We arrived in downtown Nairobi, checked in, and went to the safari office to get briefed on our 1-week safari. This was to include several days camping at the Maasai Mara game reserve (the Kenya side of the Serengeti, as it turns out), Lake Nakuru, and Amboselli Reserve. These guys ran a tight ship, so we felt in good hands. We kicked around Nairobi for a couple of days (some of which was spent retrieving our luggage) before leaving. Not much exciting to report except that the coffee was delicious and we felt a bit pale in comparison with the locals. It's a funny feeling, being in the minority seat. It was kind of like walking onto the set of the Blues Brothers as John Belushi. They would check us out, then return to business as usual.
We found the safari itself wonderful, despite the very long drive to get there, on mostly horrible roads. Lisa says it was boring. I don't really understand that, especially when one considers that she wet her pants when our truck was about to get charged by a herd of elephants (see below). But whatever... Her perspective is that it was difficult to be driving all these miles, past hundreds of real people, essentially ignoring them and their lives and their culture completely in deference to our pursuit of wild animals. It actually moved her to tears at one point. It is rather sad when you think about it. What makes their desperate, poverty stricken lives so much less interesting than animals? They have as much drama as the lions do, it would seem. This feeling was exacerbated by the tourists from Denmark on our tour, who epitomized the disinterested white visitor with every shot of their expensive cameras. The street people would come up to our van at a checkpoint and pound on the windows to try and sell some of their wears, and the Danes would just sit and snap pictures without even giving the courtesty of a polite "no thank you". Really insensitive. They were also so cheap as to put us both to shame (if you can believe that!). Hear is one incident that captures their generous spirits:
We were stopped at a roadside lunchstand, with our own box lunches mind you, and the server asked if we'd want to purchase something (to drink). One of our Danes ordered to Cokes. When they came, the server said it was 80 shillings. Equivalent to a dollar. Dane-man offerred a hundred shilling note. Server said "I don't have change". Dane says, in a tight-lipped snarl, "then don't open these. We don't want them". As he said this, he reached out to prevent the poor guy from removing the lid he'd already removed and spilled the bottle all over his friend's lap. We could hardly believe this was happening. All over what amounted to maybe 10-15 cents. I guess Alan had finally met his match at the "who's Larry David now" contest. It really felt disgusting, and set things off to a bad start. And it continued to get worse as they continued to find every possible reason not to share their copious amounts of money (a doctor and an engineer) with these poor, kind people. They were only interested in photographing them so they could take these precious holiday memories home. Ugh.
Our driver even caught wind of it, and mentioned to us his dislike for them. But by the end of the trip he disliked all of us equally (after all, we were all white), so I guess that's a lesson for us in how it feels to be a victim of racism.
Now, the fun part: the Animals! Here's an abbreviated list: lions, leopard, rhino, monkey, hippo, baboon, zebra, giraffe, elephant, gazelle, wildebeast, buffalo, wart-hogs (UGLY!), ostrich, impala, dik-dik, and countless species of bird. We were lucky, because earlier in the day a pride of lions had bagged a buffalo, affording us a chance to drive up really close to photograph them gorging on the beast. See the pictures (to be posted).
A visit to the Maasai village. This was cool! They live in mud huts, about 4.5 ft high, gathered in a circle of about 10 huts per village. Surrounding the circle of homes is a dense thicket of prickers they have gathered, making a sort of primitive barbed wire fence to defend against unwanted visitors. They did a pair of dances (one by men, and one by women), accompanied by grunts and chants. Their clothes were mostly bright red, and they wore beautiful jewelry. They also have the curious habit of piercing their ears, then stretching them out over a period of months (years?) until they flap around like strings of mozzarella off a hot slice of pizza. How appealing.
The last day at Maasai Mara. We had a great morning, having spotted a leopard, and we were headed back out of the park, trying to beat the ominous rainclouds that were forming to the south. As we came alongside a herd of elephants, one of the younger ones decided he didn't like us and charged. Our driver John, who was very experienced, punched the gas and tore out of there leaving the elephants in a cloud of dust. He has learned not to challenge these guys when they get riled up. To be safe, he cut a wide berth around another part of the herd, meaning we had to cut off the road. The ground was very wet and spongy. John wanted to make it to another section of the road just below us. Bad move. We got hopelessly bogged in the mud. And the elephants we tried so hard to avoid were, slowly, approaching us from above. John tried to put on a confident face to keep us (erm, Lisa) calm, but it was no use. She could detect a molecule of fear from the dark side of Pluto. Didn't help to watch that 19,000 lb bull elephant casually strolling toward us. We radioed for help from another truck, who eventually came. We hooked up the trucks, and BOOM! one of the straps broke. 2nd try: rope held. But: the 2nd truck was now stuck too! So, back to the radio, with more strain in John's voice as he tried in vain to reach more relief forces. John kept looking out his window, reading "Elephants in mirror are closer than they appear" on the rearview. He cheerfully told Lisa that elephants don't like smoke as he lit his Marlboro. Lisa, being a team player, joined him. Who says cigarettes are bad for your health!? So these two, puffing away, start blowing their smoke toward the menacing herd. Puff! Puff! Puff! went Lisa. I guess it worked, because they passed right by us without coming over to gore one of us on it's massive tusk. And a third truck did show up, eventually, first pulling out our failed saviors, then ourselves. Hooray!
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