I am back in the real world. And the last two days were the longest in history.
On Tuesday morning I woke up around 7, in my bed with my mosquito net and no covers in the Karibu hotel in the heart of Stonetown, Zanzibar…wow it already feels worlds ago and away. We took a taxi to the airport for our noon flight to Dar Es Selaam, which is the capital of Tanzania. We had a close call with our bags: when we last minute decided to go check on them to make sure they were still on the plane, only to see them going around and around on the baggage carousel. Basically if we hadn’t checked, our bags would still be Tanzania. Got back on a plane to Arusha. We got into Arusha around 2pm and our next flight wasn’t until 9 that night. So we just camped outside under a tree and read books and ate our mangos. Around 7 we went inside and then we met Greg. Greg started talking to us by commenting on the tons of crushed peanut shells that were strewn all over the floor near us. They weren’t ours. He was basically just really friendly and such a character. He seemed slightly paranoid about the flight, ie he got up every 10 minutes to go check the planes progress and how much longer till we got to board, etc. But he was really funny and we made a bet with him about our flight. Loser takes winner out to dinner. We are taking him to John Jay dining hall at Columbia.
We took a 777 airplane from Arusha to Amsterdam, but since the Arusha airport is so small there aren’t any tunnel terminals. By that I mean that you walk on the pavement outside up to the steps and then get on the plane that way. We had done this plenty on all the smaller flights, but this time it was a 777. It was completely the biggest human creation I have ever seen. I have no idea how it actually gets off the ground. It was incredible. We actually had to fly right back to Dar and then we went to Amsterdam. Our flight left Arusha at 9pm and got into Amsterdam at 7 the next morning (with 1 hour time zone difference). We immediately left the airport (after some serious difficulty with reading the signs in Dutch) and took a swanky train into the city.
I walked out of the train station and felt something that seems nearly impossible to describe. I’ll try tho. The world is huge. The western world is even bigger somehow. To go from Stonetown and Nanyuki to Amsterdam is such a huge, cataclysmic change: everyone is white, everyone is walking fast, everyone is dressed soooo trendy (it made me sick). Everyone is white here. Duh soph, I know but it’s true. I am just another person, another white girl among hundreds and thousands. No one stops to talk to me on the street, no one calls out to me; the girl sitting next to me at Nussbaum this morning didn’t even look at me, let alone want to start a conversation. No one wants to talk to each other here. Amsterdam was this huge shock I was just walking around in a complete daze I could barely see straight. It doesn’t even make sense to me now because I’m separated from the feeling, but at the time it was the strangest sensation of my life. Life is just totally different in a western country. Everything is clean, everything has soap, and a toilet seat. Everything has toilet paper and a toilet! We were lucky to get a long drop in most of the towns we visited. There’s running water. There’s about 10 different muffin choices at each bakery. There are 5 salads on menus. Food doesn’t give me the shits. What am I saying, I know all this was here, I knew it was different when I was away from it. But it’s completely incredible how easy it was to forget it all existed and to just get used to not having a toilet, or running water that I could drink, or trendy clothes and fast walking people. Going to Africa was easy somehow. I think it was because I was going from big to small. Somehow going the other way is just really trippy. I thought about this for a while and realized that what is the strangest part of the whole thing, or maybe the best way to describe it is this: the strangest thing in life is when the familiar suddenly seems foreign and the foreign seems familiar. I expected Africa to be different and it was. What I didn’t expect was for NYC to feel like a foreign country does.
Back to the story. We left the train station in a daze and went pastry shopping. They have the most amazing pastries there all over the city. We basically had the plan to walk all day and see as much of the city as we possibly could. We had 12 hours between our two flights. Everyone in Amsterdam rides bikes everywhere. Seriously, there are possibly more bikes than there are cars. Instead of car garages, there are bike garages; there are lanes on the roads just for bike. Anyway, we decided to rent bikes for a few hours. Best decision ever. Just biking around this city neither of us had any idea about was so much fun. It was so weird to be in Europe with all the expensive fruit, expensive clothes, expensive trains that don’t bump you once…
We biked for about 3 hours all over the city, through a little park and along all the beautiful canals. Amsterdam is laid out in a really neat way. I don’t really understand it, but there were all these rings of streets all circling around the center of the city. And there were canals and little bridges to cross the canals at each ring. It was so beautiful. We stopped to buy some peaches, which I had completely forget even existed. I knocked into an entire display of blueberries in the process. I think buying the fruit was the first time I realized just how different it all was. In Africa people are so on top of you to buy what they are selling that you actually cannot walk down the street without being pretty much attacked by people selling you things, like I’ve said so many times. But here there’s nothing like that. I was buying a book today on the street here in the city, and I caught myself walking by the tables of books and, though I wanted to look at what they were selling I had this feeling inside that I wasn’t allowed to stop and look because if I did, then they would pounce on me and I’d end up buying something I didn’t want or need. That is what would have happened in Kenya. Then I realized that it wasn’t like that here. First of all, the guy selling books wasn’t saying anything to me, and second of all it wouldn’t have been an issue if I hadn’t bought something. So I stopped and looked and asked how much a book was. He told me it was $4 and I was about to bargain with him and pay $3, when he told me he would give it to me for $3 before I even got the chance to banter with him. That was really funny and made me smile. I told him the whole story actually. So when I picked another book out and asked how much he said $4 and then he let me bargain with him just for fun.
New York is huge. And it doesn’t end. And I know that. And I knew it. Maybe I just forgot just how big it all really is…
I think this is the final, final entry. I am so glad I wrote all this. I was reading it over the other day and it was such a great way to relive the whole experience. I’ve been back in the states for less than a day and the entire trip already seems ages ago and it seems like so far away from me. Last night was the first night I spent away from Lauren in 6 weeks. I miss her. Not entirely sure what I’m supposed to do without her by my side experiencing everything along with me.
Hope to see anyone who has read this at my house on Saturday. We’re having a party. And Lubin party’s rock.
Love to everyone,
sophiebess
Thursday, July 06, 2006
Monday, July 03, 2006
last real day
i am back from the ocean. it was too beautiful to describe. i don't have the words. i am all dried up of words. i am fully spent and over saturated and cannot wait to come home. that being said i continue to see things that i cannot beleive each day and that take my breath away. it is hard because i am still living here in africa even though it is so close to the time when i will be home. it's a real state of limbo between home and here. i am trying to live still in the amazingness that is all around me each day, but it is hard when i know home is so close.
coming back from the beach up north i find that the combination of writing so much about my experiences and the unbelievable beauty of this beach, also combined with the fact that i am totally wiped at the moment...is making me unable to describe just how gorgeous the beach really was. it was like a postcard...i have pictures.
yesterday we drove up to nungwi, which is the northern most point of the island. we checked into a little hotel for $25, walked around and relaxed. we went to the local grocery store and got these little ice creams that were the best ice cream i've had this whole trip; fell asleep at 8 and didn't wake up til 8 this morning. had a really strenuous time of lying on the beach for a few hours and then our friend Fasel came to meet us (it's his day off today). he drove us to membwe where his brother is in the process of building a hotel. the beach was, if possible, more beautiful. the best part of the whole excursion was when we decided that we wanted lunch so Fasel walked down to the beach and asked this guy for a few fish. the guy gutted them right there and Fasel brought them back to his brother who cooked them and they were soooo good! talk about fresh!
so now we are back in stonetown and we just watched the sun set over the Indian Ocean for the last time. we were talking about how crazy this trip has been and all the poeple we got to know. starting when we got off the plane we met eston and louisa and steve mcqueen; then we met nancy and tony. then we flew to the farm and met suzanne and randy, hamish, the dogs, cecelia and wanjoi. then we went on our hike up the mountain with grandpa and smelly (christopher and james). met cameron on the mountain, and the french people, and uncle and his nephews, and of course jan. came down the mountain and went to the ball, met derek and all the weird poeple at the ball. saw jan again at the airstrip. then we went away to lake turkana and met bev and lee, helen, jim and jeff, caroline and dani, bosco and kamunge. the annoying guy in the matatu back from tfalls. back on the plane to nairobi to louisa's house. saw derek again and met RK at casa blanca. Onto the bus to arusha with jan! hotel night in arusha and then flight to Zanzibar. Met Fasel and since then we’ve been living on paradise island.
The last stretch starts tomorrow: flight at noon to arusha, wait there til our 8pm flight to Amsterdam. Then we have 12 hours of fun there. Back on the plane to new york to arrive in the city at 8pm on Wednesday night…that’s a lonnngg day.
I don’t feel like writing more right now. Maybe I’ll write from Amsterdam, otherwise this might be the last entry ever…try not to die without me.
sb
coming back from the beach up north i find that the combination of writing so much about my experiences and the unbelievable beauty of this beach, also combined with the fact that i am totally wiped at the moment...is making me unable to describe just how gorgeous the beach really was. it was like a postcard...i have pictures.
yesterday we drove up to nungwi, which is the northern most point of the island. we checked into a little hotel for $25, walked around and relaxed. we went to the local grocery store and got these little ice creams that were the best ice cream i've had this whole trip; fell asleep at 8 and didn't wake up til 8 this morning. had a really strenuous time of lying on the beach for a few hours and then our friend Fasel came to meet us (it's his day off today). he drove us to membwe where his brother is in the process of building a hotel. the beach was, if possible, more beautiful. the best part of the whole excursion was when we decided that we wanted lunch so Fasel walked down to the beach and asked this guy for a few fish. the guy gutted them right there and Fasel brought them back to his brother who cooked them and they were soooo good! talk about fresh!
so now we are back in stonetown and we just watched the sun set over the Indian Ocean for the last time. we were talking about how crazy this trip has been and all the poeple we got to know. starting when we got off the plane we met eston and louisa and steve mcqueen; then we met nancy and tony. then we flew to the farm and met suzanne and randy, hamish, the dogs, cecelia and wanjoi. then we went on our hike up the mountain with grandpa and smelly (christopher and james). met cameron on the mountain, and the french people, and uncle and his nephews, and of course jan. came down the mountain and went to the ball, met derek and all the weird poeple at the ball. saw jan again at the airstrip. then we went away to lake turkana and met bev and lee, helen, jim and jeff, caroline and dani, bosco and kamunge. the annoying guy in the matatu back from tfalls. back on the plane to nairobi to louisa's house. saw derek again and met RK at casa blanca. Onto the bus to arusha with jan! hotel night in arusha and then flight to Zanzibar. Met Fasel and since then we’ve been living on paradise island.
The last stretch starts tomorrow: flight at noon to arusha, wait there til our 8pm flight to Amsterdam. Then we have 12 hours of fun there. Back on the plane to new york to arrive in the city at 8pm on Wednesday night…that’s a lonnngg day.
I don’t feel like writing more right now. Maybe I’ll write from Amsterdam, otherwise this might be the last entry ever…try not to die without me.
sb
Saturday, July 01, 2006
Snorkeling
yesterday we got to zanzibar and checked into our hotel. it is full of backpackers from all over the place and has a really great vibe. Louisa's friend runs the hotel and he has been taking care of us and showing us around the town and island. he's really nice and interesting.
nearly everyone on this island is muslim. it's actually something like 95%. all the women cover their heads and wear long skirts and wraps. and a lot of the men wear those roundish square hats...you know what i'm talking about. the island is beautiful, with white beaches, teal water, and palm trees all over the palce. zanzibar has become a huuge tourist attraction. there are more white people here than i have seen in 6 weeks. it is so weird to see them actually, now after so long of feeling unique and singled out. now i am just another mazunge. it's a different feeling. since there are so many tourists there are a lot of tourist things to do. things like snorkeling and scuba diving, and there are streets just line with shops one after the other selling trinkets and souvenirs. the weird part about the shops is that each one is literally selling the exact same stuff as the shop before it. so i wonder how any of them make any money. but somehow they must.
when i wrote yesterday i was in the strangest of moods. it was like there was some part of me that could not take being a traveler anymore. i can't walk down the street on this island without getting called at my 20 (no exaggeration) people. i felt yesterday so totally overwhelmed by the desperation that surrounds me: these people live off my $2 purchase of a bracelet. and if i don't buy the bracelet, then maybe they won't be able to feed their kids. at the same time, they overcharge me by about 100% and that just gets me mad. so it's a really hard situation to be in, for both of us. it's hard for me as the white buyer, and it's hard for them, as the black sellers. anyway, yesterday i couldn't see the sadness of the situation and only saw the annoyance of it. i become hard walking down the street. my face turns cold, i know it does, and i don't smile or look at anyone. i have learned that this is the ONLY way to avoid further callings and approaches. it's a sad thing to come to, this realize that it's either walk with curiosity and interest towards the world, and therefore get stopped every 5 steps, with my entire being held within me, which shows that i have bushiness on my mind.
anyway, i couldn't really take it anymore. so i went to get ice cream but they were closed, so we went on a hunt for some ice cream. we didn't find any, but we did find the ocean. watched some local guys kick around a soccer ball and it was so nice to sit there on the ocean wall and not be bother by people and just be within the social situation. i mean here that these guys didn't have anything to sell to us, and so they weren't bothering us. granted they certainly would have slept with us if given the chance, but none of them could really speak english well enough to start a conversation with us. it was a nice respite.
we left to meet up with Facel, Louisa's friend, who took us to this restaurant that looks out onto the ocean, so we could watch the sun set. we watched the game (another disappointment as argentina lost) and then went to get some food. Facel took us to this really great night street market nearby. apparently, every night the boardwalk along the beach turns into this outside food fair. there are poele lining the street, selling all this amazing seafood and authentic tanzanian food. ate great prawns and octopus. it was really good.
this morning i woke up and went for a walk. taking both my mother and suzanne's advice i decided to have some quiet time. i bought a mango and went to the beach and ate it and didn't say a work to anyone for at least 2 hours. a really sad thing happened. a man came up to me and wanted to talk with me (who knows about what but i am sure he wanted to tell me that i wanted something he had). he said hi, and i ignored him. i didn't even turn to smile, i pretended i coudln't hear him. it was sad because it wasn't exactly a nice thing to d, but i did it because i wanted some peace and quiet.
around 2 this afternoon lauren and i hopped on a boat with a snorkeling company. i have never been snorkeling or anything like it. if anyone does not know this, i have an irrational fear of sharks and i don't really like swimming in the ocean because it freaks me out. i decided that it was bullshit and pathetic to be afraid of something so dumb and i didnt want to let it ruin a potentially great experience. so i tried it out. of course i wasn't eaten my sharks and it was completely amazing. seeing the ocean, which is completed crystal clear, is totally amazing. eve just being out there on the middle of the ocean on this little island of sand that we took the boat to was amazing. i did occationally have moments of minor panic and think that lauren next to me was a shark coming to eat me (this was aided by lauren pouncing on my and pretending to be a shark), but beyond that i was fine. and it was really amazing.
now we are going. because it's dinner time (8:40pm) and who knows what the night will bring. tomorrow we are going up north to a beach hotel for the last 2 days of our trip!!
nearly everyone on this island is muslim. it's actually something like 95%. all the women cover their heads and wear long skirts and wraps. and a lot of the men wear those roundish square hats...you know what i'm talking about. the island is beautiful, with white beaches, teal water, and palm trees all over the palce. zanzibar has become a huuge tourist attraction. there are more white people here than i have seen in 6 weeks. it is so weird to see them actually, now after so long of feeling unique and singled out. now i am just another mazunge. it's a different feeling. since there are so many tourists there are a lot of tourist things to do. things like snorkeling and scuba diving, and there are streets just line with shops one after the other selling trinkets and souvenirs. the weird part about the shops is that each one is literally selling the exact same stuff as the shop before it. so i wonder how any of them make any money. but somehow they must.
