Lamu

After visiting the game parks, my father, aunt, uncle, cousin and I flew to Lamu island, one of several islands that form the Lamu archipelago off the northern coast of Kenya, near the Somalia border. It is actually so close – about 100 km away – that the people of Lamu can hear U.S. fighter planes on missions in and around Somalia and, I am told, it makes for an easy place to buy a cheap AK-47 once smuggled over the border from Somalia into Kenya. But none of this deterred us from exploring this quiet Swahili island where the only car, that of the police commissioner, currently sits without tires atop cinder blocks.

Our small propeller plane landed on Manda island on March 28th, where we were met by Omar, a Muslim Kenyan living in Lamu town. Omar piled our luggage onto an old wooden cart and pushed it a half kilometer down a dirt path to the water, where we boarded a boat that drove us along the calm channel between the islands and the Kenyan coast. Except for passing an occasional dhow, an old wooden Swahili boat with a single lateen sail, we saw almost no other boat traffic out on the water. And, except for a few parts of the island where a couple of resorts have sprung up, there is hardly any development on Lamu. Riding in the boat, we noticed only sand dunes popping up from the island’s interior, mangrove trees lining its channels and a few small villages, where the people work as dhow-makers and weavers, dotting its shoreline.

We arrived at our “hotel” at low tide and waded onto shore while the hotel staff carried our luggage back on top their heads. We walked across woven mat pathways to our open thatched bandas, entirely woven by the people in Kipungani, the nearby village. The weather was scorching hot and our bandas did not have air conditioning, so we spent a lot the time during our three days on Lamu in the water, whether showering, swimming, sailing on the hotel’s dhow, sea kayaking, snorkeling and, one of the highlights of the trip, swimming – yes, really swimming – so close I could have reached out and touched them – with bottle-nosed dolphins!

One of the mornings, though, we boarded the boat again and went back around the island to explore Lamu town, with Omar as our guide. Lamu is known as an old Arab trading town - a trading post was established there by the Omanis after vanquishing the Portuguese in the late 17th century. With the export of ivory and slavery, Lamu became a wealthy place until the British abolished slavery in 1873 and made Lamu part of the British Protectorate. Wandering around the old, narrow alleyways of Lamu town can be captivating and charming, full of young men riding donkeys, carved wooden doorways, traditional houses, mosques and markets. But, it can also seem rather disgusting and sad, smelling from sewage that runs down gulleys lining the streets, and the donkeys, and with many people sitting about idly or lying down sick on door stoops.

We toured a Swahili-style home where the women of this decoratively-painted house would spend all day inside, cooking on the second floor, only leaving to talk across the rooftops to their female neighbors. After drinking fruit milkshakes (for which Lamu is famous) out near the Lamu harbor, while watching the donkeys and people go by, we boarded the boat back for the hotel where, each night they cooked the most incredible seafood dinners which we ate outdoors under the southern hemisphere stars. Lamu has its pluses and minuses, but one thing is certain, it is an easy place to relax and lazily wile away the days!

(Pictured: Lamu town; donkey traffic jam in Lamu)

The Maasai

During our four days in Amboseli National Park and the Masai Mara (March 24 28) young Maasai warriors accompanied us on walks, drives and at the camps – although they still keep their traditional customs, many of the young men now work at lodges on or near Maasai reserves. The Maasai are probably the most well-known of Kenya’s 70 tribes thanks to the bright red-checked blankets that the men wear around their shoulders and large number of beaded necklaces that the women wear around their necks. They are also distinctive for their tall, slender bodies, long-lobed ears and missing bottom front teeth - removed at a young age so that they can still receive milk and water should they go unconscious. Young male Maasai warriors wear their hair long, braided and dyed an ochre-color. There is no more striking figure in Kenya, I think, than to look across the savannah and see a tall Maasai standing out in vibrant red against a blue sky, herding hundreds of cattle along.

The Maasai are known for their pride and fierceness, and diet of blood and curdled milk. They are nomadic pastoralists who migrated from present-day Sudan in the early 17th century. By 1800 they had become a dominant group in Kenya, controlling a lot of land in the Rift Valley and plains near the Tanzanian border. European hunting safaris in the early 1900s made the Mara world famous. By the early 1960s, not surprisingly, the European hunters had almost wiped-out the lion population and the British colonialists had gazetted the Maasai land to create the Mara National Reserve for hunting and tourism. Initial efforts to resettle the Maasai met with slow success because the majority still practice nomadic pastoralism and have a disdain for agriculture and land ownership. To this day, the Maasai still consider their cattle, numbering in the millions, very sacred, to be used for bartering and dowries, but not for meat. However, more recently, wildlife reserves run by Maasai Group Ranches have been created adjacent to the Mara and other national parks and have begun to provide the Maasai with their owed share of land and tourism revenue.

