Adjusting to The Climate

I cannot recall if I have been clear about the fact that Bruce took my sister, Rebekah to Kenya last February. I was unable to go because of school and work obligations. Thus, our trip included many of the same elements as their previous excursion. (One glaring exception being that I was never afforded the opportunity to attend a funeral and make a speech as my sister did.)

Rebekah had told me many wonderful things about Lake Baringo. They took a boat tour there with a guide named Fox, which she assured me was a cannot-miss experience. I was ready.

The trip itself to Lake Baringo was very scenic. We pulled over to take in this spectacular view of the Rift Valley.

Photo courtesy of Bruce.

It was evening by the time we reached our hotel, which to my delight had both toilets and electricity.   However, there were not enough rooms/beds available and so James went down the road to a somewhat less modern establishment, which he assured was quite satisfactory for him. We feasted on fish and chips and went to bed.

At this point I feel obliged to warn you that the rest of the post is mostly an account of Bruce and I becoming sick. I have left out the more graphic details as so not to offend the sensibilities of anyone in my small readership. However, if you are particularly sensitive to these types of things you may stop reading here, pretend that we had a wonderful time at Lake Baringo and did not encounter food poisoning of any kind. I like to pretend that too. 

The next morning, Monica and I met James for breakfast at the hotel restaurant but Bruce had not emerged from his room. James finally went to check on him and discovered that he was ill. A boat tour was clearly out the question for him, but he urged us to go on without him and find Fox.

We found Fox, settled on a price for the tour, strapped on some life jackets (the purpose of which the Kenyans were certain I did not know and were careful to explain) and climbed aboard the boat.  Just as we pushed off from land I felt an unwelcome twinge of queasiness in my stomach. It was beginning.

Our fearless captain Fox and James, the first mate.

Let me start by saying that the boat tour was awesome. Fox is a very knowledgable tour guide and Lake Baringo is beautiful and full of wildlife and unique cultural experiences. However, I can't help but think it might have been a more enjoyable two hours had the threat of diarrhea-ing in my trousers not seemed to becoming more and more imminent.

I bravely soldiered on and captured the following pictures:

This is the crocodile we fed, the sight of whose jaws snapping almost sent James tumbling out the other side of the boat.

Pretty tree full of pretty birds and nests. 

Fox called these the "tuxedo birds". 

The tour finally concluded, we docked the boat and headed back toward the toilet hotel. But then someone had the wonderful idea that we should visit the snake park before we went back. I tried to protest in a polite, Midwestern sort of way.

"I'm really not feeling well, maybe you could just leave me at the hotel."
"Ahh, you will feel better."

Snake park it was.

I have no pictures of that part of the day. All of my energy was focused on keeping the contents of my stomach from escaping.

Bruce was not feeling any better when at last we returned to the hotel. I made half a dozen trips to the bathroom and still felt awful. Finally we decided we needed to leave in order to get back to Nakuru at a decent hour. Our Kenyan hosts assured us that we were just adjusting to the climate.

At one point on the way back, Bruce made James pull the car over so he could vomit on the side of the road. "Now you will feel better!" the Kenyans exclaimed. It most have been somewhat true, because Bruce decided we should stop and take our picture by this equator sign. I felt and looked terrible. We were bombarded by hawkers trying to sell us their goods. My feeble smiles and "no thank you's" quickly deteriorated to "FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, I DO NOT WANT TO BUY ANYTHING!"

Bruce was feeling somewhat refreshed after puking out his guts. 

When we got back to James's house, Sharon was preparing what must have been the equivalent of a Christmas feast. I feverishly stumbled to bed and buried my face in a pillow in a futile attempt to escape the aroma of food cooking. An hour or so later there was a knock on our door. 

"Sarah! Come eat!" Even in the face of great illness Kenyans never lose their appetites, nor their sense of hospitality. 

"Uh, no thank you," I mumbled.