when i wrote yesterday i was in the strangest of moods. it was like there was some part of me that could not take being a traveler anymore. i can't walk down the street on this island without getting called at my 20 (no exaggeration) people. i felt yesterday so totally overwhelmed by the desperation that surrounds me: these people live off my $2 purchase of a bracelet. and if i don't buy the bracelet, then maybe they won't be able to feed their kids. at the same time, they overcharge me by about 100% and that just gets me mad. so it's a really hard situation to be in, for both of us. it's hard for me as the white buyer, and it's hard for them, as the black sellers. anyway, yesterday i couldn't see the sadness of the situation and only saw the annoyance of it. i become hard walking down the street. my face turns cold, i know it does, and i don't smile or look at anyone. i have learned that this is the ONLY way to avoid further callings and approaches. it's a sad thing to come to, this realize that it's either walk with curiosity and interest towards the world, and therefore get stopped every 5 steps, with my entire being held within me, which shows that i have bushiness on my mind.
anyway, i couldn't really take it anymore. so i went to get ice cream but they were closed, so we went on a hunt for some ice cream. we didn't find any, but we did find the ocean. watched some local guys kick around a soccer ball and it was so nice to sit there on the ocean wall and not be bother by people and just be within the social situation. i mean here that these guys didn't have anything to sell to us, and so they weren't bothering us. granted they certainly would have slept with us if given the chance, but none of them could really speak english well enough to start a conversation with us. it was a nice respite.
we left to meet up with Facel, Louisa's friend, who took us to this restaurant that looks out onto the ocean, so we could watch the sun set. we watched the game (another disappointment as argentina lost) and then went to get some food. Facel took us to this really great night street market nearby. apparently, every night the boardwalk along the beach turns into this outside food fair. there are poele lining the street, selling all this amazing seafood and authentic tanzanian food. ate great prawns and octopus. it was really good.
this morning i woke up and went for a walk. taking both my mother and suzanne's advice i decided to have some quiet time. i bought a mango and went to the beach and ate it and didn't say a work to anyone for at least 2 hours. a really sad thing happened. a man came up to me and wanted to talk with me (who knows about what but i am sure he wanted to tell me that i wanted something he had). he said hi, and i ignored him. i didn't even turn to smile, i pretended i coudln't hear him. it was sad because it wasn't exactly a nice thing to d, but i did it because i wanted some peace and quiet.
around 2 this afternoon lauren and i hopped on a boat with a snorkeling company. i have never been snorkeling or anything like it. if anyone does not know this, i have an irrational fear of sharks and i don't really like swimming in the ocean because it freaks me out. i decided that it was bullshit and pathetic to be afraid of something so dumb and i didnt want to let it ruin a potentially great experience. so i tried it out. of course i wasn't eaten my sharks and it was completely amazing. seeing the ocean, which is completed crystal clear, is totally amazing. eve just being out there on the middle of the ocean on this little island of sand that we took the boat to was amazing. i did occationally have moments of minor panic and think that lauren next to me was a shark coming to eat me (this was aided by lauren pouncing on my and pretending to be a shark), but beyond that i was fine. and it was really amazing.
now we are going. because it's dinner time (8:40pm) and who knows what the night will bring. tomorrow we are going up north to a beach hotel for the last 2 days of our trip!!
Friday, June 30, 2006
zanzibar
so we are here. and it is paradise. the beaches are white, the water is clear teal, the sky is cloudless....and there are a billion people trying to sell me things. tomorrow i will write about what we are doing and our adventures and how i feel, but right now i am too tired to think or write much that would make sense.
a few minutes ago i wrote an email to suzanne. part of it is copied below:
>i am at this weird stage where i can't take the assault of poeple
that attack me the minute i walk out of the hotel door. it's the
kind of thing that takes a lot of patience, and i am started to lose that ability to laugh them off...how have you done it for so many years?
her response is bost hysterical and shows that she knows me well...
>Dear Sophie,
When these people bother you instead of making you laugh...you know you
are EXHAUSTED & OVERTIRED.
Go back to your old trick of not making eyecontact and do NOT speak.
Louisa and I used to pretend that she was deaf and dumb and we would
talk in this made up sign language.
Go straight to the icecream parlour...you need some sugar. Suz
just thought everyone would enjoy this...
till tomorrow then because i am going to get some ice cream.
with so much love,
sophie
a few minutes ago i wrote an email to suzanne. part of it is copied below:
>i am at this weird stage where i can't take the assault of poeple
that attack me the minute i walk out of the hotel door. it's the
kind of thing that takes a lot of patience, and i am started to lose that ability to laugh them off...how have you done it for so many years?
her response is bost hysterical and shows that she knows me well...
>Dear Sophie,
When these people bother you instead of making you laugh...you know you
are EXHAUSTED & OVERTIRED.
Go back to your old trick of not making eyecontact and do NOT speak.
Louisa and I used to pretend that she was deaf and dumb and we would
talk in this made up sign language.
Go straight to the icecream parlour...you need some sugar. Suz
just thought everyone would enjoy this...
till tomorrow then because i am going to get some ice cream.
with so much love,
sophie
Thursday, June 29, 2006
arusha
i am writing this in an internet cafe in arusha, tanzania and the man sitting next to me smells like really foil BO. it's good to know im still in africa!
on tuesday around noon Lauren and i had to say goodbye to Suzanne and Randy and their four dogs, Eston, Cecelia and Wanjoi, and to the beautiful house that has been our home for the past 5 weeks. it was really sad actually. The Whitfield have so openly invited us into their homes and into their lives, i feel a part the family. i was starting to understand things about life in Nanyuki. it is weird because after 5 weeks, no not even 5 weeks because 2 of them we spent either up the mountain or at Lake Turkana, so more like 3 weeks. anyway, in the time we were there with this house and this town and the people i was coming into contact with every day had started to make sense in the way only feeling at home can make sense. it's not to say i felt totally comfortable with life as a white girl living in kenya, but it does mean most certainly that i was beginning to expect things to happen the way they do. i expect that there will be 25 people in the matatu I take home from town, instead of the 14 that there are seats for; I expect to be convinced of what I want at markets; I expect to be ripped off by at least 100%; I expect to find a TV with a world cup match on at all times of every day no matter how remote the village is.
I cannot really describe what I’m feeling about this country right now. Mostly because I can see the little clock ticking away the minutes I have till my time runs out on this computer.
This country is incredible. It is so beautiful and it is so different. There are so many parts to it and I have managed to see a lot of them. By no means have I seen close to all of what is Kenya, not even a fraction, but I have seen a lot of difference. I got to experience the wilderness and the physical difficulty of climbing the second highest peak in Africa; and I got to see parts of the north that cannot be seen unless you drive for days on deserted bumpy, practically nonexistent roads. And I got to see remote villages. At one village in Kalacha I was, I’m quite sure, the first white person this one baby had ever seen. He was completely horrified to see my pale face. Like was saying before, going on the safari was a necessity because we could not have seen those places without the planning of gametrackers. It was touristy. 100%. But there’s no getting around it. And now, after feeling like my hand was being held my the safari company, and even at times by the sheer fact that I knew people in Nanyuki, now I am totally free, and anonymous.
I am completely alone with Lauren. We are walking around this town and we are staying in a hotel (which is really nice and costing us $20), and we are eating wherever we want and we are doing whatever we want and going to stores and being free in a place where no one, literally no one, knows our names. And it is the most incredible feeling.
But to give some history and some explanation to why we are here and what we are doing. First of all, we flew on Tuesday from Nanyuki to Nairobi and then took a taxi with Louisa back to her house, where we were before way back when we had first got to Kenya. We all went out for a night on the town with Louisa and her really great friend Derek. We went to a couple of places, one called Casa Blanca, which was covered with these couches and beds and cushions, danced there, but the place was filled with quite honestly the dorkiest people I have ever met. One guy was actually from Waltham, MA. He was mid 30s. came up to my chest, was fat, and danced like a monkey. Not kidding about that at all. So the people were a bit strange there, but after all it was a Tuesday night. Watched the game (Ghana vs. Brazil) and of course rooted for Ghana along with everyone else in the bar, because they were the only Africa team still in it, and become as thoroughly depressed about their loss as every other African on the continent. All I’m saying is that Brazil didn’t deserve to win.
Anyways, we spent yesterday recovering. And also doing some errands and seeing a bit of the city. We woke up this morning to a cab at 6am. Got in a bus that took us to Arusha. So now comes the part where I relay the most coincidental piece of happenings in the entire universe:
There were once 2 young girls who were walking down the mountain on their last day and were lucky enough to be picked up by a very nice chameleon hunter named Jan who was doing research in Africa. These two girls, a few weeks later, were drinking coffee at the airstrip when said chameleon hunter Jan was spotted driving into the airstrip parking lot. They all laughed about seeing each other again and had some coffee together. A few weeks later, after the girls had been to lake turkana, they were about to get into a bus headed for Arusha Tanzania, when who should walk up but Jan, our chameleon hunter friend!
So I would like for someone to please calculate the odds of this happening. anyway, Jan was on our bus here and he helped us find a nice hotel and we are watching the game with him tonight in 1 hour.
We drove from Nairobi to Arusha and left Kenya behind and now we are in Tanzania where everything has an extra zero added to its price tag (the Kenya shilling is stronger than the Tanzania one), and where there are a few other, quite marked, differences that we have noticed. We are staying here only the night, tomorrow we are getting on a plane and going to paradise. Also known as the island of Zanzibar. We will stay ion Zanzibar for 4 nights total, 2 in town and 2 on the coastal beaches where we will go snorkeling! Then we’ll fly back to the Arusha airport and fly to Amsterdam and then HOME! So that means that we have 5 more nights in Africa including tonight, plus one that we lose during flying…crazy. sad. exciting!
Lauren and I dropped out bags off in our room and went looking for food. We walked outside wearing what we’ve been wearing for the past 5 weeks, dresses we bought at matumba for $1. stepping outside into this new town suddenly I felt like I was naked. It was incredible. The dress I wore was not short at all, in fact it comes down to my calf, and it isn't low either. the only thing is that it has thin straps. I really have no idea if it was what I was wearing a dress or if its just that I’m white, but I have never felt so starred at, in just a provocative, incessant way as I was on our walk to get food. We turned around and put on new clothes. The stares lessoned, but not did not stop by any means.
I find myself in a moment of confusion. On the one hand I feel as though I have been here long enough so that I know what I will expect each day. I feel comfortable for the most part and I feel as if this could be a home, in some form or other (obviosuly that might sound rediculous to some, i mean i've only been here over a month, but it is honestly the truth about how i feel). on the other hand are the people who are actually African. And no matter how happy and comfortable I might think I am, they will never see me as more than an invasive presence, a means to earn or steal money, or a piece of ass. So I have this opposition between what I feel and what every one else sees and feels. I can never break beyond that mold. I really don’t think I ever could. Even Suzanne isn’t a part of Nanyuki’s uniform every day life. she has been there long enough that people know who she is and therefore her presence isn’t strange anymore, but still, she is not just another customer like everyone else.
I wonder if it is ever possible to become part of the fabric that is the culture of this country.
on tuesday around noon Lauren and i had to say goodbye to Suzanne and Randy and their four dogs, Eston, Cecelia and Wanjoi, and to the beautiful house that has been our home for the past 5 weeks. it was really sad actually. The Whitfield have so openly invited us into their homes and into their lives, i feel a part the family. i was starting to understand things about life in Nanyuki. it is weird because after 5 weeks, no not even 5 weeks because 2 of them we spent either up the mountain or at Lake Turkana, so more like 3 weeks. anyway, in the time we were there with this house and this town and the people i was coming into contact with every day had started to make sense in the way only feeling at home can make sense. it's not to say i felt totally comfortable with life as a white girl living in kenya, but it does mean most certainly that i was beginning to expect things to happen the way they do. i expect that there will be 25 people in the matatu I take home from town, instead of the 14 that there are seats for; I expect to be convinced of what I want at markets; I expect to be ripped off by at least 100%; I expect to find a TV with a world cup match on at all times of every day no matter how remote the village is.
I cannot really describe what I’m feeling about this country right now. Mostly because I can see the little clock ticking away the minutes I have till my time runs out on this computer.
This country is incredible. It is so beautiful and it is so different. There are so many parts to it and I have managed to see a lot of them. By no means have I seen close to all of what is Kenya, not even a fraction, but I have seen a lot of difference. I got to experience the wilderness and the physical difficulty of climbing the second highest peak in Africa; and I got to see parts of the north that cannot be seen unless you drive for days on deserted bumpy, practically nonexistent roads. And I got to see remote villages. At one village in Kalacha I was, I’m quite sure, the first white person this one baby had ever seen. He was completely horrified to see my pale face. Like was saying before, going on the safari was a necessity because we could not have seen those places without the planning of gametrackers. It was touristy. 100%. But there’s no getting around it. And now, after feeling like my hand was being held my the safari company, and even at times by the sheer fact that I knew people in Nanyuki, now I am totally free, and anonymous.
I am completely alone with Lauren. We are walking around this town and we are staying in a hotel (which is really nice and costing us $20), and we are eating wherever we want and we are doing whatever we want and going to stores and being free in a place where no one, literally no one, knows our names. And it is the most incredible feeling.
But to give some history and some explanation to why we are here and what we are doing. First of all, we flew on Tuesday from Nanyuki to Nairobi and then took a taxi with Louisa back to her house, where we were before way back when we had first got to Kenya. We all went out for a night on the town with Louisa and her really great friend Derek. We went to a couple of places, one called Casa Blanca, which was covered with these couches and beds and cushions, danced there, but the place was filled with quite honestly the dorkiest people I have ever met. One guy was actually from Waltham, MA. He was mid 30s. came up to my chest, was fat, and danced like a monkey. Not kidding about that at all. So the people were a bit strange there, but after all it was a Tuesday night. Watched the game (Ghana vs. Brazil) and of course rooted for Ghana along with everyone else in the bar, because they were the only Africa team still in it, and become as thoroughly depressed about their loss as every other African on the continent. All I’m saying is that Brazil didn’t deserve to win.
Anyways, we spent yesterday recovering. And also doing some errands and seeing a bit of the city. We woke up this morning to a cab at 6am. Got in a bus that took us to Arusha. So now comes the part where I relay the most coincidental piece of happenings in the entire universe:
There were once 2 young girls who were walking down the mountain on their last day and were lucky enough to be picked up by a very nice chameleon hunter named Jan who was doing research in Africa. These two girls, a few weeks later, were drinking coffee at the airstrip when said chameleon hunter Jan was spotted driving into the airstrip parking lot. They all laughed about seeing each other again and had some coffee together. A few weeks later, after the girls had been to lake turkana, they were about to get into a bus headed for Arusha Tanzania, when who should walk up but Jan, our chameleon hunter friend!
So I would like for someone to please calculate the odds of this happening. anyway, Jan was on our bus here and he helped us find a nice hotel and we are watching the game with him tonight in 1 hour.
