging on for dear life as the engine started and we crept down the road. We didn’t make it far – a hundred feet into the trip, another guy got on, then another hundred feet a couple people got off. The side door was still wide open, the music was still blasting, a girl in our group was still shouting at the driver to make sure he knew where he was supposed to drop of off. He didn’t.

About halfway to our destination we had dropped off enough people to close the van door, but the guys who were hanging on now sat uncomfortably in other guys’ laps – other guys who were already sitting in other other guys’ laps. The road became bumpy enough to skip the music DVD a couple times, so we used the opportunity to get the money collector to tell the driver generally where we were going.

We finally hit the road our destination was on, and the seven of us piled out, having actually paid 30 shillings apiece instead of 40. This was about right though, as we then had to walk the last half mile to reach our campsite. Apparently the van doesn’t do turns. (I actually think that it simply backs up to the market rather than turning around. Either that or a bunch of guys lift it and turn it that way.)

In those 30 minutes, I experienced agoraphobia, claustrophobia, vomitphobia and deathphobia, each more than once. But more than anything, I kept trying to picture this happening in America. What if you got in a four seat cab, only to find 28 other people get in behind you? What if you were picked up by a limo that then drove down the road with all its doors open? What if you told your taxi where you were going, then it dropped you off a 10 minute walk away.

Things like this just don’t happen back home. Both Zhou and I thoroughly enjoyed the ride.

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Picture of the Day: They still sell tapes here! And Betty Crocker!

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I’m Your Umbrella Holder, How Can I Help You?

9/26/09: David Sheldrick Elephant Orphanage in Nairobi, Kenya

Have you ever seen that commercial for Banana Boat with the guys in suits holding umbrellas over people as they bike sit on the beach? I never thought I’d see personal umbrella holders in real life, but today I did!

Baby elephants are apparently very sensitive to the sun, so at the orphanage they get sunscreen put on them AND they get their own personal umbrella bodyguards. [Side note: I recently found out that it is possible for the backs of your hands to burn. Who knew?] The elephants are rescued and then rehabilitated with the intention of returning them to the wild once they are two or three years old. The caretakers also told us a lot of other information about them, but I was too busy watching the baby elephants stumble around to pay attention. Yes, they stumbled. I don’t know why I was so surprised by this – I guess I just thought they would be good at walking since they’re such large baby animals. But they stumbled around, exactly like babies who have just learned to walk. You haven’t seen cute until you see a baby elephant struggle to get up after falling down.

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Picture of the Day: Mr. Turtle contemplates Kevin’s love affair with chocolate milk

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Blog Post for a Successful Marriage

9/25/09: Naiberi Resort in Eldoret, Kenya to Nairobi, Kenya

We have officially traded our days of Ugandan rain and mud for Kenyan heat and heat. And dirt. Technically, we crossed the border yesterday, but somehow we brought some of the rain with us to Eldoret.

[Side note: I forgot to mention two nights ago we thought we would have a dry Ugandan night (big mistake), and we decided against putting our rain cover on the tent. Fortunately sometime in the early morning Zhou awoke to sounds of thunder and realized the mistake. After attempting to wake me for a minute or two, she realized it would just be easier to get the thing herself. She hurried across the field in a light mist, grabbed a rain cover from the truck, threw it over the tent, climbed back in and fell asleep again. In doing this she accomplished two mighty goals: she beat the rain (which then fell long and hard) and she didn’t wake the sleepy, unhelpful husband.

I just thought Zhou should be given her proper due.]

Where was I? Oh yes, we’re now here in the scalding heat of Nairobi, sitting in swim trunks while every bit of laundry we have is hanging out to dry. I’m monitoring the clothes closely though to make sure they don’t burn first.

[Side note: Zhou is sitting next to me sewing a sleeping bag liner which I ripped through one night while sleeping. Could I theoretically sew the liner? Yes. Am I? No.

I just thought Zhou should be given her proper due.]

…

Acacia African Adventures. That’s the name of our tour.

Happy Safaris. That’s the name of some other tour.

I’m very happy that we didn’t book with Happy. Why? Because we are sitting here at camp, while a Happy truck of very sad tourists is lying nearly sideways in a ditch an hour outside of Nairobi. Makes me glad that Zhou did the research to find a quality tour. Yes, I would recommend Acacia to anyone looking into doing an overland tour or a safari.

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Puzzles for Postcards

Rhyme Time! (These do not follow any theme, solve two of three)

Tell everyone how many beans were in each of the three barrels
A CEO’s warm welcome to all attending the conference
Following the sounds a comedian induces

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Picture of the Day: For lack of anything more exciting happening today, this is a picture of Zhou coming back to the truck after a roadside toilet break.

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