"Eat! You will feel better!"

At this point Bruce kindly bellowed something to indicate that we were incapable of food consumption and that sent them on their way.

Periodically, I ventured to the squatty-potty for another bout of diarrhea. I wanted to throw up in the worst possible way. I am sure that it was equal parts comical and pathetic to see me crouched in the front yard in the middle of the night, a soft rain falling, as I quietly moaned every disgusting thing I could think of, hoping that it would help me puke. "Bologna!" "Brussels sprouts!" "Vodka!" Alas, nothing. 

The next day our sickness had subsided to minor queasiness. My middle-of-the-night trips to the squatty potty had left me with a sense of mastery over the system and for the remainder of the trip I hardly noticed the absence of porcelain toilets. While the whole ordeal seemed pretty terrible at the time (Bruce stated that on the road back to Nakuru he would have given $20,000 to be teleported back to Kansas), we survived. Not only that, we survived with clean pants. And in Africa sometimes that's all you can hope for.  

Bright Futures

Sometimes when I am feeling as though I have no direction in my life, I fondly recall Monica, who at one year older than me has already established her own school. It does nothing to ease my anxiety. 

Monica has always dreamed of being a teacher. She is a very good one too, as she demonstrated by drilling her class on domestic animals for our benefit. Her eager pupils' hands shot up at once. "Horse!" "Pig!" "Cow!" "Rat!"

Due to poor planning on our part, we arrived in Kenya just as the private schools were closing for their break. When Monica told her students that we were coming, but they would be on holiday they begged her to keep the school open a few extra days. Being the nice teacher/school director she is, she extended the school term. Some of the kids stayed home, having already completed their exams. Let's be real, in those circumstances I would have been right there with them. I was astonished by how many came voluntarily to see "the old white man" and his daughter.

As is typical of everywhere you go in Kenya, Monica had the students perform some poems and songs for the entertainment of their visitors. I always marvel at the sharp memories of Kenyan students- they probably know more poems than Robert Frost.  Here's a small sampling of what we enjoyed at Bright Futures Academy.

Please note the sour expression of the third child from the left. His face never changed. He was a boy after my own heart, but I could not stop laughing at the pictures.

Here's a shot of the entire school, guests and teachers. And yes, those are the classrooms behind.

Adorable little girl recites poem. See if you can spot our gloomy friend.

Another poem reciter and her captive audience.

The next leg of the journey was without question the most harrowing, but of course we did not anticipate that at the time. Had I known what was coming next, I probably would have staked out a nice spot on that grass and listened to poems for a full week. But I didn't know. And so I got into the car with James, Bruce and Monica and headed for Lake Baringo. 

The Not-so-Exciting Blackout

We arrived unceremoniously at Nakuru, bought some groceries and then took a windy road to the countryside where SOAR-Kenya (the school) is located. I use the term "road" rather loosely. It's more like a washed out path that unbelievably manages to accommodate motor vehicles. 

Anyway, this is the school and that's James standing in front. 

This is James's daughter, Mary who was a bit shy around the wazungu- the Swahili word for "white people".  If you want to read the fascinating context of that word, click here. 

And this is Elvis, Mary's older brother, who is not shy in the slightest. 

I would be remiss if I didn't show the garden and the drip irrigation, as Bruce is particularly fond of it. 

James lives with his children and his wife, Sharon, just up the road from the school. We stayed with them while we were in Nakuru. Here's a shot of everyone on the day we left:

When we first got there, however, we only spent one night. The next day we traveled to Eldoret to visit Monica's school. We took, what I am told, was the most dangerous road in Kenya. I believe this claim because at one point we saw three lorry accidents in a span of five minutes. 

There was an intense downpour when we arrived that evening. The electricity was out in the hotel, a problem we were assured would be fixed at any moment. That moment never came. Thus, this is the only picture I have from the Eldoret hotel: 

Just kidding. Actually I took this picture of the candle holders they gave us so we could see in the dark:

I've never had strawberry fruit wine, but it looks terrible. 