We drove from Nairobi to Arusha and left Kenya behind and now we are in Tanzania where everything has an extra zero added to its price tag (the Kenya shilling is stronger than the Tanzania one), and where there are a few other, quite marked, differences that we have noticed. We are staying here only the night, tomorrow we are getting on a plane and going to paradise. Also known as the island of Zanzibar. We will stay ion Zanzibar for 4 nights total, 2 in town and 2 on the coastal beaches where we will go snorkeling! Then we’ll fly back to the Arusha airport and fly to Amsterdam and then HOME! So that means that we have 5 more nights in Africa including tonight, plus one that we lose during flying…crazy. sad. exciting!
Lauren and I dropped out bags off in our room and went looking for food. We walked outside wearing what we’ve been wearing for the past 5 weeks, dresses we bought at matumba for $1. stepping outside into this new town suddenly I felt like I was naked. It was incredible. The dress I wore was not short at all, in fact it comes down to my calf, and it isn't low either. the only thing is that it has thin straps. I really have no idea if it was what I was wearing a dress or if its just that I’m white, but I have never felt so starred at, in just a provocative, incessant way as I was on our walk to get food. We turned around and put on new clothes. The stares lessoned, but not did not stop by any means.
I find myself in a moment of confusion. On the one hand I feel as though I have been here long enough so that I know what I will expect each day. I feel comfortable for the most part and I feel as if this could be a home, in some form or other (obviosuly that might sound rediculous to some, i mean i've only been here over a month, but it is honestly the truth about how i feel). on the other hand are the people who are actually African. And no matter how happy and comfortable I might think I am, they will never see me as more than an invasive presence, a means to earn or steal money, or a piece of ass. So I have this opposition between what I feel and what every one else sees and feels. I can never break beyond that mold. I really don’t think I ever could. Even Suzanne isn’t a part of Nanyuki’s uniform every day life. she has been there long enough that people know who she is and therefore her presence isn’t strange anymore, but still, she is not just another customer like everyone else.
I wonder if it is ever possible to become part of the fabric that is the culture of this country.
Sunday, June 25, 2006
nyahururu
The last day of the safari we got dropped off in Nyahururu, or Thompson falls. we went to the actual water falls first with the rest of the group before they left us to drive to nairobi. here's what happened:
i jump out of the last row of the range rover, my back killing me because of the previously mentioned height issue, and immediately 6 africa women swarm me, each one telling me to come to her shop. i tell them i will get to them, and then have to pretty much ignore their constant "you come to my shop now!" and just go into the first shop i see. i ask how much the kangas (which are the african wraps) are (knowing they should be between 150 and 300 kenya shillings), to be told that this one here is 2,500. it is this kind of price increase that i am talking about that happens every day, with every item, just to give you the right idea. i tell the woman that this is ridiculous and that i wont pay more than 300 and walk out. Every store (these stores are actually shacks) is filled with the same hand carved, really quite beautiful statues of animals, bone carved spoons, beaded necklaces, and colorful kangas. but every item is so over priced that i cannot even begin to bargain with them. if someone asks for 2,500 there is no way that i can ever get them to reduce the price down to 250 shillings. the lowest i got was 500. which i thought was pretty good considering i've only been bargaining for the last month. the problem is that T falls is a big tourist attraction and these women know that they can convince tourists that it make sense to spend $30 on a piece of cloth that they paid $1 for. but i know that i can find all this stuff for much cheaper when i go to Zanzibar and so i just keep on going. Regardless, i didn't end up purchasing anything. and i also never actually got to see the water fall.
i did walk away with a lot of anger and frustration. this place is just so full of people who see you more than ever as a source of infinite wealth. and like i have said, i am really rich compared to them, but these women just had no sense of what it means to run a business. well not in any sense that i had ever experienced before. they come out to the street and force you into their shop, and if you leave to quickly they get angry and say you didn't give them a fair look around. the most ridiculous part was that each time i wanted to buy something and i offered low, the woman would go and get her boss. and the boss just happened to be the same woman for each shop. this meant that the entire market is owned by one person which means there is no bargaining off other shopkeepers because each lady is only allowed to go so low, which is dictated by that one boss woman. she had a complete monopoly on the entire business. and she was a real bitch.
anyway we left there, feeling totally drained and frustrated and attacked. that's the best word for it.
we then got dropped off in town, said goodbye to bev and lee, caroline and dani, jeff and jim, helen, kamunge and boxson. the feeling of complete freedom that washed over me as the car drove away was amazing. the thing about the trip was that it was very much the planned trip for the adventurous tourist, but was just that: totally planned. we were there to see peoples and animals and culture and it was set in front of our faces and then we saw it. in spite of that, i don't regret doing it by any means because you simply cannot see the north of kenya unless you do it the way we did. you can't just take mutatus and hitch rides and buy your own food because there aren't any mutatus or buses and there aren't any places to buy food or get water.
but when we started walking away from the car it was like this thick haze fell away. what we had been seeing for the past 8 days had been real, very real, but we hadn't had to interact with it on a daily level. and then there we were. walking around this town that reminded me so much nanyuki, with cars driving by nearly running us over. and then people were calling out to us, mazunge which means white person. we went to the grocery store and bought some food and dealt with people who didn't speak any english. then we went and got some tea and somosas at this cafe (they call a cafe here a hotel). and we just sat and enjoyed being free in this very alive place that we didn't know at all.
we bought some mangos and ate them on the side of the road, which, since we were sitting down, was a clear invitation to every street seller in the area to come and try to sell us chocolates and crackers, water and watches. everything. others just wanted to talk with us. it was really interesting because at T falls all the store sellers had been women, but town was only full of men. most of which were in some stage of drunkenness. that is actually a really bad problem here. men are drunk at literally every hour of every day.
we ate our mangos and then walked over to the mutatu center. of course there was the usual bustle and argument over which mutatu we should take because everyone wants the white people to ride in their car...as we finally got into the mutatu these street sellers came up to the window and asked us to buy more stuff. at one point this guy asked lauren to buy some bananas. she told him cheekily that she already had 7 bananas in her bag, but thank you very much. his reply to that was, "well then give me some money anyways because im poor and you're rich."
finally we got going in our mutatu for the 3 hour ride to nanyuki. luckily the car wasn't as packed as other mutuatus we've been in, still white squashed tho. there was this young african guy sitting in front of us who immediately started talking to us. his name was john and he lived in nanyuki. we talked to him for most of the trip. suffice it to say he may have wanted to marry me. that was until he asked THE question: are you christian? to which i replied that i was not entirely sure what i was but that i certainly believed in a something. because of the language issue, this answer did not quite cut it and he began ranting on about how jesus is the savior and how god created the world. there was a lot of arguing and miscommunication back and forth until he asked if i thought that gay people were okay. i answered him honestly, knowing full well that he wasn't going to like my answer: yes i think gay people are perfectly alright. boy did this get him going on about, "do i see boy cows mating with other boy cows?" etc. but i've heard all that before. the hardest part about it was that he could not understand why i wasn't giving in to his point of view. he was explaining and explaining and i just wasn't budging. finally i told him that i understood where he was coming from, that i simply did not feel the same way, and that we should start talking about something else.
he got a little weird at that point, asking me why i was turning him down and would i come visit him at his house later. it was hard because i could tell that he was starting to think that i didn't want to get involved simply because he was black and i was white. but it wasn't that. it was that i just honestly wasn't interested in him. i think he'll survive tho. im sure in fact that he's already forgotten me entirely and moved on to the next mazunge girl he sees. usually guys like that see in white women a chance at either an easy lay or a ticket to the states and three year down the line citizenship as an american...
anyways he got really rude in the end and we ended up just ignoring him for the rest of the trip. it was weird how quickly it all changed. the second we werent good believing christians, the second i thought boy cows could be with other boy cows, i was no longer his bride-to-be.
we got out at the end of our road, which is still about an hours walk from the farm immediately again, people swarm us. it's just the way it is. but after all that we had been through it was too much. this one guy was trying to convince us that we wanted to ride the bicycle taxis, called bodabodas, which take almost longer than it takes to walk. its so weird because there are times when someone is trying to sell you something and you are kind of somewhat interested in buying it and then these people are reallllyyy good at convincing you that you do in fact want to get whatever it is they sell. but then there are these times when you just absolutely do not want whatever they are selling and it is in those moments when someone is trying to literally convince you of what you want, that it gets funny, and then irritating. i finally kind snapped and looked right at this one guy and told him straight that we didn't want to ride the bikes and please leave us alone. we ended up hitching a ride in the back of pickup back to the farm with this old black guy who wouldn't let us pay him.
in that moment both lauren and i were at our wits end, having felt completely attacked for the entire day. sadly we were also feeling totally abused by the men that had surrounded us the whole day. not in the physical sense obviously. but in the sense that every guy we had come across that day had either looked as us with sex or money in his eyes. and then here comes this nice old african who won't accept out money, when he so easily could have, and our faith in common human decency returned.
that was a really exhausting day.
i jump out of the last row of the range rover, my back killing me because of the previously mentioned height issue, and immediately 6 africa women swarm me, each one telling me to come to her shop. i tell them i will get to them, and then have to pretty much ignore their constant "you come to my shop now!" and just go into the first shop i see. i ask how much the kangas (which are the african wraps) are (knowing they should be between 150 and 300 kenya shillings), to be told that this one here is 2,500. it is this kind of price increase that i am talking about that happens every day, with every item, just to give you the right idea. i tell the woman that this is ridiculous and that i wont pay more than 300 and walk out. Every store (these stores are actually shacks) is filled with the same hand carved, really quite beautiful statues of animals, bone carved spoons, beaded necklaces, and colorful kangas. but every item is so over priced that i cannot even begin to bargain with them. if someone asks for 2,500 there is no way that i can ever get them to reduce the price down to 250 shillings. the lowest i got was 500. which i thought was pretty good considering i've only been bargaining for the last month. the problem is that T falls is a big tourist attraction and these women know that they can convince tourists that it make sense to spend $30 on a piece of cloth that they paid $1 for. but i know that i can find all this stuff for much cheaper when i go to Zanzibar and so i just keep on going. Regardless, i didn't end up purchasing anything. and i also never actually got to see the water fall.
i did walk away with a lot of anger and frustration. this place is just so full of people who see you more than ever as a source of infinite wealth. and like i have said, i am really rich compared to them, but these women just had no sense of what it means to run a business. well not in any sense that i had ever experienced before. they come out to the street and force you into their shop, and if you leave to quickly they get angry and say you didn't give them a fair look around. the most ridiculous part was that each time i wanted to buy something and i offered low, the woman would go and get her boss. and the boss just happened to be the same woman for each shop. this meant that the entire market is owned by one person which means there is no bargaining off other shopkeepers because each lady is only allowed to go so low, which is dictated by that one boss woman. she had a complete monopoly on the entire business. and she was a real bitch.
anyway we left there, feeling totally drained and frustrated and attacked. that's the best word for it.
we then got dropped off in town, said goodbye to bev and lee, caroline and dani, jeff and jim, helen, kamunge and boxson. the feeling of complete freedom that washed over me as the car drove away was amazing. the thing about the trip was that it was very much the planned trip for the adventurous tourist, but was just that: totally planned. we were there to see peoples and animals and culture and it was set in front of our faces and then we saw it. in spite of that, i don't regret doing it by any means because you simply cannot see the north of kenya unless you do it the way we did. you can't just take mutatus and hitch rides and buy your own food because there aren't any mutatus or buses and there aren't any places to buy food or get water.
but when we started walking away from the car it was like this thick haze fell away. what we had been seeing for the past 8 days had been real, very real, but we hadn't had to interact with it on a daily level. and then there we were. walking around this town that reminded me so much nanyuki, with cars driving by nearly running us over. and then people were calling out to us, mazunge which means white person. we went to the grocery store and bought some food and dealt with people who didn't speak any english. then we went and got some tea and somosas at this cafe (they call a cafe here a hotel). and we just sat and enjoyed being free in this very alive place that we didn't know at all.
we bought some mangos and ate them on the side of the road, which, since we were sitting down, was a clear invitation to every street seller in the area to come and try to sell us chocolates and crackers, water and watches. everything. others just wanted to talk with us. it was really interesting because at T falls all the store sellers had been women, but town was only full of men. most of which were in some stage of drunkenness. that is actually a really bad problem here. men are drunk at literally every hour of every day.
we ate our mangos and then walked over to the mutatu center. of course there was the usual bustle and argument over which mutatu we should take because everyone wants the white people to ride in their car...as we finally got into the mutatu these street sellers came up to the window and asked us to buy more stuff. at one point this guy asked lauren to buy some bananas. she told him cheekily that she already had 7 bananas in her bag, but thank you very much. his reply to that was, "well then give me some money anyways because im poor and you're rich."
finally we got going in our mutatu for the 3 hour ride to nanyuki. luckily the car wasn't as packed as other mutuatus we've been in, still white squashed tho. there was this young african guy sitting in front of us who immediately started talking to us. his name was john and he lived in nanyuki. we talked to him for most of the trip. suffice it to say he may have wanted to marry me. that was until he asked THE question: are you christian? to which i replied that i was not entirely sure what i was but that i certainly believed in a something. because of the language issue, this answer did not quite cut it and he began ranting on about how jesus is the savior and how god created the world. there was a lot of arguing and miscommunication back and forth until he asked if i thought that gay people were okay. i answered him honestly, knowing full well that he wasn't going to like my answer: yes i think gay people are perfectly alright. boy did this get him going on about, "do i see boy cows mating with other boy cows?" etc. but i've heard all that before. the hardest part about it was that he could not understand why i wasn't giving in to his point of view. he was explaining and explaining and i just wasn't budging. finally i told him that i understood where he was coming from, that i simply did not feel the same way, and that we should start talking about something else.
he got a little weird at that point, asking me why i was turning him down and would i come visit him at his house later. it was hard because i could tell that he was starting to think that i didn't want to get involved simply because he was black and i was white. but it wasn't that. it was that i just honestly wasn't interested in him. i think he'll survive tho. im sure in fact that he's already forgotten me entirely and moved on to the next mazunge girl he sees. usually guys like that see in white women a chance at either an easy lay or a ticket to the states and three year down the line citizenship as an american...
anyways he got really rude in the end and we ended up just ignoring him for the rest of the trip. it was weird how quickly it all changed. the second we werent good believing christians, the second i thought boy cows could be with other boy cows, i was no longer his bride-to-be.
we got out at the end of our road, which is still about an hours walk from the farm immediately again, people swarm us. it's just the way it is. but after all that we had been through it was too much. this one guy was trying to convince us that we wanted to ride the bicycle taxis, called bodabodas, which take almost longer than it takes to walk. its so weird because there are times when someone is trying to sell you something and you are kind of somewhat interested in buying it and then these people are reallllyyy good at convincing you that you do in fact want to get whatever it is they sell. but then there are these times when you just absolutely do not want whatever they are selling and it is in those moments when someone is trying to literally convince you of what you want, that it gets funny, and then irritating. i finally kind snapped and looked right at this one guy and told him straight that we didn't want to ride the bikes and please leave us alone. we ended up hitching a ride in the back of pickup back to the farm with this old black guy who wouldn't let us pay him.
in that moment both lauren and i were at our wits end, having felt completely attacked for the entire day. sadly we were also feeling totally abused by the men that had surrounded us the whole day. not in the physical sense obviously. but in the sense that every guy we had come across that day had either looked as us with sex or money in his eyes. and then here comes this nice old african who won't accept out money, when he so easily could have, and our faith in common human decency returned.
that was a really exhausting day.
