MySpace removed my old blogs so I am moving them here. This was the beginning of my write-up on my first trip to Africa in 2004. Here's part one; two to follow soon, and then maybe I'll somehow attempt to finish it... (I never did, and it's been nearly ten years!)
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Sunday, 18 July: Nairobi
Two
days of air travel (Note to self: never do two overnight flights in a
row again) and endless waiting but I'm finally in Africa. For those of
you who aren't aware, my brother, Kurt, lived in Kenya for a year in the
mid 80s (attending the University of Nairobi) and Tanzania for two
years in the late 80s (in the Peace Corps and working in Jane Goodall's
headquarters), then in the 90s he started leading wildlife safaris in
East Africa every year or two. I housesat for him in the desert (because
I couldn't afford to go) during the previous two in '99 and '00, and
then the following year, slaving away at (No)Futurekids, I finally saved
enough money to go, but for various reasons "Baobob V" was postponed
until this year.
With twenty in all, this is Kurt's largest
group ever, and always on the lookout for new recruits, he has persuaded
Helen, our 84-year-old "fake relative" (she's a friend of the family,
she grew up next door to my mother with no living relatives left on the
planet) to be my "roommate", warning me with a slight smirk that Helen's
memory ain't what it used to be. (The thing is, it never was what it
used to be; she's one of those people who, although kind-hearted and
well-meaning, constantly asks you loads of questions yet dizzily, never
pays attention to the answers.) I am happy not to pay a single
supplement and decide not to worry.
Helen flew on her own from
Phoenix and joins our flight from London to Nairobi. As we get off this
second overnight flight, Helen requests a wheelchair as she is feeling
rough. This turns out to be a plus for Candice (my brother's girlfriend)
and me: we push the chair and get to breeze through Immigration with no
waiting.
It's early in the morning and here we are at our
luxury hotel (I'm not really expecting this and I'm not accustomed to
places that give you bathrobes and slippers) on a hill above the city,
the Nairobi Serena. Helen dons the dressing gown and crashes as soon as
we're shown into the room and I struggle to stay awake. After channel
surfing (the only local television channel seems to be an East African
MTV with a lot of tedious booty-shakin going on, and there seems to be a
very wide range of trashy American "Lifetime television for women"
biopics (inside joke to those who know him: no Ramsay sightings
unfortunately) available at all hours) and sitting in the Jacuzzi for a
while (it's way too cold to go swimming), I end up guzzling coffee at
the poolside bar, mildly pestered by a sunburnt builder from Reading
(his hols: a two-day "Big 5" type safari followed by a fortnight on the
beach at Mombasa) who accuses me of being unfriendly because I'm trying
to read my book. (He shuts up when I tell him I'm hoping to see some
bats, probably thinks I'm some kind of goth freak.)
Finally it's
2 PM and five of us are taken to the Nairobi National Museum. It's
adjacent to Nairobi Snake Park! We must go in. I believe we're the only
tourists in there. Relieved to see that there are large enclosures in
this vivarium/aquarium, though it could do with more frequent cleaning -
we see some quite enormous boa turds.
The museum is wonderful
and although it's much bigger, it brings to mind the sorely missed (at
least by me) Leeds City Museum (which also had a very small
vivarium/aquarium, wonder what happened to those mud puppies!), as well
as the very Victorian Dublin Natural History Museum. I'm drawn to the
Leakey skulls (Homo Habilis!!), although the hall of dead birds was very
useful for future identification, and the hall with local art was
amazing.
We stop off for a drink on the veranda of the Norfolk Hotel (Nairobi's oldest), where I have my first Tusker lager.
Dinner
that evening at the hotel restaurant is a four-course affair, the first
of many. Helen has slept through it, and consequently is up all night,
noisily pottering about.
Monday, 19 July: Nairobi
Helen
finally emerges from the room for breakfast. She decides not to go on
our first game drive however, saying she plans to spend the day sitting
by the pool. At any rate there is more room for the five of us in our
pop-top minivan.