I'm not complaining however, because that hotel had porcelain toilets, albeit ones without seats. Even so, after using a squatty potty a toilet bowl was about the most welcome sight I could imagine. 

Bruce and I spent a long evening chatting with Monica and James at the hotel restaurant. James did some hilarious wazungu impressions. Monica told us all about her school. I ate a stringy unidentifiable piece of chicken. Finally, our candle burned out and we walked back through the rain to our cold, dark hotel rooms. It was undoubtedly one of my favorite nights in Kenya. 

And now back to our regularly scheduled trip recap

While nothing could outdo the Elephant Orphanage, the Mamba (read: Crocodile) Park certainly put up a valiant effort. The Crocodile Park includes turtles, ostriches, and you guessed it- rabbits. Oh, and also crocodiles. Seen here:

American Crocodile Hunter

I didn't want to post this picture because my face is still recovering from lack of sleep,
but I also wanted to provide photographic evidence that I held that little twerp. 

This is James, the school director at SOAR-Kenya triumphing over a moderate-severe crocodile phobia.

This is Carol, friend of James and our Nairobi tour guide. She clearly has no qualms about snuggling up with this guy.

After the Mamba Park, we went to visit Bruce's other favorite Nairobi tourist attraction. 

Have you seen Out of Africa? It stars Meryl Streep and Robert Redford and is based on the real-life story of Karen Blixen, a Danish coffee farmer turned author who lived in Kenya. If you haven’t seen it, don’t tell Bruce as he will take personal offense.  (Not that I’m speaking from experience.) I bought Out of Africa to read on the trip because I have a severe aversion to watching movies before I’ve read the book.* The story is beautifully written, but in such a poetic way that it lulls me to sleep almost instantly. At this rate I’ll finish it in 30 years or so, at which point I will watch the movie.

Anyway- we went to visit Karen Blixen’s home in Nairobi, which has now been turned into a museum. Photos are not permitted inside the house, but here’s the exterior.

 The next morning we would leave Nairobi and head to a place less touristy and with fewer toilets. But I'll get to that.  

*Helen, I promise to read The Help soon. Sorry I ruined your birthday.

I don't know about you, but I'm feeling 27

A couple weeks ago I turned 27- not a particularly momentous milestone as far as birthdays go. At 25 I could rent a car and at 26 I was kicked off my parents’ health insurance plan, but 27? No big deal.

However, within forty-eight hours of my birthday I had purchased a car. This was significant for several reasons:

1.    The car had four doors.

2.   I did all the negotiating myself, with only minor consultation with my father- a feat I firmly believed I was incapable of until the frustration of being confined to my house superseded my car-buying anxiety.

3.   I met the dealer at McDonald’s in Junction City (the halfway point between us, but admittedly an odd place to broker a deal), signed all the paperwork and wrote a check for the entirety of my life savings.

Hello adulthood.

If I needed further proof that I am practically a real adult I found it in droves Friday night. My friend Kimberly and I went to outdoor concert that included a dozen or so bands and 18,000 audience members. After the first two bands my feet were achey and I wanted to sit down. Or perhaps lie down for a short nap.

I noticed immediately that we were surrounded by youths. As in high school students who looked like they were eleven and were complaining about their moms. And I found myself thinking the following thoughts:

Where are your parents? Why would they let you come un-chaperoned to an event where there are DRUGS and statistically speaking MULTIPLE REGISTERED SEX OFFENDERS?

Although we had an awesome time, we left before the final band because that seemed preferable to waiting for the 45 minutes it would take for them to set up the stage.  Plus, our feet were very tired.  Plus there was a very dramatic (read: intoxicated) woman behind us who was inciting violence and it became stressful.

The good news is that I got home with plenty of time to watch a couple of episodes of New Girl on Netflix before bed.

