Kenya: the Safari
1 Comment »15th January, 2012; Category: Traveller's Tales
Early on Monday morning we were collected from the guesthouse to begin our journey to the Maasai Mara wildlife reserve on the south western corner of Kenya. You can find out more about the reserve here: http://www.maasaimara.com/. We travelled in a minivan, and most of the journey was comfortable enough… until the last 30km or so and one of the most pot-holey roads I have come across in a while. Our driver’s tactic was to speed up to the worst of the pot holes, then slow rapidly and swerve from side to side… not the most comfortable of driving experiences.
Our fabulous (?) vehicle that took us to the Maasai Mara national park.
Checking out a good view on the way.
The good view.
At about noon we stopped and were met by our guide, Sammy, our tracker, Albert and the lovely four wheel drive in which we were to enjoy our safari. The part of the wild life reserve we were in was the Naboisho Conservancy. You can find out more about this particular conservancy here: http://www.maasaimara.com/community-conservation/conservancies/naboisho-conservancy. The nice thing about this conservancy is that they protect the reserve by limiting the number of people who can come to stay, and allow the guides to drive wherever they wish, even off the tracks. I have heard that on some safaris they insist that the guides stick only to the marked tracks, which can make it hard to get close to the more elusive animals. We were able to get very close to a number of animals we otherwise probably would not have seen at all.
The beginning of the Naboisho Conservancy.
We felt a little like we were in a scene from Out of Africa, and indeed a few weeks later, when we got together to watch the film, we realised that the scene where Denys takes Karen on safari was remarkably similar to our lovely experience! We had a picnic lunch packed for us and ate it amongst the wilder beast and impalas, while dodging a little bit of rain.
Our fabulous safari vehicle!
At about mid-afternoon we arrived at our camp, the Encounter Mara camp. You can check out their website here: http://encountermara.com/. We were met at the beginning of an elephant dung track (an awesome form of mulch, by the way) by a group of Maasai men who escorted us through the bush to the tents. There we were invited to sit and enjoy an ice cold glass of mango juice while the managers, a Kenyan/Spanish couple, explained how the camp worked. The campsite is unfenced, which meant that the animals could wander through at will, and occasionally did! To that end, we could walk around relatively freely during the day, but in the evenings we were escorted from our sleeping tent to the dining tent by our sprightly Maasai guard. These lovely guards were also our housekeepers, and filled our showers with hot water, filled our hot water bottles and popped them into our turned-downed beds, brought us thermoses of hot water for washing in the morning, and zipped up our tents as we retired. For the record, the tents had an en suite, so there was no need to leave the tents to go to the loo in the middle of the night! The front of the tents had verandas with deck chairs and a day bed, which I managed to doze on very pleasantly on the second afternoon.
My tent. Not too shabby!
The view from my tent.
After settling into our tents, we reconvened in the lounge tent for a substantial afternoon tea before our late afternoon drive, which included a “sundowner” otherwise known as a gin and tonic (or other drink of choice) savoured as one watched the sun set over the African horizon. And yes, it is very cool. We returned from our drive in the early evening to shower (hot water was poured into a bucket above our tents by our lovely Maasai housekeepers) and then were escorted by them to dinner, which began with drinks around a camp fire then a three course meal in the dining tent. We had originally planned to while the evening away by playing card games but were too tired and were in bed before 10pm.
- The Bar! Sammy and Alfred prepare our “Sundowners”.
-
Evening ambience.
Dinner with our Maasai host.
We were woken at 5.30am, again by our lovely Maasia men to a light breakfast of fruit, cereal and tea and coffee. It was weird at first to have these chaps waiting on us hand and foot… but eventually I think we could have got used it! Then we were off on our dawn drive. This continued until about 10am when we returned to “brunch”, an enormous meal that consisted of a buffet of hot foods, salad, juice and bacon and eggs. So much food! We had the afternoon free until 4pm and our late afternoon tea, so we chose to laze about at our tents. Each had a lovely big canvas day bed which I stretched out on in the warm sun, and very nearly fell asleep. I certainly had weird dreams involving an ex-boyfriend and a lion. I won’t go into details, mainly because I can’t remember them, but I have an impression that I was on the side of the lion…
-
Breakfast at dawn, hoping the giraffe show up to say hello. (They never did...)
Dozing on the day bed on my tent's verandah. Loving the view.
We again enjoyed a late afternoon drive, a “sundowner” and continued into the early evening. Then showers, dinner and bed, then dawn again the final morning. We enjoyed one last safari drive, then spent the remainder of the morning at a Maasai village that allows visits. We visited a woman’s home. Interestingly the women take responsibility for building the houses. They consist of a wooden frame on which the mud and manure walls are formed. Inside are small rooms and natty little shelves and cupboards. There is a small cooking stove, and the women make little lamps from a glass bottle, a piece of twisted fabric and some fuel.