We have about a half hour wait outside the
gates of Nairobi National Park, and are encouraged, for the first of
many times, to visit the gift shop. I ask if I can go into the Animal
Orphanage instead, and they arrange for us all to go in. (Note: Richard
Leakey was once head of the orphanage, and this is where Jane Goodall
worked when she first came to Africa.) This is not something they
normally do so everyone is quite pleased that I suggested it, as we get
to frolic with cheetah and lion cubs.
The
cheetahs are teenagers, about the size of a German Shepherd (though
more the shape of a greyhound of course), and they purr as you scratch
them under the chin and like to lick your face.
The lion cubs are much younger and play roughly just like kittens:
climbing up your leg, grabbing your arm and sinking claws and teeth into
it - only they're about twenty times the size of kittens with a
corresponding twenty times larger teeth and claws. I manage to
disentangle myself and merely receive a surface scratch but poor Sandy's
leg is kind of a bloody mess, requiring an application of iodine.
Not as exciting, but still very cute, here's a dik dik:
Nairobi
Park is a good introduction to African game drives as it encompasses so
much in such a small area; beyond every corner is a different kind of
terrain, from forest and bush to swamp and savannah. At certain points
you can see the skyscrapers of Nairobi behind herds of giraffe. Giraffes
are everywhere; we drive ten feet past the gates and about a dozen are
blocking the road.
No
big cats or elephants yet, but we also see zebras, impalas, gazelles,
bushbucks, elands, hartebeests, wildebeests, buffalo, vervet monkeys,
warthogs and loads of birds.
I have an eye to eye brief encounter with a malachite kingfisher, who flies away as soon as I notify others of his presence.
Lunch
is at a restaurant called the Verandah, owned by an American woman.
It's very nice and I'm relieved that we didn't have to dine at the
Carnivore Restaurant (with a selection of "bush meat") up the road.
Afterward we visit the Langata Giraffe Centre. It houses three tame Rothschild's giraffes which you may feed:
you
climb up a tower in order to reach the level of their mouths and
they'll take the food, which is like rather large rabbit pellets, off
your hand or out of your mouth (several young boys get very into this!)
A
giraffe tongue is quite soft but not wanting to get covered in giraffe
spittle, I mostly toss the pellets as one would toss fish to a seal.
They're
greedy buggers too! Way down below, some warthogs are eating the
pellets that have fallen on the ground, but there aren't many of those.
Apparently
for some extortionate sum you may stay in the giraffe towers on the
premises, and they, the giraffes that is, will stick their heads in and
wake you up in the morning. I'm sure if they were given free rein they'd
be happy to wake you up in the middle of the night too!
Next we
travel to the district of Karen and visit Karin Blixen's house and
museum. All I remember about Out of Africa is that I wasn't impressed by
her taste in men - going for those macho big game hunters. I guess she
did a lot for the locals, or at least gave them work on her plantation,
but she actually only lived in Africa for fourteen years or so. You'd
think if you thought of somewhere as your spiritual home and had nice
digs (as this house was, and what a view too!),
that
you would want to spend the rest of your days there, but no, she went
back to dreary Denmark and never returned to Africa! Not once!! In
Denmark she died of malnutrition. I reckon she wasn't getting enough
fresh vegetables. But back to that fourteen years thing - I lived that
long in Leeds! Will Meryl Streep play me someday in Out of Headingley,
working the door at the Warehouse (turning away cranky ligging
journalists who want us to subsidize their dates), buying cheese &
onion pasties at Stanley's Bakery, doling out cash advances on wages to
stage crew at the Playhouse, riding my bike across Woodhouse Moor and
driving Bob (my old Mini) through the dales? Will the "district" of Hyde
Park be renamed in honour of me? Only time will tell.
Back at
the hotel we learn that Helen called for a doctor and was later taken to
Nairobi Hospital! I won't go into the details but it wasn't anything
life threatening. Okay, she was just a little stopped up, if you get my
drift. Kurt goes to fetch her and later all is well; he says she's fine
to travel tomorrow though she seems a little cranky. Again she's up all
night so again my slumber is disturbed.