Hello old age. 

all creatures great and small

Nairobi was my home for eight weeks during the summer of 2009. The minute we stepped out of the airport I inhaled a lungful of car exhaust and smog and smiled with the great satisfaction that only comes with the smell of a place very dear to you. My first time in Nairobi was fairly devoid of any touristy type experiences- a fact that Bruce set out to remedy immediately. First on the agenda was the giraffe park:

"Oh hello there!"

This is a magical place where you feed giraffes out of the palm of your hand. Trivia: In the sixth grade, my favorite animal was the giraffe and I wrote what felt like at the time  a very extensive research paper on them. Did you know that giraffes have seven vertebrae in their necks? That's the same number as humans. That might also be the only information I retained from the sixth grade.

This giraffe was either particularly gregarious or particularly hungry, because all of his friends were chilling in the distance.

Carefully avoiding the humans

The name "Giraffe Park" might be a bit deceptive, because there's also plenty of these guys:

Pumba?

Now I love giraffes and warthogs and basically any animal featured in the 1994 motion picture classic, The Lion King. But as we all know, my heart really belongs to BABY ELEPHANTS. Which was why our next destination, The Elephant Orphanage filled my heart with joy. Brace yourself, because you're about to be bombarded with more cuteness than you can probably handle. 

I warned you.

The majority of these precious little babes have been made orphans by poachers. We learned that they can't survive without their mother's milk until they are two years old. The orphanage rescues the babies and feeds them a vegetable-based formula:

Nom nom nom.

The babies are eventually reintroduced into a wild herd- a process that takes 5-10 years. 5-10 YEARS.

The moral of this story is never ever ever buy anything made of ivory. 

The one with the blanket is the youngest elephant at the orphanage. He's so little
that he has to wear the blanket to regulate his body temperature.

Let me leave you with a short video- so you can get the full effect. You're welcome. 

I apologize for leaving everyone in such suspense. We made it to Africa; we made it home again; and then I waited a month to write anything about it. But as I am better at articulating experiences via the written word (my apologies to everyone who has asked about the trip and received this response: "Uh, it was good, really good."), I thought I might as well blog the highlights.

Day One: Amsterdam

Preface: I arranged for us to have a 12-hour layover in Amsterdam on our way to Kenya. My brilliant thought was that we would sleep on the plane and wake up refreshed and ready to take on a full day of sight-seeing. I am notoriously able to sleep anytime, anywhere and under almost any condition. Unfortunately those conditions exclude sitting next to crying babies/screaming children who are too old to be screaming on a plane. Therefore, I got about forty-three minutes of sleep on the flight to Amsterdam.

 

In Amsterdam, before the exhaustion set in.

The lovely thing about Amsterdam is that it is relatively easy to navigate. You can take a short train ride from the airport into the city, most people speak English and you can see the majority of the touristy stuff on foot or by canal boat. We set out on foot at first, but then Bruce inadvertently wandered into the bowels of the Red Light District. If you ask him about this, he will deny it.

“What makes you think this is the Red Light District?”- Bruce

“Gee, Dad, I don’t know. Maybe all the red doors and the prostitutes?”- Me

“Where did you see prostitutes?”

“Standing in the windows.”

“How did you know they were prostitutes?”

“How did you not know they were prostitutes?”

Bruce was easy to spot in his orange shirt.

Fortunately, it was 9:00 in the morning and the RLD was not exactly a hotbed of activity. Even so, it’s not a place you hope to find yourself at any time of day with your old man.

After that we boarded a hop-on, hop-off canal boat, a decidedly more family-friendly activity. We saw most of the city that way. We hopped off for lunch at a sidewalk café. I succumbed to the temptation of something on the menu called an “American Toasty”. That was a mistake, but this espresso was the fulfillment of my European dreams.

Espresso and Heineken. Please note the absence of marijuana.