Our welcome from the Maasai women. Jen S and I joined in the dancing!
A Maasai home.
The inside of the Maasai home. I loved the nifty little shelves and stove moulded into the mud walls.
After a final brunch we were driven out of the conservancy by our lovely guide and tracker and were met by our minivan and the return trip to Nairobi. That evening we indulged in a curry (so good) and started considering our all-important shopping lists for our final day in Kenya. We hit the souvenir shops early, buying small things for family and selves. Then, somewhat more importantly, we hit Nakamutt! On the top of our lists were cheese, bacon, butter, chips, Cadburys chocolate and nice shampoos! The cold items were frozen for safe travel and the rest were stuffed wherever we could fit them in our cases. In the late afternoon we drove through the traffic congestion to the airport and finally boarded our flights at about 10.30pm. Back in Addis and home by 1.30am, we collapsed into bed. Now if you actually want to know about what animals we saw, you will just have to wait until I write the next blog…
Our little group: Laura, me, Sammy (our guide), Jen S, Alfred (our lion-killing tracker), Tessa and Jen C.
Kenya: Nairobi
In the one-week October break, I had the opportunity to travel to Kenya for the week. Jen C (who is English) was celebrating her 40th Birthday with a trip to Nairobi and then on to the Maasai Mara National Park and a safari. She invited me to be part of the group of five, and I had no intention of turning down the invitation! Jen S (who is American) organised the trip for us) and we were also accompanied by Laura and Tessa (also both English).
Crowded into a Kenyan taxi with Laura, Tessa and Jen C.
So at 1.30am, the morning after most of us had been on retreat (me with Grade 7s, Tessa with Grade 9s and Laura with Grade 11s), we dragged ourselves out into the car park where Clare had valiantly agreed to drive us to the airport. I really don’t know why it is, but most of the flights in and out of Addis seem to be at “stupid o’clock” in the morning. Jen S was already in Nairobi, having gone a few days earlier for medical tests.
Divine iced tea, served with a little jug of sugar syrup.
We were in Nairobi by dawn and Jen S was awaiting us at her mission’s very nice guesthouse with bacon, eggs, croissants, orange juice, tea and coffee! So nice! We decided to hit the town and I confess that our first stop was the Nakumatt supermarket at the Westgate shopping mall. What a sight to behold! The shops were so shiny and full of things to buy, and as for Nakumatt supermarket, I think I may have truly experienced culture shock! It never seemed to end… there was so much on the shelves… and there were chips and bacon and cheese and… Well, you get the idea! We shopped for snacks and breakfast food and scoped out all the things we planned to buy, freeze and take home to Ethiopia! We also indulged in such delicious iced tea, you know, the kind where they make it fresh and serve it with a little jug of sugar syrup to sweeten it! So nice…
We had a lovely lunch at a café called Le Rustique which was set in lovely gardens. Check out their website here: http://www.lerustique.co.ke/. Having lived in Ethiopia, we were all a little bit obsessed with food which meant, of course, that we needed to photograph everything! Java House became a favourite spot for coffee and we took advantage of restaurants selling both seafood and Indian food. Just lovely! I’ve realised when looking through my photos, that I took almost none of Nairobi itself, and an awful lot of the food we ate…
My lovely lunch at Le Rustique: the antipasti platter. Delicious!
On the Sunday morning we went to the International Church to check it out. It seemed to consist mainly of Americans, although we met people from other countries. The church meets in the auditorium at Rosslyn Academy, which is a Christian international school. The academy has very beautiful grounds… we were almost jealous, but we do love our little campus in Addis!
My lovely seafood starter of crab.
However Tessa's meal was much more dramatic, and very tasty by all accounts!
Overall I do like Nairobi (mainly because of the supermarkets and food, I think) but it seemed so very different to Addis Ababa. You rarely see the poverty you know exists in Kenya; the slums are neatly tucked away far from the city centre, so you can pretend they don’t exist at all. I can’t make up my mind whether it is better to have slums and poverty in your face as it is in Addis Ababa, so you never forget it exists, or whether it is better to keep the city neat and tidy and perhaps safer… however despite their efforts, I think Nairobi is renowned for being quite unsafe, especially in the week we visited, a few days after Kenya declared war on Somalia!
A Traditional Coffee Ceremony
One of the best parts of our orientation programme was the opportunity to visit the homes of some of Bingham’s Ethiopian employees for a traditional coffee ceremony. I went to the home of Embet, who is the houseworker for several Bingham families. She is a delightful woman who lives about a 20 minute walk from the school. I visited her home with Randen, Christina and their three girls, and with Tessa. Randen and Christina are from the US; Randen is the new student counsellor, particularly focusing on assisting the Grade 12 students as they apply for universities in one of the many countries Bingham’s graduating class leave for at the end of their time here. Tessa is the new French and German teacher and is from the UK.