Saturday, June 24, 2006
lake turkana and the north
What a trip this was! Totally different from our hike up Mount Kenya, but just as amazing and worth while. Tho it lacked the physical stress of the mountain, our safari to northern Kenya was certainly strenuous in other ways. To start off with, I should mention that we were with this great safari company called Gametrackers. The group is highly recommended by multiple Kenya books and guides, as well as being the Whitfield’s safari company of choice. The trips Gametrackers goes on tend to be full of more adventurous people, and less about gaping at animals. Secondly, I should also add that I could probably write an entire book just about the people who came on this trip with us. There were nine of us tourists in total (including Laur and me) plus a driver and a cook. We drove in a big Land Rover that had three rows of three seats each, all of which were covered in a leopard printed fabric. This was obviously to get us in the mood for the safari. O man did it work! The rows, unfortunately, were set up on a tiered system, I have no idea why they designed the truck like this, but it made it so that if you were sitting in the back seats you couldn’t see anything unless you were short or scrunched down or leaned out the window. Not the best of design if you are more than 5’2 if you ask me.
Who ever said that the roads up to Lake Turkana are the worst in Kenya was right. They were terrible: always really bumpy. One day we were driving along deserted bandit roads, the next we were going thru sand deserts. Then it would become wet and muddy and we almost got stuck in the mud. But always, the roads had huge holes and ditches that made it impossible to go in a straight line. Instead cars before us had created new roads off to the side to avoid the pits. Every day we got totally bumped around and jostled up. Things we had in our bag on the floor would end up splayed all over the floor of the car because they had been shaken out. Also there was an incredible amount of dust all the time so each day when we got out of the car, we looked like a different race than when we had gotten in.
Back to the people on the trip. First there’s Helen. Helen was a 19 year old redhead from Bath, England (go on say it with the accent). She was taking her gap year between finishing her A-levels and starting at University. She is going to Liverpool next year to become a doctor. As we soon found out, Helen had previously been in France for 6 months working as a chalet girl (or if you’re like me and didn’t know what a chalet girl is, she was a personal cook for a different guests each week). I have a feeling that Helen has never met a single person who did not like her. She is English to a T, but there is something about her that is really warm (not to say that most English people aren’t warm). She absolutely loved children and I would bet $100 dollars that, had no one stopped her, she would have adopted 10 children over the course of the entire trip. She waved to every single—and I mean every single—person we passed. She would even wave across other people’s laps. Helen was the right amount of nice. By that I mean that had she been any nicer, I would have had to kill her. But as she was, she was great, most especially because she had an edge to her, and she was really quite amazingly smart.
Alright. After Helen there’s Bev and Lee, who were somewhere in their early 70’s, were sisters, with four year between them. These two women are probably the greatest people I have ever met. They are both originally from New Zealand, tho Bev now lives in Florida. Bev has literally been to ¾ of the countries in the world: she spends 6 months of every year traveling to crazy cool places, like Lake Turkana, Exhibit A. She’s fantastic. She says things like “Aww fuck it!” and “He’s a reaaal baaastard!” She boogies to the showers at 6am, and drinks brandy heavily, beginning at 4pm and ending, who knows when. Lee is a bit more subdued. She has a really amazing history with husbands and boyfriends, and when it comes to traveling she is almost as experienced as she older sister. Just seeing them on this trip together obviously made me think about what margsie and I are going to be doing when we are 70. Hopefully we will be bumping along in some leopard patterned Land Rover to see an amazing new place in the Mediterranean.
So, then there was Jim. Jim was 33 from Texas. He used to live in Russia for a while and as such likes hard liquor and was very proud of the going away presents his Russian friends had given him. He was kind of weird. But cool. He didn’t like lots of noise because he wanted to enjoy the peacefulness of the wilderness in silence. That experience might have been easier had he not been snapping photos of literally every single thing we saw. He also had a leaning problem, but he leaned across you to get the photo of the 100th gazelle we saw. Hand in hand with Jim, was Jeff. It must be noted that before this trip these two men did not know each other, tho they have some amazing similarities. Jeff was a 41 year old single (never been married) psychiatrist from Seattle. He had some serious OCD qualities—for example, always putting his camera perfectly back into its case after EACH picture— and tho he never said as much, Jeff seemed totally baffled by the fact that he was 41 and not married. Jim and Jeff, or JJ as we named them, both had the exact same super zoom canon powershot camera! With matching straps too! Both also had this hysterical habit of making everyone else take pictures of them with their own camera. Here’s how it would work:
Jim (or Jeff): Hey would you mind taking a picture of me with my camera?
One of the rest of us: Sure why not.
JJ hands over the camera and then walks off towards the selected scene. Then a few different things might happen. The first is that he would say, “Now this is an action shot so just take it while I’m walking towards you” or he might sit down and look off into the far distance (not at the camera) and we were to take the picture of him being pensive. After a few photos I couldn’t keep the camera steady I was laughing too hard, so they started asking someone else. What I don’t understand about the whole thing was, what on earth are they going to tell everyone back home when showing these photos…“o this is me at the lake, and this is me again at the forest…yea someone else took the photos of me…o and in this one, my friend just. HAPPENED to get a picture of me looking off into the distance…”
To finish off the list of our fellow passengers there was Daniela (Dani) and Caroline. Caroline is 29 and, as she quite thoroughly told us the first day, has a Swedish passport, but her mother thinks she is English, her father thinks she is Swedish, and she thinks she is Portuguese. She works at Heathrow Airport, has a weird English accent and also pronounces her “th’s” like “F’s”. Caroline is an actress in the same way my grandmother is an actress. Pretty much every second of every day is a chance, in her mind, to tell another story (which of course inevitably turns into a full fledged play) or make a comment on the goings on of our trip. Literally, and I am not kidding about this, on our 7th day of traveling we drove from 8am to 6pm and Caroline did not let a single bump, person, animal, or pile of shit pass us by without informing the rest of the car that said item was coming up. I listened to my ipod the entire day. Despite being annoying and irritating, her stories were sometimes lifesavers. I mean this in the sense that there were times when the driving was so bad and we had been going for so long that listening mindlessly to her talk about her ex-husband, or her childhood as near-Swedish royalty became quite captivating. Jim was most annoyed by Caroline, for obvious reasons.
In case you were wondering, because I know I certainly was at the time, Caroline was married when we was 19 to a 46 year old English man who tried to lock her in her room and wouldn’t let her drink or have any fun. So she decided to piss him off by traveling around the world. This led to their divorce 2 years ago. Dani, also 29, was Caroline’s sea diving instructor when Caroline was in Thailand during this world trip. Dani is from Malta and is a quite blah. She hates beer but loves vodka. Also, our driver had a raving crush on her.
Our driver’s baptized christian name was Joseph but his Kikuyu name was Kamunge, so we all called him that. He was a really genuinely nice guy, who did a lot of really scary driving for us. We gave him a big tip. Our cook’s name was Boxson, tho everyone called him Bosco because we all thought that was his name until the very last day. I helped him with a few meals and he gave me the Kikuyu name Wangico.
Now, for what we actually did each day. There were 8 days in total. Some more exciting than others. Here goes…
Day 1: Our first day was meant to begin when we met the rest of the group in Nanyuki around 2pm. Instead, at noon we got a call saying that the vehicle had been in a crash and wouldn’t be there until night. We met everyone at a local lodge and drove a few hours in the dark to the Riverside lodge (or something like that). Had dinner and went to bed early because we had to get up early the next morning.
Day 2: Woke up at 4am and drove north to the Samburu National Park. We went on two game drives where we saws elephants, cheetahs eating a gazelle, tons of different birds, these little miniature deer-like animals called dik-diks. I know what a great name! It was neat to see all them all, these diverse strange animals like giraffe and stuff, tho honestly that was not why we were on the trip so it was a bit worrisome at first. But the safari really only centered around animals for a day or so, and then we moved on to the people and culture of the north which was great.
Day 3: We drove from Samburu to Marsabit. This took quite a while, passed lots of little, very isolated towns, full of people wearing authentic kikuyu or samburu clothes. This was the first time we came across people who wouldn’t let us take pictures of them. The reasons vary. Some people say that taking a picture will bring bad luck, others that the camera is the evil eye. Others, quite smartly if you ask me, realize that what tourists want more than anything else are pictures and therefore they now charge us to take their photo. We camped that night in this beautiful forest clearing on the edge of the village. Besides the picture thing, the people in these villages are really interested in us. Though most of them can’t actually communicate with us beyond “hello” on both sides, they seemed to like how much we were interested in them and in their culture. They always ask our names, and interestingly, each time I told them I was Sophia everyone would ask me if I was Muslim. I guess Sophia is a Muslim name around here…? We went on a game drive through the forest nearby and we saw a leopard which was really neat. Other than that we didn’t see many more animals, but it actually gave me the chance to really look at the trees and other parts of the forest. There were these trees that had begun growing out of another tree’s branch. It was really cool.
Day 4: Drove from Marsabit through the desert to Kalacha. The desert is just infinitely big and vast and never-ending and HOT. As we drove we realized that literally we were surrounded b y mirages of huge lakes. Off in the distance it looked like the trees were floating in rivers. But it was all just from the heat. Pretty cool. The most insane part was that we would have been driving for a few hours through hot desert and suddenly come across a cluster of huts. Right there in the middle of nowhere. And there was no water nearby, or that I could see. It was just so remote and isolated. As we were driving through these different parts of Kenya I noticed how each town has built their houses out of totally different materials, which of course were dependent on what was around the town. For example, in the desert the houses were made out of branches and big pieced of cloth. At Lake Turkana they were made out of reeds. Near Maralal they were made from stones wedged between beams, and at another place they were made entire from grass. It was really neat to see all these different, yet very simple, homes that had been constructed out of what was available. When we got to the campsite we discovered that there was a swimming pool! Basically this missionary preacher man (or something) had brought in a windmill thingy that brought water to the village. In the process the water went through a water tank, which was our swimming pool. The town of Kalacha is home to some of the most beautiful people I have ever seen in my entire life. These women are so stunningly gorgeous I literally could not stop staring at them. They have the most incredibly high cheekbones and their skin shines and shimmers with the light. Of course I didn’t get any real photos of them because we weren’t allowed. We drove a little outside the village to the edge of the Chalbi desert to watch the sun set. It was amazing. There hasn’t been any rain there for something like 7 years! The ground was so dry that the cracks went down 4 inches in some places. It felt like walking on a giant brownie. That might seem weird, but that’s what it felt like. It wasn’t sand the way a lot of deserts are, instead it was just really dry earth and the cracks made it spongy almost, like the way a brownie feels. As the sun set I literally saw the moment at the very beginning of the Lion King and of course in my head I sang “Ah—sinwenyaa” which made me think of CRI. That night we went skinny dipping in the pool, just the girls. But it was great to have this group of women, youngest being 19 oldest somewhere in their 70s all in the pool swimming under the stars. And o the stars! There are so many out there you wouldn’t believe it. I see the southern cross every night and the big dipper just above the horizon. And scorpio swirls around in its loops. It’s pretty amazing.
Day 5: We drove from Kalacha to Lake Turkana! Stopped for a bit in North Horr, where we still couldn’t take pictures. Lake Turkana is gorgeous; it looks like the sea, it is so big and vast. I had thought that since it was a lake the landscape around it would have been green and lush, but it wasn’t. Instead the desert continued on right up to the water’s edge. We stayed in authentic Turkana huts made out of palm reeds. It was completely amazing, but at times it got unbearably hot. I think the week before it had been 112 degrees. The hardest part of it being so hot was that there was this amazing, cool, beautiful lake right in front of us that just called to us. But it is totally filled with crocodiles, that WILL EAT YOU. So we couldn’t go swimming. Watched the sun set over the lake and I felt like I was living in a postcard, it was just like all those cheesy photos of island paradises. But I was actually there. On our drive into the village that is nearby the lake we had met, as always, tons and tons of the local people. They invited us to come later to watch the football (aka soccer) match, so around 9pm we all piled into the safari truck and bumped along into town. The guys were so thrilled that we had actually come to watch. We all sat in this grass hut where very recently someone had installed a TV set with a satellite. They guys told us that it was only a few months old. It was totally surreal being there, literally in the middle of nowhere with not a light in site, watching the football game with 30 avid fans all screaming in Swahili at the screen. I met and got talking with some really interesting people. One guy, named Sammy talked to me for a while. Earlier that day I had actually bought a necklace from him so I was really glad that he had put business aside and we were just talking like two normal people. But then near the end of the night he asked me if I wanted to come back to his house and look at more necklaces. It was a weird moment of realization that no matter how hard I tried, I would never be able to break the status that we had set up. The status that said I was a white tourist with money and he was a black native with none.
Day 6: We stayed at the Lake for the whole day. First we all piled into this motor boat (that looked something like the Anna Cady) and went to some islands nearby. The lake is so big that getting to a “nearby island” means an hour in the boat. Anyways we saw these guys who were fishermen, drying their week’s catch out in the sun. There’s a picture up of the fish. We saw some crocodiles swimming around and tried to cheer them on to eat this bird that was in the water near them, but no luck. We then went to this tiny island where the turkana people had set up shines and temples and our guide person who was taking us around and explaining the history of the places we were seeing, told us about all these rites and rituals the people perform. One was that every child when they turn 10 must have their bottom two front teeth pulled out. He wouldn’t say why, there was some communication failures I think, but it was true because every person I saw there, didn’t have his or her bottom front two teeth. The other thing they practice is that before any boy is allowed to marry he has to go kill a hippo and bring back its rib. We asked how this was done in modern times and our guide said that they do it once a year now and have to write a letter to the wildlife people to get permission to kill one hippo. It was a weird moment of clashing of the old traditional and the new modernist worlds. Lake Turkana is home to the people who wear all those necklaces around their necks. And as we learned the necklaces signify that a girl is engaged. Girls can become engaged at birth, but most start wearing the beads when they are 11 or so. After that we went to a village on another island. Again like the photos, these people have become really smart and now charge tourists to come walk around their village. The price itself wasn’t that much (about $7 a person) but there was something unsettling about the whole thing that made both me and Lauren decide not to partake. I think it had something to do with the fact that it reminded us both too much of Plymouth Plantation. That is not to say that these people were putting on an act and pretending to be authentic and poor and hungry (because they actually were all these things), but there certinaly was something a bit contrived about the whole thing. Anyway, Lauren and I sat in the boat and just enjoyed the landscapes and talked and then some of the kids waded out to our boat and we had a good time with them. It’s interesting what kind of communication passes between adults (I am an adult in the eyes of these kids at least) and children when language is not an option. Instead of talking everyone just smiles a lot at each other, and plays in the water, makes faces at each other, or claps and plays hand games. Or course then came some men who tried to sell us things…as always white = money. That night this guy from Texas named Chris (everyone in town called him Doctor Chris) came to our little campsite for dinner. Chris was 32 and was working for Doctors without Boarders and had been in the north of Kenya for a month. He plans to be there another 2 months. He was working with children who are malnourished and handing out supplemental food packages to starving children. He was a really cool guy.
