10-10 Last African treats

At about 4:45, Bruce whispered, “Get up. There are zebras outside.” I fought my way out of the mosquito-netted bed and could barely believe my eyes. There were two zebras and seven gazelles on the lawn, not 20 feet away. (This is a very dark video of their departure.) There was no way I was going back to bed, so I stood there and watched until the zebras departed, then lay back down. After a minute I though, “Who am I kidding?”, got up, and stood in the window watching them feed and groom each other. I don’t know if they heard something or if they just knew that people would be about soon, but one by one, they jumped over the bushes and out of sight. An amazing start to the day. I finished our last-minute packing and we headed to breakfast. They seated us outdoors but, sadly, Mt. Kilimanjaro wasn’t in the mood today, so we could only see halfway up the peak before the clouds took over.

We bade farewell to the lovely staff and went to the lobby to check out.

There I met a lovely tiger-striped tom cat who was looking for some scritch. We headed out to the van and discovered that it would, once again, be the four of us riding together to Nairobi. As we were driving out of the Amboseli area, there was a giraffe on the side of the road.

One last game sighting before we left. As we drove I noticed in some places along the side of the road there were what looked like ditches in the soil. Evans said that these are man-made and meant to hold water when the rainy season comes.

We had to take the road from Mombasa to Nairobi, a 2 lane road which is the main route used by trucks. My admiration for Evans grew as I watched him weave his way through the traffic.

One thing I noticed every time we were on the road was how there seemed to be no limits on what, or how much, could be transported, whether it be by car, cycle or bicycle. If you look closely at this photo you'll notice a bunch of chickens tied to the roof.

After about 4.5 hours we ended up at the Carnivore Restaurant. This was a big feature on our itinerary. It’s a highly rated restaurant in Nairobi that's basically a Kenyan churascuria, with a couple of notable menu items not found in Brazilian steakhouses: Ostrich meatball, crocodile and ox balls. I tried two out of three. Bruce and I had invited Lemaron to join us and we asked Evans to join us as well. It seemed rude not to, given his importance to us over the last couple of days. We had so much fun, laughing, reminiscing about things from earlier in the trip and talking trash about Tanzania. At some point in the conversation we started talking about strikes. There had been a strike in the UK before we left for Kenya. Young doctors were striking for better pay. Some fully qualified doctors with the NHS make around 14 pounds per hour. Evans said that Kenyans often strike, even though they know that it’s futile and the government won’t respond. He said that strikes are especially prevalent in the north where many of the politicians are from. He said that people near the strike area sit by and sell rocks to throw at the police. Small rock $1, medium rock $2, big rock $3. And you have to buy a rock or the protesters won’t let you pass. When the police get wind of an upcoming protest, they block the roads so the protesters can’t get in, so the protesters have now started showing up at the protest sites in the middle of the night before the police can set up. The police use tear gas, and when the protesters seize a can of tear gas they mock the police saying, “You can’t use this tear gas on us. It’s past its sell-buy date. We want the fresh tear gas!” Evans said that whenever he has to drive near a place where a protest might happen he always carries two baseball caps. When he approaches one group of protesters, he dons the cap with their colors or motto and shouts slogans of solidarity so they’ll let him pass. When he gets past them and approaches the area of the other side, he switches his cap for their colors and more slogans of solidarity. We all laughed and laughed. Okay, maybe you had to be there.

Matthew and MJ left for the airport at around 2:00. The four of us remaining had such a great time together, I could have stayed there all afternoon, but it was time to have a short conference with Sylvester who was waiting for us at the bar. We reviewed our trip, the highs and the lows, and Sylvester revealed his new plan for restructuring the business. He has had so many complaints about the Tanzanian part of the safaris that it’s hurting his business because disgruntled customers usually demand refunds. As a result, he has decided to no longer offer trips to Tanzania. I’m sure that will result in much more satisfied customers. We were over the moon with the Kenyan part of our safari. It was when we crossed into Tanzania that things went downhill. I think Sylvester’s heart is in the right place and he sincerely wants his customers to fall in love with Kenya, as do all the people who work for him. I feel certain that he’ll get it together and straighten out the issues with his business.

It was then time for sad goodbyes. Before we parted, Lemaron gave Bruce a Tusker t-shirt and handed me a little bag, which held two pair of earrings made by the Masai. We really grew close in our 5 days together and we’ll truly miss him. Evans brought us to the Panafric hotel, the place where we spent our first two nights so that we could see Irene again and kill a little time at the lounge before heading to the airport for our 10:45 flight.

I popped into the gift shop to kill a little time and struck up a conversation with Maureen. We started talking about safari and she told me that many years ago her father worked as a resident engineer at lodges in the national parks. When he was posted to Samburu, he and his wife had just had a baby. When Maureen’s mom would wash the clothes she would set the baby on a blanket with toys and some food while she worked. One day she walked out and the baby was gone. From high in the trees she heard a monkey screeching, so she looked up to see the monkey holding the infant. The monkey came halfway down the tree and held out its paw. Maureen’s mom went to the kitchen but had no bananas, so she rushed to the neighbor’s house and asked if she could borrow some bananas to get her baby back. The neighbor went with her and documented the whole thing in pictures. The monkey came down the tree but would not hand over the baby till she had banana in hand. From that day forward, every time the mom wanted to put the baby on the blanket outside, she had to put bananas near the blanket as a payoff to the monkey. There’s a cocktail party story!

Irene, Bruce and I said our goodbyes and Maxwell, our driver from the first night picked us up to take us to the airport. The airport, yeah. That’s a whole other story. To be continued...