On our way to Embet's Place.
Our walk was a pleasant one, but it reminded me that Kolfe, the part of the city in which we live, is very poor. There are ramshackle slum dwellings just a couple of hundred metres up the road; my Year 12 Studies of Societies class from last year would recognise the type of dwelling from our Slum Survivor simulation camp last year (See TEAR Australia’s website for more information: http://www.tear.org.au/education/slum-survivor/). The difference was, of course, that we could chicken out and sleep in Quicky, the high school groundsman’s shed when it got too wet that night; these people have no such choice in this wet and muddy rainy season! We passed many shops and a large vegetable market.
Shops along the way.
A fruit and vegetable market.
Embet had everything prepared for our arrival. The little stove on the right of the photo below what filled with hot coals and she began to roast the raw coffee beans. It was a slow and methodical process that was very relaxing! In the meantime she served us freshly popped corn which is usually served with traditional Ethiopian coffee.
Embet roasts the coffee beans over hot coals.
Once the beans were roasted, they needed to be ground up by hand, in Embet’s mortar and pestle which she had inherited from her grandmother. We all had a go at grinding the coffee, but none of us were as efficient as Embet!
Tessa grinding the coffee.
The ground coffee is placed in the traditional coffee pot with fresh hot water, and then allowed to brew over the hot coals.
Placing the ground coffee and water in the coffee pot.
What results is a lovely strong, black brew of coffee, which is served in tiny cups.
Embet pours the coffee into tiny cups.
I generally avoid coffee; as a rule it makes me quite ill with an unpleasant case of nausea and a headache. Apparently Ethiopian coffee has no such effect! Yes, it is very strong, and I confess I added a generous helping of sugar, but I really quite enjoyed it! I’m not saying I will be suddenly drinking lattes from the Bakehouse in Clare, but if there is freshly-made Ethiopian coffee to be had, I will indulge, I think!
O., M., Christina and Tessa savour their coffee.
After several hours of talking with Embet and her teenage and adult children, we made our way back to Bingham for a late lunch! It was a wonderful way to have spent a morning!
Taking our leave from Embet's house.
The Amazing Race
One of the treats the new Bingham staff had in store for us for our orientation was The Amazing Race. It was organised by existing staff, and I think was a thinly-disguised initiation ritual! (Just kidding, it was loads of fun!) The idea was to get us to use the local taxis and to follow the clues which would orientate us around the city. We began with a small amount of money; I can’t remember the exact amount, but it was no more than 300 Birr (about AU$17 ). This money needed to be enough for our team of 5 to take taxis across the city and to make various purchases as we went.
My Amazing Team!
Above is my amazing team: Meseret, the Ethiopian wife of Jari, who is second from the right and is one of our new music teachers, from Finland. In between them is Brett, the husband of Kathy, the new Year 2 teacher. Brett and Kathy are Australian, from New South Wales. Brett is a pastor, and here is the Grade 9 Homeroom teacher, is overseeing the Middle and High School chapels, and is playing househusband, enjoying a much-deserved break. On the right is Jason, who is American and a new lecturer at the Evangelical Theological College (ETC). His wife, Emily is part of our little learning support team and is an elementary school reading specialist.
An Addis Taxi.
We were all driven to Bole, near the airport and pretty much on the opposite side of the city from Kolfe, where Bingham is located. We were given our first clue and were expected to catch the Addis taxis to complete the challenge. Taxis are actually blue and white minivans. A small taxi as we would know it is actually called a “Contract” and is much more expensive than sharing one of these taxis with a group of others. The young man in the door way calls out the destination of the taxi and takes your money when you get on. When the door is shut, he leans out the window to keep calling to potential passengers.
Local lads cleaning shoes.
One of the tasks we needed to complete while on our way to various locations was to collect or photograph various items. The first one was to photograph at least three “typical” Ethiopian sights. These are some of my choices! Above, you can see young boys cleaning shoes, a frequent sight throughout the city. Below is a typical road-side shop selling various small items and a fruit and vegetable stall. There are several veggie stalls just outside the gates of the school where we can pop to get avocadoes, bananas (waaaaay cheaper than the jewel-encrusted ones we have had to buy in Australia this year, post-Queensland cyclone!), onions, potatoes and other things.
A local shop and fruit and vegetable stall.
Below you can see a fairly normal sight: scaffolding on a new building, Ethiopian style. Yes, that is wooden scaffolding! It looks rickety, but I suppose it is sturdy enough…
Scaffolding, Ethiopian-style.
