Hilary’s Travels

I spend a lot of time with cab drivers. They take me to and from work, about 30 min each way when traffic is not bad and I have hired a few to take me on trips around Nairobi. I learn a lot from them. They tell me about the political situation – unanimously they say the previous regime (under Daniel Arap Moi) was very corrupt, swindling the country of most of its profits and that the current, democratically elected regime (under Mwai Kibaki) is better. They are my informal tour guides, pointing out areas of interest as we drive by.

They greet me by name and if I have not yet met them they always introduce themselves. They are dignified, well read and educated. Most are outgoing and if you indicate the desire to talk, will oblige with accounts of their lives, their hopes and dreams, the political climate, what is going on in the city. They are a fabulous source of information. One public holiday I was looking for a foreign exchange bureau and I called one cab driver, Waynayna. Within a few minutes he had gotten back to me with an answer, saving me hours of frustrated searching.. They are punctual, always arriving 15 min earlier than booked.

I have my favorites. Issac has three children and tells me about his work, the necessity of providing well for his family and the importance of being kind to people. “Hilary”, he says, “it is always important to be kind. To all people, to animals and to the environment. There is not enough kindness in this world!” Another driver, Joseph, has seven sisters, one who is a nun, another is a doctor with her own clinic in their home town. He runs tours for the cab company also and his greatest joy is to go to one of the National Parks and to view the wild animals. One Monday when he picked me up he entertained me with a vivid description of what he had seen that weekend; lions killing a wildebeest, a crocodile attacking a zebra whilst its herd watched placidly. On another occasion we passed a bus stop where his wife happened to be waiting and he asked if we could give her a lift. I obliged and after he had dropped her off on our way, he confessed that they were not actually legally married but had a two-year old child. I enquired if this was a common and accepted practice and he said it was fairly common, but that he was to undergo a cleansing ceremony, involving being beaten with dried dung. What seemed to be holding back the marriage ceremony was the price of a dowry, which was competing with the need to get a better education in order to get a better job.

I decided to spend the weekend in Mombasa, Kenya’s port and beach resort area. I took a 45 min plane ride from Nairobi, filled with festive wedding party guests. I arrived at the restive sanctuary of the Travelers Beach Hotel. With its open air cathedral ceiling lobby, stucco white and beam design, pool that winds its way from the bar inside the hotel out to the lawn studded with palm trees, it promised to be the getaway I was hoping for. The hotel property ends at the beach and from there you can hear the distant roar of crashing waves out on the edge of the bay where a coral reef protects the town from the vast Indian Ocean beyond. I immediately felt I’d come to the right place to relax and I booked a safari trip for the following day.

At 6:00 on Saturday morning I was greeted by Said, safari independent operator, driver and guide. I also met my safari companion, Alex, a Brazilian, in Kenya on a business trip. We embarked on a mad drive out of Mombasa and on the main road towards Nairobi, navigating around bathtub sized potholes, vans and huge lumbering trucks carrying goods from Mombasa port to Nairobi and beyond to landlocked Uganda, Sudan and Ethiopia. After two hours of driving we arrived at the entrance to Tsavo National Park.

Almost immediately on entering the park we saw a family of giraffes somewhat obscured by bushes and Said inched forward to give us the best possible view. I clicked away with my camera, trying to line up the best shot, aware with every click that my battery was going to run out during the trip – little did I know that on the return trip giraffes would be surrounding us right on the road! A few miles down the road we saw a small family of elephants pondering by and not much later we stopped to see a group of zebra huddled together, while on the other side of the road a pair of gazelle were studying us. A little troop of warthogs trotted by purposefully. I was amazed at the quantity and density of animals. If this was representative of the entire 20,000 square kilometers of park, the place was teaming with wildlife. “Was this the way it had been for eons?”, I wondered. How the world must have seemed to be both bountiful and dangerous to humans living there!

My first view of a giraffe, head and neck peering from behind a bush like a prehistoric animal, and felt like I had been holographically transported into a movie set. This feeling of being in a movie persisted throughout the day. At one point I felt like the “Lion King” cartoon characters had all come to life and become real …except that the animals were all in families. Animal culture is not individualistic. Giraffes graze together in nuclear families, the father towering above the others, easily 18 feet high while the mothers and teenagers graze close by, sometimes with a baby tottering about.