Jackson, our guide in Amboseli, and Robert, in the Mara, sat and shared stories with us. They talked to us about the three stages of a Maasai man’s life – boyhood, warrior and elder. Men become warriors at some point between ages 14 and 18 years when they first go through a circumcision ceremony, then live alone outside their village with other warriors for 8 years or so, before returning to the village as elders. Warriors are meant to hunt and protect the cattle herds and land and, to this day, it is taken very seriously. In addition, many Maasai still practice polygamy and female circumcision – of course, practices much derided and fought against, despite their tradition within the Maasai, because of their abuse of women.

Jackson took us to a village nearby Amboseli, a somewhat touristy excursion that involved us shaking every elder’s hand and touching every child’s head; almost suffocating in a windowless, hot, small mud hut as an elder explained a husband’s custom of placing his spear outside one of his wife’s hut to let everyone know he was with her; watching men make fire and women make curdled milk; and observing a dance among the warriors that involved jumping as high as possible as a show of strength. But the fact remains, the village was an example of where and how most Maasai currently live – they did not just carpool in from Nairobi, put on their costumes and dance around for tourists – but they actually live in small mud huts, cook over a fire, drink curdled milk and blood and wear the clothing and ornamentation they have been wearing for centuries. Despite their ventures into tourism and the cell phones that dangle from their waste belts next to their knives, they still keep to their traditional beliefs and customs. Men, such as Jackson and Robert, still return to their small villages during their days off and share all the money they earn with their clan. They express happiness and no desire to leave or change. In many ways, the Maasai really are people to be in awe of!

Lunch!

Lions eating topi in Masai Mara, above. Below, us, also having lunch in Masai Mara a bit later (I ate a cheese and tomato sandwich that day). Seated left to right is our guide, Gordon; Tim, who is working in Sudan right now, and along with his mother and father, were with us on safari in both Amboseli and Masai Mara; two Maasai men; Tim's mother Trisha; my Aunt Amy; my cousin Susie; Tim's father Brian; my father; my Uncle Larry.

Teeming with Life

I received a great present on March 23rd, the day after my birthday – all wrapped in new, mosquito-repellant safari clothes and tied with straps from binoculars, cameras and wide-brimmed hats – my father, Aunt Amy, Uncle Larry and a cousin, Susie, arrived after a long 41-hour journey from Missouri. After 5 months away from home, seeing them was a true gift that meant a lot to me! We spent Friday, March 23rd, sightseeing around Nairobi, and then set off on Saturday for a week spent divided between Amboseli National Park, Masai Mara National Park and Lamu Island.

Amboseli and Masai Mara are the African parks of my imagination – of Hemingway and Dineson stories – with beautiful landscapes and endless skies and full of animals and birds as far as the eyes could see. Rarely did we see humans other than Maasai men and women, dressed in colorful robes and jewelry, herding their goats and cattle across the open savannah. The romanticism of all this was enhanced by flying in small planes to each destination and landing on dirt “paved” airstrips, driving across fields in open air vehicles, having cocktails while the sun set and the Southern Cross appeared, and dining under an open tent with our guides who entertained us with stories of life growing up in Kenya. We spent our days driving around the parks and then sitting quietly to stare out at African eagles and other birds of prey sitting atop lone acacia trees, warthogs running through tall grass, and herds of buffaloes, giraffes, elephants, ostriches, wildebeests, topi and gazelles all sharing the same open space. Always, there was such a display of life!

Both Amboseli and Masai Mara border Tanzania – Amboseli to the south of Nairobi and the Mara to the north. Amboseli is a small park, at only 392 sq Km, compared to the huge Masai Mara which measures 1510 sq Km. Amboseli lies at the base of Mt. Kilimanjaro and it is a spectacular sight to see herds of giraffes and elephants walk by with the snow-capped mountain in the background. Water run-off from the slopes of Mt. Kilimanjaro feeds several swamps and lakes in Amboseli, and these are full of flamingoes, pelicans, hippoes and so much other wildlife. At Amboseli we saw juvenile lions, were charged by elephants and observed a pack of hyenas fighting over territory.