Day 7: This day marked our return journey. We traveled a different route home than on the way there, but it was just as bumpy and shaky, if not more so, than before. Caroline spent the entire day commenting on every single thing we passed and I spent the entire day listening to my ipod. When we stopped for lunch we ran into this other safari group. They were also using a Gametrackers vehicle. We found out they were actually missionaries all from America, on their way to built a house in some remote town up north. They were completely hysterical. One guy had Jesus tattooed on his arm, and another was decked out in a FULL safari outfit. And I mean full. I don’t think he was missing a single article of clothing that could be used for the stereotypical safarigoer. There is a picture of him up online. We spent the night in Maralel at this campsite where there was a pen of racing camels and a bar and restaurant. It was fun.
Day 8: The plan for the actual trip is to drive from Maralel all the way back to Nairobi. But for Lauren and I it made more sense for us to get off before Nairobi at a town called Nyaharuru, or T-Falls. Yesterday was such a crazy day in itself I think I will write about it in a separate entry.
Overall, the trip was incredible. Mostly because we saw parts of Kenya that were totally different from what we have been living in. It was dry and hot and isolated. And the people were different and didn’t speak English. If we hadn’t gone I wouldn’t know Kenya really. I would know Nairobi and Nanyuki and the Highlands. I would certainly know the mountain. But by going we saw a totally different side of this country, one which most tourists don’t get a chance to see.
there are two new albums up online. one from the ball and the other is from this trip.
www.sophieskenyapictures.shutterfly.com
password: sophie
much love to all
sophiebess
Who ever said that the roads up to Lake Turkana are the worst in Kenya was right. They were terrible: always really bumpy. One day we were driving along deserted bandit roads, the next we were going thru sand deserts. Then it would become wet and muddy and we almost got stuck in the mud. But always, the roads had huge holes and ditches that made it impossible to go in a straight line. Instead cars before us had created new roads off to the side to avoid the pits. Every day we got totally bumped around and jostled up. Things we had in our bag on the floor would end up splayed all over the floor of the car because they had been shaken out. Also there was an incredible amount of dust all the time so each day when we got out of the car, we looked like a different race than when we had gotten in.
Back to the people on the trip. First there’s Helen. Helen was a 19 year old redhead from Bath, England (go on say it with the accent). She was taking her gap year between finishing her A-levels and starting at University. She is going to Liverpool next year to become a doctor. As we soon found out, Helen had previously been in France for 6 months working as a chalet girl (or if you’re like me and didn’t know what a chalet girl is, she was a personal cook for a different guests each week). I have a feeling that Helen has never met a single person who did not like her. She is English to a T, but there is something about her that is really warm (not to say that most English people aren’t warm). She absolutely loved children and I would bet $100 dollars that, had no one stopped her, she would have adopted 10 children over the course of the entire trip. She waved to every single—and I mean every single—person we passed. She would even wave across other people’s laps. Helen was the right amount of nice. By that I mean that had she been any nicer, I would have had to kill her. But as she was, she was great, most especially because she had an edge to her, and she was really quite amazingly smart.
Alright. After Helen there’s Bev and Lee, who were somewhere in their early 70’s, were sisters, with four year between them. These two women are probably the greatest people I have ever met. They are both originally from New Zealand, tho Bev now lives in Florida. Bev has literally been to ¾ of the countries in the world: she spends 6 months of every year traveling to crazy cool places, like Lake Turkana, Exhibit A. She’s fantastic. She says things like “Aww fuck it!” and “He’s a reaaal baaastard!” She boogies to the showers at 6am, and drinks brandy heavily, beginning at 4pm and ending, who knows when. Lee is a bit more subdued. She has a really amazing history with husbands and boyfriends, and when it comes to traveling she is almost as experienced as she older sister. Just seeing them on this trip together obviously made me think about what margsie and I are going to be doing when we are 70. Hopefully we will be bumping along in some leopard patterned Land Rover to see an amazing new place in the Mediterranean.
So, then there was Jim. Jim was 33 from Texas. He used to live in Russia for a while and as such likes hard liquor and was very proud of the going away presents his Russian friends had given him. He was kind of weird. But cool. He didn’t like lots of noise because he wanted to enjoy the peacefulness of the wilderness in silence. That experience might have been easier had he not been snapping photos of literally every single thing we saw. He also had a leaning problem, but he leaned across you to get the photo of the 100th gazelle we saw. Hand in hand with Jim, was Jeff. It must be noted that before this trip these two men did not know each other, tho they have some amazing similarities. Jeff was a 41 year old single (never been married) psychiatrist from Seattle. He had some serious OCD qualities—for example, always putting his camera perfectly back into its case after EACH picture— and tho he never said as much, Jeff seemed totally baffled by the fact that he was 41 and not married. Jim and Jeff, or JJ as we named them, both had the exact same super zoom canon powershot camera! With matching straps too! Both also had this hysterical habit of making everyone else take pictures of them with their own camera. Here’s how it would work:
Jim (or Jeff): Hey would you mind taking a picture of me with my camera?
One of the rest of us: Sure why not.
JJ hands over the camera and then walks off towards the selected scene. Then a few different things might happen. The first is that he would say, “Now this is an action shot so just take it while I’m walking towards you” or he might sit down and look off into the far distance (not at the camera) and we were to take the picture of him being pensive. After a few photos I couldn’t keep the camera steady I was laughing too hard, so they started asking someone else. What I don’t understand about the whole thing was, what on earth are they going to tell everyone back home when showing these photos…“o this is me at the lake, and this is me again at the forest…yea someone else took the photos of me…o and in this one, my friend just. HAPPENED to get a picture of me looking off into the distance…”
To finish off the list of our fellow passengers there was Daniela (Dani) and Caroline. Caroline is 29 and, as she quite thoroughly told us the first day, has a Swedish passport, but her mother thinks she is English, her father thinks she is Swedish, and she thinks she is Portuguese. She works at Heathrow Airport, has a weird English accent and also pronounces her “th’s” like “F’s”. Caroline is an actress in the same way my grandmother is an actress. Pretty much every second of every day is a chance, in her mind, to tell another story (which of course inevitably turns into a full fledged play) or make a comment on the goings on of our trip. Literally, and I am not kidding about this, on our 7th day of traveling we drove from 8am to 6pm and Caroline did not let a single bump, person, animal, or pile of shit pass us by without informing the rest of the car that said item was coming up. I listened to my ipod the entire day. Despite being annoying and irritating, her stories were sometimes lifesavers. I mean this in the sense that there were times when the driving was so bad and we had been going for so long that listening mindlessly to her talk about her ex-husband, or her childhood as near-Swedish royalty became quite captivating. Jim was most annoyed by Caroline, for obvious reasons.
In case you were wondering, because I know I certainly was at the time, Caroline was married when we was 19 to a 46 year old English man who tried to lock her in her room and wouldn’t let her drink or have any fun. So she decided to piss him off by traveling around the world. This led to their divorce 2 years ago. Dani, also 29, was Caroline’s sea diving instructor when Caroline was in Thailand during this world trip. Dani is from Malta and is a quite blah. She hates beer but loves vodka. Also, our driver had a raving crush on her.
Our driver’s baptized christian name was Joseph but his Kikuyu name was Kamunge, so we all called him that. He was a really genuinely nice guy, who did a lot of really scary driving for us. We gave him a big tip. Our cook’s name was Boxson, tho everyone called him Bosco because we all thought that was his name until the very last day. I helped him with a few meals and he gave me the Kikuyu name Wangico.
Now, for what we actually did each day. There were 8 days in total. Some more exciting than others. Here goes…
Day 1: Our first day was meant to begin when we met the rest of the group in Nanyuki around 2pm. Instead, at noon we got a call saying that the vehicle had been in a crash and wouldn’t be there until night. We met everyone at a local lodge and drove a few hours in the dark to the Riverside lodge (or something like that). Had dinner and went to bed early because we had to get up early the next morning.
Day 2: Woke up at 4am and drove north to the Samburu National Park. We went on two game drives where we saws elephants, cheetahs eating a gazelle, tons of different birds, these little miniature deer-like animals called dik-diks. I know what a great name! It was neat to see all them all, these diverse strange animals like giraffe and stuff, tho honestly that was not why we were on the trip so it was a bit worrisome at first. But the safari really only centered around animals for a day or so, and then we moved on to the people and culture of the north which was great.
Day 3: We drove from Samburu to Marsabit. This took quite a while, passed lots of little, very isolated towns, full of people wearing authentic kikuyu or samburu clothes. This was the first time we came across people who wouldn’t let us take pictures of them. The reasons vary. Some people say that taking a picture will bring bad luck, others that the camera is the evil eye. Others, quite smartly if you ask me, realize that what tourists want more than anything else are pictures and therefore they now charge us to take their photo. We camped that night in this beautiful forest clearing on the edge of the village. Besides the picture thing, the people in these villages are really interested in us. Though most of them can’t actually communicate with us beyond “hello” on both sides, they seemed to like how much we were interested in them and in their culture. They always ask our names, and interestingly, each time I told them I was Sophia everyone would ask me if I was Muslim. I guess Sophia is a Muslim name around here…? We went on a game drive through the forest nearby and we saw a leopard which was really neat. Other than that we didn’t see many more animals, but it actually gave me the chance to really look at the trees and other parts of the forest. There were these trees that had begun growing out of another tree’s branch. It was really cool.
Day 4: Drove from Marsabit through the desert to Kalacha. The desert is just infinitely big and vast and never-ending and HOT. As we drove we realized that literally we were surrounded b y mirages of huge lakes. Off in the distance it looked like the trees were floating in rivers. But it was all just from the heat. Pretty cool. The most insane part was that we would have been driving for a few hours through hot desert and suddenly come across a cluster of huts. Right there in the middle of nowhere. And there was no water nearby, or that I could see. It was just so remote and isolated. As we were driving through these different parts of Kenya I noticed how each town has built their houses out of totally different materials, which of course were dependent on what was around the town. For example, in the desert the houses were made out of branches and big pieced of cloth. At Lake Turkana they were made out of reeds. Near Maralal they were made from stones wedged between beams, and at another place they were made entire from grass. It was really neat to see all these different, yet very simple, homes that had been constructed out of what was available. When we got to the campsite we discovered that there was a swimming pool! Basically this missionary preacher man (or something) had brought in a windmill thingy that brought water to the village. In the process the water went through a water tank, which was our swimming pool. The town of Kalacha is home to some of the most beautiful people I have ever seen in my entire life. These women are so stunningly gorgeous I literally could not stop staring at them. They have the most incredibly high cheekbones and their skin shines and shimmers with the light. Of course I didn’t get any real photos of them because we weren’t allowed. We drove a little outside the village to the edge of the Chalbi desert to watch the sun set. It was amazing. There hasn’t been any rain there for something like 7 years! The ground was so dry that the cracks went down 4 inches in some places. It felt like walking on a giant brownie. That might seem weird, but that’s what it felt like. It wasn’t sand the way a lot of deserts are, instead it was just really dry earth and the cracks made it spongy almost, like the way a brownie feels. As the sun set I literally saw the moment at the very beginning of the Lion King and of course in my head I sang “Ah—sinwenyaa” which made me think of CRI. That night we went skinny dipping in the pool, just the girls. But it was great to have this group of women, youngest being 19 oldest somewhere in their 70s all in the pool swimming under the stars. And o the stars! There are so many out there you wouldn’t believe it. I see the southern cross every night and the big dipper just above the horizon. And scorpio swirls around in its loops. It’s pretty amazing.
Day 5: We drove from Kalacha to Lake Turkana! Stopped for a bit in North Horr, where we still couldn’t take pictures. Lake Turkana is gorgeous; it looks like the sea, it is so big and vast. I had thought that since it was a lake the landscape around it would have been green and lush, but it wasn’t. Instead the desert continued on right up to the water’s edge. We stayed in authentic Turkana huts made out of palm reeds. It was completely amazing, but at times it got unbearably hot. I think the week before it had been 112 degrees. The hardest part of it being so hot was that there was this amazing, cool, beautiful lake right in front of us that just called to us. But it is totally filled with crocodiles, that WILL EAT YOU. So we couldn’t go swimming. Watched the sun set over the lake and I felt like I was living in a postcard, it was just like all those cheesy photos of island paradises. But I was actually there. On our drive into the village that is nearby the lake we had met, as always, tons and tons of the local people. They invited us to come later to watch the football (aka soccer) match, so around 9pm we all piled into the safari truck and bumped along into town. The guys were so thrilled that we had actually come to watch. We all sat in this grass hut where very recently someone had installed a TV set with a satellite. They guys told us that it was only a few months old. It was totally surreal being there, literally in the middle of nowhere with not a light in site, watching the football game with 30 avid fans all screaming in Swahili at the screen. I met and got talking with some really interesting people. One guy, named Sammy talked to me for a while. Earlier that day I had actually bought a necklace from him so I was really glad that he had put business aside and we were just talking like two normal people. But then near the end of the night he asked me if I wanted to come back to his house and look at more necklaces. It was a weird moment of realization that no matter how hard I tried, I would never be able to break the status that we had set up. The status that said I was a white tourist with money and he was a black native with none.
Day 6: We stayed at the Lake for the whole day. First we all piled into this motor boat (that looked something like the Anna Cady) and went to some islands nearby. The lake is so big that getting to a “nearby island” means an hour in the boat. Anyways we saw these guys who were fishermen, drying their week’s catch out in the sun. There’s a picture up of the fish. We saw some crocodiles swimming around and tried to cheer them on to eat this bird that was in the water near them, but no luck. We then went to this tiny island where the turkana people had set up shines and temples and our guide person who was taking us around and explaining the history of the places we were seeing, told us about all these rites and rituals the people perform. One was that every child when they turn 10 must have their bottom two front teeth pulled out. He wouldn’t say why, there was some communication failures I think, but it was true because every person I saw there, didn’t have his or her bottom front two teeth. The other thing they practice is that before any boy is allowed to marry he has to go kill a hippo and bring back its rib. We asked how this was done in modern times and our guide said that they do it once a year now and have to write a letter to the wildlife people to get permission to kill one hippo. It was a weird moment of clashing of the old traditional and the new modernist worlds. Lake Turkana is home to the people who wear all those necklaces around their necks. And as we learned the necklaces signify that a girl is engaged. Girls can become engaged at birth, but most start wearing the beads when they are 11 or so. After that we went to a village on another island. Again like the photos, these people have become really smart and now charge tourists to come walk around their village. The price itself wasn’t that much (about $7 a person) but there was something unsettling about the whole thing that made both me and Lauren decide not to partake. I think it had something to do with the fact that it reminded us both too much of Plymouth Plantation. That is not to say that these people were putting on an act and pretending to be authentic and poor and hungry (because they actually were all these things), but there certinaly was something a bit contrived about the whole thing. Anyway, Lauren and I sat in the boat and just enjoyed the landscapes and talked and then some of the kids waded out to our boat and we had a good time with them. It’s interesting what kind of communication passes between adults (I am an adult in the eyes of these kids at least) and children when language is not an option. Instead of talking everyone just smiles a lot at each other, and plays in the water, makes faces at each other, or claps and plays hand games. Or course then came some men who tried to sell us things…as always white = money. That night this guy from Texas named Chris (everyone in town called him Doctor Chris) came to our little campsite for dinner. Chris was 32 and was working for Doctors without Boarders and had been in the north of Kenya for a month. He plans to be there another 2 months. He was working with children who are malnourished and handing out supplemental food packages to starving children. He was a really cool guy.