Elephant travel as a crèche of mothers with their offspring. Baboons move in great clans of aunts, uncles and cousins, grazing on open grassy areas, pulling tufts of grass with deft fists. Larger birds (we saw many including Ibis, Hornbill, Snake Eagle, Ostrich, all named by Said, who knows his birds) are often found in pairs as well as the tiny Dik Dik the smallest gazelle in Africa, shivering in fear like little rabbits. Herds of Thompson Gazelle are all male or all female, coming together for playful orgies like ancient worshipers of Baccus.

We stopped for lunch at a hilltop camp sporting a domed thatch roof, waiters serving drinks, from where you can see the plains below. Alex (who has contracts in Portuguese-speaking Angola) and I traded stories about our own countries and what it is like to work in Africa.

It rained occasionally during the day and on the return trip the temporary road, for use while the main road was being repaved (we get a few miles of road before each election joked Said with cynical good humor) was quite washed out. We followed a line of trucks crawling along towards Mombasa. At one point we came to a complete standstill, a line of trucks also stopped in the opposite direction also and waited for at least half an hour – I wondered if we were going to get home that night. Eventually the line started again and we passed half a dozen trucks mired axel-high in the mud. When we got back that evening to the peacefulness of the Mombasa Travelers Beach hotel I felt like I had been through several different parallel universes, and entering another one!

If you go to Mombasa:

Safari: Said M. Harusi, PO box 403 Mombasa. Mobile: 0722 707346

Travelers Beach Hotel, travhtls@africaonline.co.ke; phone: 041-5485121; fax: 041–5485674

On the plane to Nairobi after a civilized overnight at a hotel at London Heathrow, I am seated beside two ladies from Cleveland Ohio off on Safari. Most passengers are vacationers, judging by skin colour, attire and the demeanor of excitement and anticipation generated by the giddy crowd, most of whom had just arrived from overnight flights.

I read my training manuals and take notes, now and then looking out to see a blanket of clouds that pretty well cover the whole of Europe. At one point the jagged peaks of the Alps poke through, dwarfed by this perspective, as though they are mere small islands poking out of a cottony sea. Once we reach North Africa the clouds thin so that the desert below is apparent. The Sahara is vast. It takes 3 hours to fly over – longer than it took to fly from London to the North African side of the Mediterranean. All that desert, all that sand. I wondered if it could ever be transformed, if there were the will to do it. If seven maids with seven mops …

Sue and Alice, my flight neighbors were lovely and we chatted about other trips they had taken and they leant me their Lonely Planet Guide. Eventually we feel the plane descend and soon we see the lights of Nairobi. “Its very small”, says Alice. “Its not that small”, I say, “its just not very bright like cities in the West. There is less access to electricity” (Nairobi has the highest urban population in East Africa, estimated at between 3 and 4 million). “Mmm”, Alice mused, “that’s nice, much better for the environment, when people use less electricity”. The comment startled me. Did she really believe what she was saying? Was she feeling uncomfortable visiting a poor country just to see some animals and pretend Masai? I imagined all the people down there, untold millions huddled around candles or bare bulbs, in small shanties and cold apartments, comparatively few others in comfortable luxury. I wondered what they might think of that statement? But Alice seemed innocent of any faux pas and I didn’t enlighten her.

A seasoned traveler, my goal is to eventually leave for a trip in a relaxed manner, but this time, like always, I was in a panic to get my travelers cheques before the bank closed and grab my malaria pills etc from the pharmacy. One last meeting with the contractor who is updating and sending me the documents I will need for my work in Kenya, a rushed dinner, and I’m off!

I am to spend 6 weeks in Kenya overseeing the delivery of a leadership training program for young people and I am to train a team of Kenyan facilitators to deliver this program. My job as Learning Director for an international not-for-profit takes me to interesting places where I meet and work with people of different cultures and enjoy side trips to places I might never have gone otherwise. This blog is a description of my adventures and observations.