Masai Mara is an extension of the Serengeti Plains in Tanzania and is backed by the marvelous Siria Escarpment. Possibly one of the most spectacular things I have seen in my life was during one day in the Masai Mara. We were driving along when our guide spotted a few lions under a group of bushes. As we approached from one side, we saw it was not just a few, but 9 lions – 2 mothers with their juveniles and young cubs. As we moved even closer and circled around the bush, we saw that this group had just – only moments earlier – killed two large topi, dragged the topi from the open grass back to the bush, and were now having lunch. We sat forever, only a few feet away and watched the mother lions guard the area while the cubs, literally, ripped the topi apart to eat. You could smell the blood that the young cubs had all over their faces and the insides of the topi intestines that had been pulled out from their bodies. This was no zoo, but real – wild – life!

(Pictured: Fighting hyenas; A lone male elephant passes by Mt. Kilimanjaro).

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I hope everyone has a good Easter holiday. Here in Kenya, both Good Friday and Easter Monday are national holidays and I am taking advantage of that to go on a camping trip up in Northern Kenya, around Lake Turkana and the Chalbi Desert. Will be back in touch in a week or so. Enjoy!

White Nile, Shoebills and Chimps

I sat patiently for an hour at the café in front of the Speke Hotel beginning at 6:00 a.m. on Saturday morning a few weeks ago, waiting for Nile River Explorers to pick me up and transport me to Jinga, Uganda, to begin my rafting trip up the White Nile. A personal goal of mine while in Africa is to learn to relax and let things happen as they may. I have been trying to contain my obsessive-compulsive need to confirm everything a dozen times, to insist on promptness, and to fret when things do not go as I plan. I already had phoned the rafting company once, upon my arrival in Kampala on Friday, to confirm.

So, there I sat guzzling coffee, watching women with straw brooms sweep the street, keeping one eye on the frightening Marabou storks hovering in the trees overhead, and pacing out to the curb every few minutes to take pictures while searching nervously down Nile Avenue for my ride to Jinga. One hour later and I burst, picked up my phone and called. AHA! I knew it! They forgot me and were now halfway to Jinga! I was almost happy with the confirmation that my compulsive behavior indeed is justified. But, I quickly jumped in a cab at the company’s insistence and on their dime (and thus, for once, did not even bother to negotiate the fare) and told the driver to get me quickly to Jinga, the town located 80 Km east of Kampala on the shores of Lake Victoria and right at the source of the Nile River. We drove fast and determinedly, stopping once so the driver could go to the bathroom right beside his car door and slowing down once so I could snap a picture of the Owen Falls Dam, at the start of the White Nile, which supplies Uganda with the bulk of its electricity. I arrived in Jinga an hour and half later, just in time for the launching of four 7-person rafts, into the Nile.

In my raft were a couple from San Diego taking 6 months off to travel throughout Africa, a researcher for the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, two women from an AIDs charity in Canada and a woman spending time in Uganda on a traveling fellowship. As we pushed off the shore, nearly 25 young, scantily clad, children waved us good-bye. Many of the little girls had infants strapped onto their backs. It was a strange scene and, with my life jacket and helmet on, in the big orange raft full of travelers and development workers, I felt a bit ridiculous – a feeling I have a lot as I balance being a tourist in such a poverty-stricken environment.

We spent from 10:00 a.m to 5:00 p.m. making our way 30 Km up the White Nile towards Khartoum, Sudan where it joins up with the Blue Nile and proceeds to Egypt. We encountered 14 major rapids along the way, including four Grade 5 rapids with apt names such as “The Bad Place” and “The Dead Dutchman.” We flipped over several times, but always felt safe since a safety boat and a dozen men in kayaks remained constantly near our rafts. During the trip, I was as intrigued by the life along the shoreline of the Nile and as I was scared by its rapids. We floated by a large baptism taking place in the Nile, by wooden “ferries” transporting men and their bicycles across, and hundreds of women and children washing their clothes in the water. We also passed long stretches without any sign of life other than the moving water.

Our day ended with a bbq along the shore and the purchase of a DVD of the experience, since I did not take my camera. The next day, Sunday, I rounded out my first trip to Uganda with a visit to the Uganda Wildlife Centre so I could see for myself the strange Shoebill Stork (pictured here), with its plastic Cheshire Cat-like grin, and to the Ngamba Island Chimpanzee Sanctuary, where I sat for an hour and watched around 40 orphan chimps move freely about the small island eating, playing and grooming (pictured here). I'm still having a wonderful time here in Africa, and enjoying every minute of my experience, I thought, but watching these chimps really made me homesick, and miss my brother, sister and sister-in-law...for some reason!