Part of the fun of travelling around Addis is the truly entertaining things one can see on the road. A heavily-overloaded ute is a normal sight now. This week I have noticed live sheep with their hooves tied together lying placidly on the roof of a taxi and a dozen dead chickens hanging from the roof of a van.
A ute loaded up Ethiopian-style.
Another of our challenges was to have our photo taken while playing Foosball. It is easy to find a group of lads around a foosball table. This group (below) were beside one of the city’s stadiums. They let us play briefly while I took the official team photo. Then one of the boys insisted on dragging me into the game and very kindly placed the ball at the feet of one of my “players” so I could actually hit it!
Playing foosball with local lads.
We had to dress up one of our team members in traditional Ethiopian clothing: Brett was our “willing” mannequin. Not exactly a traditional outfit, but close…
Brett in traditional clothing... sort of!
We had to find someone selling “Ethiopian toothbrushes” which are pieces of soft wood, the ends of which can be softened so you can clean your teeth with them. We found someone on the street selling them and bought one. Below, Jason is demonstrating how they are used! The man we bought it from is on the right.
Jason brushing his teeth with a local toothbrush.
We had to buy a postcard and post it. We found someone selling them on the street, bought one, then I wrote on it, and we went to the nearby postoffice to buy a stamp so we could actually post it. I sent it to Mum and Dad and a couple of weeks later it arrived!
Buying a postcard.
Addressing the postcard to my parents.
Posting the postcard. For the record, it made it to Australia!
Of course, in amongst all of these little tasks, we were also supposed to be following the clues to get ourselves to various destinations. Our first clue was to go either to “Lime Tree” or to a certain cinema. We accidently went to the wrong cinema and kind of got a bit side-tracked! Luckily the Ethiopian Amharic teachers were secretly tracking each team and they contacted the teachers organising the race to let them know we had gone off track! We got a phone call from Dave telling us we were “lost” and we needed to make our way to the SIM headquarters for our next clue!
Collecting the mail from the SIM mail room.
While we were at SIM HQ we had to take our photo in the mail room. This is us posing suitably! When mail is sent to me, this is where it arrives. We need someone to collect our mail every week and bring it back to Bingham. After that we took a taxi to the Norwegian Lutheran Mission, or NLM, where some of the Bingham staff are living. From there, we were completely out of time, so we were instructed to get ourselves to the Sheraton, which we did via contract rather than taxi since we were so short of time.
Jari scores the groovy hat of one of the Sheraton's fine employees.
The Sheraton hotel is a whole other world! It is precisely how you would expect a high-end hotel to be: marble floors, quiet inoffensive music playing, vast swimming pool and extensive gardens, and nice clean toilets with the best smelling handsoap ever! Our first task was to take a photo of one of the staff members with the groovy little hats. We were supposed to take a photo with one of us wearing the hat, but were then told by the staff members who gave us the clue that they probably wouldn’t agree to this. We, however, succeeded! Jari is wearing the groovy hat!
Being "British" at the Sheraton.
Then we had to go out into the gardens and find the red phone booth near the Gnome Garden (which was a little creepy…). Once there, we had to take a photograph of ourselves doing something “British”. This is us lining up, British-style!
Having missed the first clue, we never really caught up, and sadly came last in the race. We did, however, have a jolly good time, so it really didn’t matter!
Orientation Week 1
Aside from settling into our apartments and daily routines of shopping, cooking, cleaning, etc., we have also been organising various aspects of paperwork. Wednesday saw me and the other new Australian couple head to the Australian Embassy, currently located in the Hilton hotel (apparently they won’t move into their own building until they can get one built to Australian standards). Our task was to have our Australian drivers licences authenticated. This involved them writing a letter that explained the main information and conditions of our licences. We managed this task in about half an hour. We then needed to visit the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to have the letter authenticated and stamped. This can take several hours of waiting in line in a courtyard, but again, I think we only needed to wait about half an hour, maybe a little longer. To have both of these steps accomplished in a single morning is apparently quite an achievement. The next task is to visit the licence bureau to actually apply for the licence!
The next day our drivers took most of the new staff to the Licence Bureau to help us get our licences. Their job was not just to get us there, but also to help us to complete all the paperwork, including a form that must be filled out in Amharic script… We would never have managed it ourselves, so these men were such a blessing to us! I now have a beautifully laminated piece of paper that states that I may drive a car in Ethiopia. Of course, SIM will not actually let me drive a car until I have had a driving test to ensure that not only can I manage Ethiopian road rules, traffic and pedestrians, but in my case, also that I can handle driving on the wrong… er… right side of the road. Time for me to retrain my brain and hands; I think my feet will be able to largely do the same that they usually do in terms of clutches, brakes and accelerators! I intend to practise in the safety of the compound before I actually take my test some time later this week!