Day 7: This day marked our return journey. We traveled a different route home than on the way there, but it was just as bumpy and shaky, if not more so, than before. Caroline spent the entire day commenting on every single thing we passed and I spent the entire day listening to my ipod. When we stopped for lunch we ran into this other safari group. They were also using a Gametrackers vehicle. We found out they were actually missionaries all from America, on their way to built a house in some remote town up north. They were completely hysterical. One guy had Jesus tattooed on his arm, and another was decked out in a FULL safari outfit. And I mean full. I don’t think he was missing a single article of clothing that could be used for the stereotypical safarigoer. There is a picture of him up online. We spent the night in Maralel at this campsite where there was a pen of racing camels and a bar and restaurant. It was fun.
Day 8: The plan for the actual trip is to drive from Maralel all the way back to Nairobi. But for Lauren and I it made more sense for us to get off before Nairobi at a town called Nyaharuru, or T-Falls. Yesterday was such a crazy day in itself I think I will write about it in a separate entry.
Overall, the trip was incredible. Mostly because we saw parts of Kenya that were totally different from what we have been living in. It was dry and hot and isolated. And the people were different and didn’t speak English. If we hadn’t gone I wouldn’t know Kenya really. I would know Nairobi and Nanyuki and the Highlands. I would certainly know the mountain. But by going we saw a totally different side of this country, one which most tourists don’t get a chance to see.
there are two new albums up online. one from the ball and the other is from this trip.
www.sophieskenyapictures.shutterfly.com
password: sophie
much love to all
sophiebess
Wednesday, June 14, 2006
mutatus, the maze, and our safari
yesterday getting back from town was such a crazy experience.
first of all, i wrote at some point about the roads and the driving here. and the taxi buses called mutatus. basically a mutatu is an old toyota minivan where someone has gone through and replaced all the normal seats with uncomfortable wirely ones. 12 of them. plus two in the front. that means that legally, these taxi minivans can carry 14 people.
but not really. yesterday, was a great example. we got in ready, waited as the car filled up with people. pretty soon the car was full, so you think that we're ready to go. but we wait a bit more. inside the cars the middle two rows have a little space in the middle of the bench seats, so poeple can walk to the back. but when the mutatus get really full, out come the boards, which go across the empty space and now you have two more seats. how efficeint of them. now we have 4 in each row. but we have to pick more poeple up...and then we have 5 in each row. with one boy sitting on some random lady's lap, and two other guys standing but since its a minivan there is really not enough room to stand in any way. so its more like a standing but leaning over at a 90 degree so that they are pretty much lying down on top of us. we ended up packing 25 poeple into that van. not kidding. i counted.
also, since we're white everyone's favorite activity while in the mutatu is to talk loudly in swahili about us. while staring. there was the funniest old man who literally did not take is eyes off of us for the entire trip. from the moment the door opened to the time the mutatu drove away from us at our stop, he was staring. and it was the kind of stare that, even when we looked his way, he would keep looking...it was so awkward, but really funny.
the other day eston, louisa, hamish, lauren and i went to the "mount kenya safari club." the safari club is the super expensive hotel nearby where local poeple can become members. we were not members. eston used his boss's expired membership card to get us in. we walked aroung these amazingly luch green lawns (which is so weird, because that is one thing you don't ever see: green grass) through a golf course, to this great hedge maze (yes just like in harry potter, or hpgof...oly you're a dork). anyway, the hedge maze looked easy but we got lost in it for about 2 hours. it was really hysterical.
on friday lauren and i are going on an 8 day safari up north to lake turkana. it will be amazing, i know it. louisa has been on the same trip and said it was fantastic. we are going to be driving thru the desert and seeing all these old tribes of poeple who still function the way they did hundreds of years ago... super cool.
we're going to school now. see if we can be any help there. we're doing some work in the library.
much love to all
sophiebess
first of all, i wrote at some point about the roads and the driving here. and the taxi buses called mutatus. basically a mutatu is an old toyota minivan where someone has gone through and replaced all the normal seats with uncomfortable wirely ones. 12 of them. plus two in the front. that means that legally, these taxi minivans can carry 14 people.
but not really. yesterday, was a great example. we got in ready, waited as the car filled up with people. pretty soon the car was full, so you think that we're ready to go. but we wait a bit more. inside the cars the middle two rows have a little space in the middle of the bench seats, so poeple can walk to the back. but when the mutatus get really full, out come the boards, which go across the empty space and now you have two more seats. how efficeint of them. now we have 4 in each row. but we have to pick more poeple up...and then we have 5 in each row. with one boy sitting on some random lady's lap, and two other guys standing but since its a minivan there is really not enough room to stand in any way. so its more like a standing but leaning over at a 90 degree so that they are pretty much lying down on top of us. we ended up packing 25 poeple into that van. not kidding. i counted.
also, since we're white everyone's favorite activity while in the mutatu is to talk loudly in swahili about us. while staring. there was the funniest old man who literally did not take is eyes off of us for the entire trip. from the moment the door opened to the time the mutatu drove away from us at our stop, he was staring. and it was the kind of stare that, even when we looked his way, he would keep looking...it was so awkward, but really funny.
the other day eston, louisa, hamish, lauren and i went to the "mount kenya safari club." the safari club is the super expensive hotel nearby where local poeple can become members. we were not members. eston used his boss's expired membership card to get us in. we walked aroung these amazingly luch green lawns (which is so weird, because that is one thing you don't ever see: green grass) through a golf course, to this great hedge maze (yes just like in harry potter, or hpgof...oly you're a dork). anyway, the hedge maze looked easy but we got lost in it for about 2 hours. it was really hysterical.
on friday lauren and i are going on an 8 day safari up north to lake turkana. it will be amazing, i know it. louisa has been on the same trip and said it was fantastic. we are going to be driving thru the desert and seeing all these old tribes of poeple who still function the way they did hundreds of years ago... super cool.
we're going to school now. see if we can be any help there. we're doing some work in the library.
much love to all
sophiebess
Sunday, June 11, 2006
the ball
well. the ball.
it was interesting. bad.
we all agree that it was probably the strangest gathering ever. the setting what as the local sports club, the people there were all the white land-owners from this area. there were probably about 100 people there, most of them were some how from england. at the beginning of the night everyone was all proper and stuck up. really cold and unwelcome to meeting new people. that lasted for about 20 minutes. Basically everyone got belligerently drunk. it seemed as tho they had been waiting ages to finally get the chance to let loose and go crazy. o well. we left at 11. but we heard the dancing didn't end til 6am... also realize these were not young people. they were middle aged to old. so that was interesting too.
there was also a terrible dj who played really astonishingly bad music. my favorites were during dinner a sappy version of celine dion's my heart will go on. and then later during the dancing part he played, get ready for this one all you hippies: a techno version of john denver's country roads. yea it was pretty great. and obviously by great, i mean not great.
at one point louisa turned to me and asked me what i thought all these people were thinking. i said that they were ecstatic that everyone around them was, for a change, white. there is obviously something about being in this country and being white that means a lot. for one, you are ALWAYS different. for another people look at you with huge dollar signs in their eyes: if you're white, then you're a billionaire. and technically, in comparison to most kenyans around here, we are filthy rich. but it means that every minute you are being watched and stared at. so when louisa asked that question i thought about how different it probably suddenly felt to NOT feel different. they must have felt relieved to once again not feel like the odd one out. it's just a reversal of what you hear about happening in the states. i think that is also why they were all so ready to let go of their stuffiness and get plastered.
anyway, today we celebrated louisa's 28th birthday (tho it was last monday). we had a fun party of local friends. great food provided of course, by the wonderful cook of the house, cecelia--who i will write about soon because she is a really fascinating and amazing woman who i am growing to like more every day.
till then, love to all
sb
ps peter, i happen to have a song on my ipid by santa esmeralda called "don't let me be misunderstood" which i listen to with great joy...how great is that!
it was interesting. bad.
we all agree that it was probably the strangest gathering ever. the setting what as the local sports club, the people there were all the white land-owners from this area. there were probably about 100 people there, most of them were some how from england. at the beginning of the night everyone was all proper and stuck up. really cold and unwelcome to meeting new people. that lasted for about 20 minutes. Basically everyone got belligerently drunk. it seemed as tho they had been waiting ages to finally get the chance to let loose and go crazy. o well. we left at 11. but we heard the dancing didn't end til 6am... also realize these were not young people. they were middle aged to old. so that was interesting too.
there was also a terrible dj who played really astonishingly bad music. my favorites were during dinner a sappy version of celine dion's my heart will go on. and then later during the dancing part he played, get ready for this one all you hippies: a techno version of john denver's country roads. yea it was pretty great. and obviously by great, i mean not great.
at one point louisa turned to me and asked me what i thought all these people were thinking. i said that they were ecstatic that everyone around them was, for a change, white. there is obviously something about being in this country and being white that means a lot. for one, you are ALWAYS different. for another people look at you with huge dollar signs in their eyes: if you're white, then you're a billionaire. and technically, in comparison to most kenyans around here, we are filthy rich. but it means that every minute you are being watched and stared at. so when louisa asked that question i thought about how different it probably suddenly felt to NOT feel different. they must have felt relieved to once again not feel like the odd one out. it's just a reversal of what you hear about happening in the states. i think that is also why they were all so ready to let go of their stuffiness and get plastered.
anyway, today we celebrated louisa's 28th birthday (tho it was last monday). we had a fun party of local friends. great food provided of course, by the wonderful cook of the house, cecelia--who i will write about soon because she is a really fascinating and amazing woman who i am growing to like more every day.
till then, love to all
sb
ps peter, i happen to have a song on my ipid by santa esmeralda called "don't let me be misunderstood" which i listen to with great joy...how great is that!
Saturday, June 10, 2006
changes
sit by my side, come as close as the air
share in a memory of grace
and wander in my world
and dream about the pictures that i make --of changes
green leaves of summer turn red in the fall
to brown and to yellow they fade
and then they'll have to die
trapped in the circle time parade --of changes
sciences of my young years were warm in my mind
visions of shadows that shine
til one day i returned
and found they were the victims of the mind --of changes
the world spins madly--it drifts in the dark
swims thru a hollow like haze
a race around the stars
a journey thru a universe ablaze --of changes
moments of magic will glow in the night
all fears of the forest are gone
but when the morning breaks
they're swept away by golden drops of dawn --of changes
passions will part to a strange melody
as fires will sometimes burn cold
like petals in the wind
where puppets fear the silver stings of souls --of changes
your fears will be trembling
now it's someone else
one last cup of wine we will pour
and oily kiss you one more time
and leave you on the rolling river shore --of changes
so sit by my side, come as close as the air
share in a memory of grace
and wander in my words
and dream about the picture that i make --of changes
those are the lyrics written on a photo copied sheet of paper that i found inside the piano bench here at the house. the handwriting is my fathers.
i found the papers as i was digging through the collection of music, seeing if there was anything i could plunk away at on the piano (i've reached that point when it's been too long since i played). it was completely wonderful to stumble across the words. i recognized the handwriting immediately because it is so distinguished and impossible to read, and also because it is identical to my brother's illegible scrawl (which is a bizare coincidence in itself, isn't it?).
i started to talk with everyone about my dad, which is always great. it's amazing to be around these people who knew him so well. it makes me able to know him myself...in my own way. i hear about how wonderful and cool he was. i imagine that most people reading this probably know him better than i can say. i love you.
talking to suzanne, we were discussing how his death made him into this perfect man; how no one ever really talks about the weird stuff he did. so she told me vaguely about a disco phase he went thru. she didn't remember too much about it. so can someone please elaborate....
did my dad really go thru a disco-clubbing phase?
we are going to the ball in a few hours. it's going to be a blast. lots of fun people in bad clothes. and food. which sure makes me happy
love to all,
sophiebess
share in a memory of grace
and wander in my world
and dream about the pictures that i make --of changes
green leaves of summer turn red in the fall
to brown and to yellow they fade
and then they'll have to die
trapped in the circle time parade --of changes
sciences of my young years were warm in my mind
visions of shadows that shine
til one day i returned
and found they were the victims of the mind --of changes
the world spins madly--it drifts in the dark
swims thru a hollow like haze
a race around the stars
a journey thru a universe ablaze --of changes
moments of magic will glow in the night
all fears of the forest are gone
but when the morning breaks
they're swept away by golden drops of dawn --of changes
passions will part to a strange melody
as fires will sometimes burn cold
like petals in the wind
where puppets fear the silver stings of souls --of changes
your fears will be trembling
now it's someone else
one last cup of wine we will pour
and oily kiss you one more time
and leave you on the rolling river shore --of changes
so sit by my side, come as close as the air
share in a memory of grace
and wander in my words
and dream about the picture that i make --of changes
those are the lyrics written on a photo copied sheet of paper that i found inside the piano bench here at the house. the handwriting is my fathers.
i found the papers as i was digging through the collection of music, seeing if there was anything i could plunk away at on the piano (i've reached that point when it's been too long since i played). it was completely wonderful to stumble across the words. i recognized the handwriting immediately because it is so distinguished and impossible to read, and also because it is identical to my brother's illegible scrawl (which is a bizare coincidence in itself, isn't it?).
i started to talk with everyone about my dad, which is always great. it's amazing to be around these people who knew him so well. it makes me able to know him myself...in my own way. i hear about how wonderful and cool he was. i imagine that most people reading this probably know him better than i can say. i love you.
talking to suzanne, we were discussing how his death made him into this perfect man; how no one ever really talks about the weird stuff he did. so she told me vaguely about a disco phase he went thru. she didn't remember too much about it. so can someone please elaborate....
did my dad really go thru a disco-clubbing phase?
we are going to the ball in a few hours. it's going to be a blast. lots of fun people in bad clothes. and food. which sure makes me happy
love to all,
sophiebess
Friday, June 09, 2006
sophie & lauren's hike up mount kenya...aka frodo and sam's trek thu middle earth with smelly and grandpa
well we made it...and it was quite amazing. climbing this mountian was the by far the hardest thing i have ever done. hands down.
pictures from our climb and also some from before we left are up. there are two new albums, so go to:
www.sophieskenyapictures.shutterfly.com
password: sophie
okay, i will start at the beginning of our journey.
day 1: met up with our guide, christopher and our porter, james. we hiked from the entrance gate (where we paid a rediuclous fee. it's really quite amazing how much they rip you off in this country if you are white!) and began our hike to the met station camp site at 10,000ft. a few little something's about our porter and guide. first of all, the idea of deodorant is completely foreign to them and therefore they smell really bad. not their faults tho. however what was the their fault was the nonstop, continuous talking up the entire mountain. this meant that there was rarely any quiet, whihc got extremely annoying, extremely quickly. anyways, one of the craziest parts about this hike was the very fact that we HAD a porter and guide. well the guide is understandable bc how else would we know where to go...but christopher did way more than just point the pathways out. even at 10,000...and later at 17,000 ft in the air, both christopher and james were there pretty much to serve us. whether it was making us tea, or cleaning our dishes, or carrying out food. the thing about it is that you have to realize that this is what they do. and tho it's hard to accept service at 17,000 ft, it is just the way it is, and beyond that, i had to keep reminding myself that this is their job and it is how they make money. therefore, by having a porter and a guide, we were giving two people a means to earn their living...so pretty much that is how i justified it to myself...tricky, i know. Another thing to add about Christopher and james, and this is pretty hilarious, is that james spoke NO English. And Christopher, who was old and who wore his pants at his armpits, at a stutter, was deaf, and spoke English decently. This made for some fairly large communication problems…especially later on in the trip. Christopher could not get his words out and james just smiled and nodded yes to whatever we said. In lue of their smell and Christopher’s general nature, we nick-named them grandpa and smelly. (james being smelly and Christopher being grandpa, obiv)
alright so the other thing to realize is that we were never camping in tents, which made me happy, im not going to lie. instead there are cabins all along the route we took so that was a really nice thing to come to at the end of a long day of hiking!