We visited some shops and Bruce had what he declared to be the best cheese of his life. He wanted to buy an entire block of it as a "snack", but I convinced him they probably had the same cheese in Kansas. We almost got hit by bicycles countless times before deciding to retreat to the canal boat.

I'm telling you... bikes. Everywhere.

Upon boarding the boat we had to squish into a booth with a lovely British family. But I was so tired, that despite the antics of the hilarious mum and a four-year old with blonde curls down to his shoulders, I almost immediately slipped into a coma-like sleep. I opened my eyes just long enough to see Anne Frank's house as we passed by, but couldn't summon the energy to get out my camera.  Bruce was dozing off as well, so we finally decided to head back to the airport. 

Thus concludes the pot-pungent first leg of our journey. Next stop: Africa. 

There's nothing I love more than traveling and nothing I hate more than planning a trip.

When I went to Kenya four years ago, I worked with a missions organization that did all the travel arranging for me. They booked the flights, told me what shots to get, arranged for a place for me to stay, and gave me malaria pills. All I had to do was hand over a large sum of money. It was beautiful.

My dad, Bruce, has been to Kenya several times since serving there in the Peace Corps 40- some years a while ago.  Being a generous and benevolent father, he told me he would take me back to Kenya once I finished graduate school. There's an 80% chance that we are leaving next Tuesday. Here's why:

1. Bruce put me in charge of booking the flight. Bold move. As I am my father's daughter, I booked the flight out of Wichita (although I live in Kansas City) upon discovering we could save $400 on our tickets.

2. I drive a 2004 Chevy Cavalier named LeBron, whose days have been numbered since about 2007. (The car's name is irrelevant to this story, but you should probably know it anyway.) Two days ago I was turning in a busy intersection amidst road construction that eliminated one lane of traffic. (Read: there were a lot of cars congested in a small area.) Halfway through the turn, LeBron began to shudder violently and head off in another direction (read: toward oncoming traffic). Miraculously, I regained control of the car and held my breath the rest of the way home. We were fine, obviously, but I am now afraid to drive until he has been inspected by a mechanic and cured of his wayward tendencies. The mechanic is unavailable until next Wednesday, i.e. the day after I leave the country.

3. We now had to come up with a plan to get me from Kansas City to Wichita. Once I ruled out hitchhiking, Bruce tried very hard to convince me to take a BUS. This seemed like a ridiculous proposition to me- I wasn't even sure that there were buses in Kansas, but I was proven wrong. Since I have to work on Monday, the only thing available was an Amtrak ticket to Topeka, followed by a Greyhound to Newton. The trip would take 8 hours and put me in Newton at 4:15 AM. The middle of the night arrival time was my only saving grace, because with that information Bruce finally conceded that it would be easier for him to pick me up in Kansas City.

4. I finally arranged for my doctor to call in a prescription for malaria pills to my pharmacy. This took several days and multiple phone calls, but I was relieved to finally have the pills in my possession. Upon further inspection of the prescription, however, I realized that she had prescribed a type of Tetracycline. My mother, Paula, once had a violent allergic reaction to Tetracycline and was advised to never let her children take it, on the chance that we had inherited her vicious allergy. Growing up, the rule was "Never touch a loaded gun, street drugs, boys or Tetracyclines." I called to get her advice, which was basically "Well the PEDIATRICIAN, who had a medical degree told me to NEVER let you have them, but go ahead and try them if you're not afraid of DEATH."

5. I called the doctor's office. The doctor had just left town and will not be returning until Monday. I'm still debating if I should take a chance...

6. True to form, I haven't packed a single thing. There is a good chance that I will end up in Nairobi with 12 pairs of sweat pants and one shirt. This would not be the first time.

Goals for the trip:
Pack enough underwear, drink a lot of Chai, see a baby elephant, avoid malaria, come back alive.

*Once upon a time four years ago, I ate this goat. It was by far the most delicious goat I had on my trip.