so first night we watched as a herd of buffaloo made their way around our cabin, their eyes were all glowing with the reflection of our flashlights. they were actually really close to us, maybe 200 feet away...actually i dont knwo how far away they were...but they seemed really close.
day 2: began at 7am. we hiked from met station at 10,000ft to mackinder's camp at 14,200ft. that took us nearly 7 hours!!! it was completely insane. first we walked through a forest, then through the never ending marsh (and it REALLY was never-ENDING!) and then along this ridge that ran quite flat into a valley to where the camp was. it was a really long day. the highlight was probably our lunch stop when we ran into this guy from australia who was on his way down the mountain. he was really cool and was on a tour of climbing all the big mountains in africa...or something like that.
the hike that day was really hard, and as we got higher and higher i really could honestly feel the air getting thinner and harder to breathe. so much so that we had to rest. a lot. and pretty much because of me. i mean christopher and james were totally unaffected (seeing as they had the energy to TALK the entire hike) and lauren somehow was not affected by the altitude the entire trip. it was weird but that's what everyone says: altitude sickness doesnt effect the same kinds of people all the time. it is completely random.
anyways it was so beautiful getting higher and higher and as the mountain peaks started to emerge out of the clouds it was just completely amazing. the valley we stayed was just at the base of the real peak, so we could see everything. it was totally breathtaking.
day 3: day three we stayed at mackinder's camp and went for a day hike around the valley, up a few smaller peaks and to see some amazing lakes that are hidden between the mountains. we did this so that we could get used to the altitude and not feel so sick when we summated to the very top. it was totally amazing these lakes are just so wonderfully tucked away between the mountains and they are so clear. that night we stayed again at mackinders but this time we had a lot of company. there was a french hiking group of about 8 or so (only 1 of which spoke any real amount of english) and a man, who we christened "uncle", with his two nephews (both late 20's) who were from Switzerland, tho uncle was living in thailand...they also didn't speak any enlgish, only uncle did and he talked to us for a long time. besides freaking us out about how we were going to get frost bite when we summited, he also told us some things that we should do while we are here in africa, the most exciting of which was his idea that we join them as they rafted down the nile river...right like that's gonna happen...
we went to sleep at 7pm...and then woke up at 2am. began hiking at 3 int he total and complete dark. the moon rises at like 7pm and sets at around midnight here so by 3am it is still totally dark, but no moon. so the stars were totally incredible!!! i tried taking a picture, but obviously that did not work. the reason we started so early is so that we could be at the summit when the sun rose.
anyways, it took us exactly 3.5 hours to summit, but after about the 1st hour i was dying with the altitude. it's weird because literally you cannot breathe right, and you're arms and legs feel like they weigh about 100lbs each. it's impossible to go more than a few steps at a time. i know this sounds all melodramatic, but its true. i literally had to force myself to take the next step. it was great because lauren was the complete opposite. she had so much energy, more energy that she usually does actually. it was something about the adrenaline i think. so she was all running ahead and then waiting for me and at one point she starts coxing me through the hike. for those who don't row (excluding tony and josie of course because they are honorary members of their own crew team), a coxn (and i KNOW that is not how you spell is, thanks tho) is the person who motivates you, sort of. anyways. lauren pretended we were in a race and made up the funniest story that i dont think can ever be repeated because it was wrong in so many ways, and offensive to WAY to many people. anyway, i got my mind of how tired i was. then suddenly started to feel better, just as the start was starting to show...
basically what is really important to understand is taht at this point we were hiking in the dark. keep that in mind. so lauren is running up the moutning, whihc i need to also remind you all, is outrageously steep...REALLY steep, and i am one step better than death. and we are going up and and up. o i forgot, it snowed the night ebfore. so there is a lot of snow on the ground...anyways we get going higher and we think we are close to the top and the sun starts to rise
it is the most beautiful thing i have ever seen in my entire life. i do not have the words and i am serious to describe what we saw. the colors and the mountians. and we were 17,000 ft in the air!!
so we keep going up bc we havnt actually gotten to the very top. and we realize that to get there we have to some minor rock climbing!! so it is at this point that lauren and i look at eachother and realize what we have gotten ourselves into: this is NOT a small hill like mt monadnock for all my MA readers. no this is some serious serious SERIOUS climbing. its the kind of climbing that, when you put your foot on this tiny ledge, you think that if for some reason your foot slips....you will ACTUALLY be dead. no question. dead. anyways, that was a fun realization to come to at 6am at 17,000ft.
but we didnt slip. at one point i remember being sprawled on this little ledge totally exhausted and not able to move and there was lauren behind me telling me i had to get up because she neede to be wehre i was. but i couldnt move. sometimes it was easier to go on my hands and knees, or just kind of stop and pretend to be moving, but actually not be going anywhere because i was so tired.
so it sounds ridiculous, but its all true.
anyways, we made it to the top, over the last ridge, and meanwhile we have been going as fast as possible because we didn’t want to miss the sun rise...so we make it and we collapse at the top, wehre there are these prayer flags (in true Everest style) and we eat SNICKERS! they were amazing. took a million pictures and could not believe where we were.
i am going to try to explain what i saw: you look out and you see kenya on all sides. to one side is a higher set of peaks (which you cant climb unless you have climbing gear and know what you're doing...as if what we did was okay for people like us...)and the sun is just this rosy golden pink and its shining off all the mountain peaks. out below the peaks are deep valleys that you can tell have been cut away from huge glaciers. and the thing is that that is not where the bottom is. bellow those valleys are more valleys and it just keeps going on and on down and down further and further below you. it just never seems to stop. and then the clouds came in and they were, of course, below us and they were just billowing in, pouring over the mountains peaks and washing over to the other sides into more valleys. we stayed up there fore about 30 minutes before we got too cold and began coming back down.
the thing that cannot be stressed enough is that fact that on our way up the mountain is was dark...on our way down however, it was light. and a good think it was dark when we were going up because what we had been walking (in lauren's case running, and in my case stumbling blindly) up was the smallest little ridge you;ve ever seen. on either side the mountain just dropped down. straight down hundreds of feet below. walking down was so much scarier than coming up bc we could see exactly what would happen if we had taken a wrong step...!!!
we walked all the way down to mackinder’s camp, through so many different elements: first there ist eh snow, then the loose rocks that you basically have to ski down. Then comes the part when you cross the rivers and finally the hike through the big rocks to the camp. We got there and ate pancakes (which was completely amazingly good!) and packed up and then started out again. We walked all the way from mackinder’s down to met station, which took some ridiculously long time, where we had dinner and fell asleep at 7pm. just to you can imagine it right, we woke at 2am, hiked up to the summit from 3 to 6:30am. Hiked down to mackinders by 9:30am. Started walking again at 11:30 and didn’t not get into Met until 4pm.
In total that means we hiked for about 11.5 hours in one day.
Yes for sure we fell asleep at 7pm and didn’t wake up intil 7 the next morning, when we packed up and walked down to the gate to meet randy.
It turned out that randy wasn’t there so we got a ride from this guy from England who was there doing research on three-horned chameleons. He was pretty great. It was great to think about all the people we met on the mountain: there were the caretakers of each cabin site who constantly tried to get more money from us, chri, the woman at the gate, the man we bought a pen from, Cameron, the Australian, the French group, uncle and the mute-swiss guys, and yan, the English chameleon hunter. They were each so crazy and cool. And it was so much fun to talk with each other and hear what had brought them to climbing the mountain at the point in time.
So that was our hike up the mountain. Little did we know that when we said we were hiking mount Kenya, we would be in for such a treat, or in for such an adventure. Honestly I have to say that we are really lucky everything went as smoothly as it did, bc there were so many times when something could have gone wrong and luckily it didn’t!
The last thing I want to say before finishing this up is just to share something that I thought about when I was on the top of the mountain ( by the way the peak we climbed is called point lanana). I was watching the sun rise and it struck me how the beauty that I was seeing in that instant happens every single day, without fail, whether there are “witnesses” there to see it or not. That beauty was not happening specially for us, and it was certainly not happening because of us. It happens everyday. And its different every day. It was just so crazy to think about all that glory and amazement that I felt at that moment as being nothing all that special from the point of view of the mountain.
I hope everyone is doing well. I am starting to miss home and you all, but there are so many things left to do that we barely have enough time to think about what we just did before the next adventure happens our way.
To make a point of just how varied our trip can be, I would like to inform you all that on Saturday night we are attending a ball at the local sports club to raise money for a local school. We get to dress up, which is always fun.
so much love,
sb
Saturday, June 03, 2006
boots and dust
yesterday we went to nanyuki to buy supplies for our hike. what an adventure that was! to begin with, i should mention that fact that clothes-buying here is basically like thrift-store buying, but cheaply. everything is in huge piles, and everything is about $1 may $2, and you bargain for everything. it takes some getting used to. sometimes they laugh at us for trying to pay less, because they know we aren't use to it. other times tho, they tell us a price that is way too high and when we refuse to pay it, they laugh becuase they know that what they asked for was rediculous, they know that it was too high, but they were just seeing how high we would go! its such a game!
anyways, after the market we went to look for hiking boots. within about 20 minutes of being in town every shoe seller knew that there were two white girls buying boots; which meant that every single seller ran around the whole town looking for boots in our sizes. then they would bring them to us and shove eachother aside so that we would buy their own shoe! in the end it meant that there were 7 or 8 guys all crowded around us, with one shoe on one foot and another shoe on the other foot! the funniest part was that even when we said, o these don't fit, they would respond, "yes! yes! these fit! it is cold up on the mountain, you will wear 3 pairs of socks!" it was great. we ended up getting two great pairs of hiking boots for something like $15 each, with the help of suzanne who bargains magnificently!
this morning lauren and i got in eston's old (circa 1979) range rover with Nancy, a friend of eston and louisa (who we stayed with on that first night in nairobi) and drove out to this park a few miles away. of course a few miles takes about 30 minutes to get to because the roads are so bad, but we made it. nancy turns out to be a great bargainer as well. she convinced the gaurd that we were residents of kenya (which she is) but that lauren and i had forgotten our cards, so that we didn't have to pay the rediculously high entrance fee to the park! it was a great time in the park. we saw zebras, gazelles, some differnt birds, some kind of monkey, and some other larger deer-like animals. o and a hippo! we did NOT however see the "freindly rhino" that we were promised by our friend the gaurd at the entrance, nor did we see any elephant or lions! sad. o well. the best part of the whole trip was sitting in the back of eston's old car, it is set up with seats facing eachother. but since it was so hot we opened the back door. i sat with the door propped open and my feet dangling the whole way. it was great! only problem is that with the door open, all the dust from the road billows up and spills into the car and all over us! so much so that i had dust everywhere. like up my noise, down my throat, oo best was in my contacts! but nothing a quick dip in the neighbor's pool won't fix!
this is really the life!
tonight we are having a little party here with eston and us, suzanne and randy, louisa and hamish (her boyfriend, who is coincidentally eston's roommate...can you say awkward for eston?!), and tony and nancy. it will be great fun!
o i almost forgot, just to rub it in some more. i got an hour long massage the other day for $7! and she's coming back next week! hmmmm
hope everyone is doing well.
much love
xoxoxo
sb
anyways, after the market we went to look for hiking boots. within about 20 minutes of being in town every shoe seller knew that there were two white girls buying boots; which meant that every single seller ran around the whole town looking for boots in our sizes. then they would bring them to us and shove eachother aside so that we would buy their own shoe! in the end it meant that there were 7 or 8 guys all crowded around us, with one shoe on one foot and another shoe on the other foot! the funniest part was that even when we said, o these don't fit, they would respond, "yes! yes! these fit! it is cold up on the mountain, you will wear 3 pairs of socks!" it was great. we ended up getting two great pairs of hiking boots for something like $15 each, with the help of suzanne who bargains magnificently!
this morning lauren and i got in eston's old (circa 1979) range rover with Nancy, a friend of eston and louisa (who we stayed with on that first night in nairobi) and drove out to this park a few miles away. of course a few miles takes about 30 minutes to get to because the roads are so bad, but we made it. nancy turns out to be a great bargainer as well. she convinced the gaurd that we were residents of kenya (which she is) but that lauren and i had forgotten our cards, so that we didn't have to pay the rediculously high entrance fee to the park! it was a great time in the park. we saw zebras, gazelles, some differnt birds, some kind of monkey, and some other larger deer-like animals. o and a hippo! we did NOT however see the "freindly rhino" that we were promised by our friend the gaurd at the entrance, nor did we see any elephant or lions! sad. o well. the best part of the whole trip was sitting in the back of eston's old car, it is set up with seats facing eachother. but since it was so hot we opened the back door. i sat with the door propped open and my feet dangling the whole way. it was great! only problem is that with the door open, all the dust from the road billows up and spills into the car and all over us! so much so that i had dust everywhere. like up my noise, down my throat, oo best was in my contacts! but nothing a quick dip in the neighbor's pool won't fix!
this is really the life!
tonight we are having a little party here with eston and us, suzanne and randy, louisa and hamish (her boyfriend, who is coincidentally eston's roommate...can you say awkward for eston?!), and tony and nancy. it will be great fun!
o i almost forgot, just to rub it in some more. i got an hour long massage the other day for $7! and she's coming back next week! hmmmm
hope everyone is doing well.
much love
xoxoxo
sb
Wednesday, May 31, 2006
the sauna
the whitfield's sauna is a short walk away from the main house, in the heart of the eucolyptis forest that surrounds their home. it is far enough away that you cannot see any lights when you are out there in the sauna, but close enough that you can get back to the house in 2 minutes if you need to.
the sauna is, i am told, the exact same one that the whitfields had at their first house in africa. this means that it is the same sauna that my family used when we were here 17 years ago. pretty cool.
the eucolyptis forest is completely gorgeous. the trees stand over 100 feet tall, and they are as straight as can be, with leaves only branching out at the very tops. the bark of the trees falls off, laeving the ground literally covered with long strip of crunchy, tube-like bark. what is amazing, well the whole thing is pretty amazing, but what is really amazing, is that when the bark falls off the trees don't all have the same color wood. each tree turns different colors: some are greenish, others are blueish, other's purply, or grey. and no tree is only one color. in the daylight these colors are wonderfully vivid, but at night the trees begin to glow as the moon beams off their shiny surfaces.
the sauna itself is wonderfully hot, just like any sauna. i guess what makes this sauna special is that when you get too hot, (which happens in an instant, suddenly you realize that you absolutely cannot be in there anymore!) you push open the door to be greeted by the cool breeze and wonderful darkness of the eucolptis forest at night. on the side corner of the sauna are buckets of water to rinse off with, which feels silky and smooth and the wind just blows all around you and it's incredible.
you go into the sauna and get dripping wet with sweat, run outside into the darkness and cool off with the water, then get right back into the hot sauna. ther are benches at the far end of the sauna house were we just sat and listened, and enjoyed this spectacular piece of heaven.
the moon last night was just a sliver, but instead of being a sideways sliver, it was a bowl of a moon, just the bottom edge. the moon just poked through the thick trees, casting shadows all around the forest. i felt like a nymph. whatever that means, i just felt like one.
ps. to see pictures so far, go to: www.sophieskenyapictures.shutterfly.com
password: sophie
xoxox
sb
Tuesday, May 30, 2006
recent events
yesterday we went to school, where we soon realized that if we are to be in any way productive, we are going to have to bring the ideas with us. what i mean is that when we show up they are so excited, but then they have no idea what they should do with us while we are there. they also waste a huge amount of time at school, just sitting around, while the kids (who like i said are totally obedient) do their lessons without teachers even in the room. its weird. different i guess is a better word choice?
we spent last night with eston in nanyuki, which was really a blast. eston's 18 month old dog just had puppies (fathered we are pretty sure by his other dog). it was NOT planned, and kinda bad because the mother is so young, BUT it means that there are 3 tiny adorable puppies about 2 weeks old and they are quite cute!
we are meeting today with this guy who will be our guide on our hike up MOUNT KENYA! yup! we're going up the mountain! super exciting. we'll probably go on sunday and spend about 3 nights up there. fun~
must go. we're going to take a sauna later this afternoon. oo man is it a rough life here!
xoxoxo
sophiebess
we spent last night with eston in nanyuki, which was really a blast. eston's 18 month old dog just had puppies (fathered we are pretty sure by his other dog). it was NOT planned, and kinda bad because the mother is so young, BUT it means that there are 3 tiny adorable puppies about 2 weeks old and they are quite cute!
we are meeting today with this guy who will be our guide on our hike up MOUNT KENYA! yup! we're going up the mountain! super exciting. we'll probably go on sunday and spend about 3 nights up there. fun~
must go. we're going to take a sauna later this afternoon. oo man is it a rough life here!
xoxoxo
sophiebess
Sunday, May 28, 2006
cookies and flying!
yesterday we baked cookies with the nieghbors kids. it was so fun and wild. they are probably 6 and 8 or something like that, and in the process of making the cookies, those kids probably ate about a pund of cookie dough and 2 pounds of frosting before we even finished making the cookies. it was great. havnt been so dirty and sticky in a while.
now we are spending the evening with louisa and suzanne and randy. tomorrow we are giong back to school which will be fun. we have also just made plans for wednesday that lauren and i are going to accompany eston on one of his flights, as his "stweardesses," to some exotic place, and we get to fly in a helicopter... so super cool, i know!
im going now. love to everyone!
xoxoxoxox
sophiebess
Friday, May 26, 2006
this was a day.
a few hours ago i pulled a huge thorn out of the bottom of my foot. it actually wasn't THAT big, but doesn't that make a better first sentence than "i pulled a tiny thorn out of foot"? regardless of size, this splinter serrriousssllyy hurt because it was really deep AND because the end tip actually has some poisen in it which makes it hurt even more! yay~ of course, the poisen part was what was lodged inside my foot. i was joking with Cecilia, our cook and my new friend, that the thorn was probably half way between the top and bottom of my foot. that is an exaggeration, but whatever.
the thorn itself is NOT that important. amazing i know. but it's not. the REASON for the thorn, however is very important. here is the story.
today was my first day of school. i walked onto the compound as all the kids were having their meeting. they were completely adorable, recited the lords prayer (tho not a single kid was saying the same thing at the same time and i have a feeling that none of them knew what they were actually saying, even the ones who understand english). then i sat in on a few classes to get a sense of what each class is learning, also because im still totally at a loss as to how i am going to suddenly become a teacher!! ate lunch with the other teachers who are all simply great and after a long day of feeling out of place, stared at, and awkward our 30 minute walk with Suzanne and Lauren back to the whitfield's house. here is where it gets incredible.
again i am going to have to tell you, whoever you are, that what i am about to write and what you are about to read is going to sound like a made up story straight out of a movie. but it's not. it actually happened. and it was probably the coolest experience of my life....
before we started our walk home we noticed the sky beginning to turn grey and far off in the distance we could all see a storm coming our way. like i was saying yesterday about the openness of this place, since there is nothing between your vision and the sky, you can see the whole storm taking place before you, even when it is miles away. i got to see the weather in a comepletly new way. it was so beautiful because half the sky was sunny still and the other was totally grey and cloudy! the kids were still playing around the fields, i have a feeling that storms always look like this here in kenya, so to them this was nothing special to them. bu to me looked like the sky was attacking us! anyways. we started walking, Suzanne saying that the storm would probably go the other direction, much to my sadness actually because it really did look like quite the storm...so we started walking, and we had a group of about 25 of the kids from school walking with us. actually they were walking behind us, whispering, watching, laughing, not daring to go ahead.
then it started to rain. huge drops, and freezing! as we started reacting to the rain, the kids started laughing and reacting to it just the same. then it really started to rain. like REAALLYYY started to rain. i was quite drenched quite quickly. my laughing made the kids start to laugh, we can't communicate very well, but we all were experiencing the same thing: the joy of a good rain, the excitement of getting soaked, and the elation that we were all in it together. they all started laughing as the drops got faster and bigger and as we started laughing and screaming about it too. then it started to hail. again this was no light, small hail. this was heavy, pebble sized balls of ice that flew down at us and smacked you so hard that we all have a few bruses on our faces and arms. everyone started screaming and shreeking, but we were all still laughing just the same. i think the kids really loved to see us: these white american girls who had been with them all day so proper, suddenly become just as affected by the weather as they were.
by this time the dirt roads had become streams of muddy water, so much so my pants dragged in the mud, and nearly were falling off because they were so wet and heavy. i was slipping all over the place. i took my shoes off, planning on carrying them, when this girl came up to me and prompty took my shoes from me and told me she would carry them for me. another grabbed lauren's shoes. i kept laughing, lauren kept laughing, suzanne was laughing probbaly the hardest of us all. and the kids loved it. eyes were just staring up at me so happy that i was enjoying a good dance in the rain. they were thrilled. they were also freezing, but that was totally secondary. it got really bad, so we all ducked into an open church that was on the side of the road to wait it out. the hail on the tin roof of the church was incredible. it sounded just like my granfather's rainsticks, only times about a billion.
but the storm wasn't letting up and we were all getting really cold not moving so we decided to get going again. we kept walking slash running shlash slipping, still laughing, pretty much sliding our way along this road of mud and water. at one road split most of the kids went the other way from us, while we kept on going, still followed by a few. we ended up having to cross a river by this tiny slanted bridge. since it was so muddy we crawled, naturally. the kids on the other hand did it walking, still carrying my shoes. this made me feel like an old person. whihc was the first time that has ever really happened. it was the first time that i have felt separate from what kids do. anyways. we made it back to the house safely, well except for my foot. at some point during my shoeless escapade i managed to step right on a thorn. it took a long time and a lot of digging in my own skin (ooo yummy) to get it out. it still hurts like crazy too.
so. that was my day. those kids loved it, i loved it. Suzanne and lauren loved it! it was so much fun! it was one of those experiences that could have gone on forever. it was also one of those times when i was totally, 100% alive and awake. i was so free of everything that my mind could be telling me about these kids, about that school, about my own fears of teaching, etc. instead i was seriously, just simply, being there alive.
back to the topic of school for a completely secondary point, not NEARLY as interesting as the first, are there any thoughts as to good games to play (keep in mind that most of the kids don't understand a lot of english) mom or margeret, circle games from waldorf? play ideas. it looks like i am going to be teaching english, and also im going to be leading a project to build a small garden that will soon grow food for the kids lunch at the school. im going to make it an entire school wide project, as in im going to have each class be responsible for helping me with some aspect of the garden! i have to think about it some more, but i do think that it will work. like i was saying before, the teachers at the Mukuri primary school are all so wonderful. they are warm and welcoming, and they give off the impression that they really care about teaching and about their students. its really great. its also quite fascinating to be on this other side of the teacher student relationship. normally im the one being taught, or the one paying attnetion (or not paying attention as the case may be). suddenly i am observing a class for the sole purpose of understanding a means to teach....soooo weird.
the kids here so really different than kids back home. american schools are filled with hyper-active, attention seaking kids who can never sit still and who can never be quiet. here, it is the complete opposite. nevermind telling a child he must be quiet, it is harder in fact to get them to speak in the first place...really different.
as a final note i wanted to say that i had my first lesson in Swahili today! i know a few key words and also how to conjugate the basic present tense!! here is an example, if i can remember it without my book which is downstairs...
i sleep - mimi ninakulala
i know a lot more, but will write it out later because someone is telling me that there is ice cream downstairs and you all know me and ice cream!
love to everyone!
xoxoxox
sophiebess
ps oly you're a butt. two fingers! big duuhhh i figured it out after a milisecond!
the thorn itself is NOT that important. amazing i know. but it's not. the REASON for the thorn, however is very important. here is the story.
today was my first day of school. i walked onto the compound as all the kids were having their meeting. they were completely adorable, recited the lords prayer (tho not a single kid was saying the same thing at the same time and i have a feeling that none of them knew what they were actually saying, even the ones who understand english). then i sat in on a few classes to get a sense of what each class is learning, also because im still totally at a loss as to how i am going to suddenly become a teacher!! ate lunch with the other teachers who are all simply great and after a long day of feeling out of place, stared at, and awkward our 30 minute walk with Suzanne and Lauren back to the whitfield's house. here is where it gets incredible.
again i am going to have to tell you, whoever you are, that what i am about to write and what you are about to read is going to sound like a made up story straight out of a movie. but it's not. it actually happened. and it was probably the coolest experience of my life....
before we started our walk home we noticed the sky beginning to turn grey and far off in the distance we could all see a storm coming our way. like i was saying yesterday about the openness of this place, since there is nothing between your vision and the sky, you can see the whole storm taking place before you, even when it is miles away. i got to see the weather in a comepletly new way. it was so beautiful because half the sky was sunny still and the other was totally grey and cloudy! the kids were still playing around the fields, i have a feeling that storms always look like this here in kenya, so to them this was nothing special to them. bu to me looked like the sky was attacking us! anyways. we started walking, Suzanne saying that the storm would probably go the other direction, much to my sadness actually because it really did look like quite the storm...so we started walking, and we had a group of about 25 of the kids from school walking with us. actually they were walking behind us, whispering, watching, laughing, not daring to go ahead.
then it started to rain. huge drops, and freezing! as we started reacting to the rain, the kids started laughing and reacting to it just the same. then it really started to rain. like REAALLYYY started to rain. i was quite drenched quite quickly. my laughing made the kids start to laugh, we can't communicate very well, but we all were experiencing the same thing: the joy of a good rain, the excitement of getting soaked, and the elation that we were all in it together. they all started laughing as the drops got faster and bigger and as we started laughing and screaming about it too. then it started to hail. again this was no light, small hail. this was heavy, pebble sized balls of ice that flew down at us and smacked you so hard that we all have a few bruses on our faces and arms. everyone started screaming and shreeking, but we were all still laughing just the same. i think the kids really loved to see us: these white american girls who had been with them all day so proper, suddenly become just as affected by the weather as they were.
by this time the dirt roads had become streams of muddy water, so much so my pants dragged in the mud, and nearly were falling off because they were so wet and heavy. i was slipping all over the place. i took my shoes off, planning on carrying them, when this girl came up to me and prompty took my shoes from me and told me she would carry them for me. another grabbed lauren's shoes. i kept laughing, lauren kept laughing, suzanne was laughing probbaly the hardest of us all. and the kids loved it. eyes were just staring up at me so happy that i was enjoying a good dance in the rain. they were thrilled. they were also freezing, but that was totally secondary. it got really bad, so we all ducked into an open church that was on the side of the road to wait it out. the hail on the tin roof of the church was incredible. it sounded just like my granfather's rainsticks, only times about a billion.
but the storm wasn't letting up and we were all getting really cold not moving so we decided to get going again. we kept walking slash running shlash slipping, still laughing, pretty much sliding our way along this road of mud and water. at one road split most of the kids went the other way from us, while we kept on going, still followed by a few. we ended up having to cross a river by this tiny slanted bridge. since it was so muddy we crawled, naturally. the kids on the other hand did it walking, still carrying my shoes. this made me feel like an old person. whihc was the first time that has ever really happened. it was the first time that i have felt separate from what kids do. anyways. we made it back to the house safely, well except for my foot. at some point during my shoeless escapade i managed to step right on a thorn. it took a long time and a lot of digging in my own skin (ooo yummy) to get it out. it still hurts like crazy too.
so. that was my day. those kids loved it, i loved it. Suzanne and lauren loved it! it was so much fun! it was one of those experiences that could have gone on forever. it was also one of those times when i was totally, 100% alive and awake. i was so free of everything that my mind could be telling me about these kids, about that school, about my own fears of teaching, etc. instead i was seriously, just simply, being there alive.
back to the topic of school for a completely secondary point, not NEARLY as interesting as the first, are there any thoughts as to good games to play (keep in mind that most of the kids don't understand a lot of english) mom or margeret, circle games from waldorf? play ideas. it looks like i am going to be teaching english, and also im going to be leading a project to build a small garden that will soon grow food for the kids lunch at the school. im going to make it an entire school wide project, as in im going to have each class be responsible for helping me with some aspect of the garden! i have to think about it some more, but i do think that it will work. like i was saying before, the teachers at the Mukuri primary school are all so wonderful. they are warm and welcoming, and they give off the impression that they really care about teaching and about their students. its really great. its also quite fascinating to be on this other side of the teacher student relationship. normally im the one being taught, or the one paying attnetion (or not paying attention as the case may be). suddenly i am observing a class for the sole purpose of understanding a means to teach....soooo weird.
the kids here so really different than kids back home. american schools are filled with hyper-active, attention seaking kids who can never sit still and who can never be quiet. here, it is the complete opposite. nevermind telling a child he must be quiet, it is harder in fact to get them to speak in the first place...really different.
as a final note i wanted to say that i had my first lesson in Swahili today! i know a few key words and also how to conjugate the basic present tense!! here is an example, if i can remember it without my book which is downstairs...
i sleep - mimi ninakulala
i know a lot more, but will write it out later because someone is telling me that there is ice cream downstairs and you all know me and ice cream!
love to everyone!
xoxoxox
sophiebess
ps oly you're a butt. two fingers! big duuhhh i figured it out after a milisecond!
Thursday, May 25, 2006
driving and schools
the roads and the driving here in kenya are an experience unto themselves. there basically aren't any laws, or if there are laws, no one obeys them. in the city people drive outrageously fast, they cut you off and pretty much ignore signs and lights. taxi buses are everywhere, so full of poeple that some are riding outside the windows holding onto the inside. it's pretty nuts. out here in the country the roads are barely paved, with huge ditches and holes everywhere. poeple drive around the holes, even if this means going onto the wrong side of the road. the space is comepletly open here too. you can see the entire sky, in a way that i dont think i've ever really seen before. its a full 360 degree dome above our heads.
we drove to see the schools lauren and i are going to be working at. it was a real experience. as we walked into the school yard almost immediatly we could hear whisperings and heads started popping up out of the windows, trying to get a glimps of us. it is not that these children have never seen white people before, they just have not seen that many. while we were there the kids were let out for recess and it was like we were on a stage or something: nearly every pair of eyes just stared at us, watching our every move. tomorrow we are going to their all school assembly at 8am where we will be introduced.
dinner time. love you all
sophiebess
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
