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Gearing up for the big departure

I took many measures to mentally prepare myself for my recent trip to Kenya.

I read The White Masai by Corinne Hofmann. I bought three bottles of insect repellent – one for each week. I (involuntarily) dreamt of being kidnapped by Somali pirates. I bought, and actually read, a guide book on Kenya (if you can read French, I highly recommend Gallimard’s Bibliothèque du Voyageur series). I took a Lariam tablet a few days before our departure date. I packed light. Hoping to desensitise myself, I looked at photos of exotic, hairy and colourful spiders and insects on the Internet. I tried to go an hour or more without washing my hands.

Yes, but was all that of any use?

It was lucky that I was so well-prepared, as Kenya was worse than I could ever have imagined.

I saw a grand total of three miniscule spiders out of the 15 different rooms I slept in!

I was bitten by ants on two separate occasions!

I didn’t see one pirate, Somali or otherwise!
(although Kenya did wig out and declare war on Somalia shortly after our arrival.)

I received four mosquito bites!

I didn’t fall in love with a Maasai!

… These are just 11 examples of why I was an idiot for getting all het up about the potential dangers, because in truth, Kenya wasn’t bad at all. Completely the opposite, in fact.

While I couldn’t always wash my hands with soap and about 50% of the toilets I visited were just holes in the ground, I discovered that I have a large capacity for adaptation. I only had one meltdown at the beginning of the trip when I had to go to the toilet (hole in the ground) in the dark in an empty camping ground. I promise that’s the last time I’ll talk about toilets. Ugh.

The juicy details

I travelled with Jim and our Kenyan friend Lucki. We were joined by Lucki’s wife Claire and son Lemayan the first week, then by Ben, his pastor brother, for the remaining two weeks.

We barely visited Nairobi as it’s not a particularly safe place to be. We had the opportunity to eat in some amazing restaurants there, which seem to cater to the Kenyan middle/upper class, expats and tourists. We enjoyed five-star food and a couple of alcoholic beverages for only 10€ each. That’s not a lot for us, but an impossible price for some, who might only have 100 Kenyan shillings (less than 1€) to spend once a day for food.

The highlight of being in Nairobi was seeing Lucki’s art exhibition at the Banana Hill Art Gallery. What a talent. Here are some examples:

All paintings by Lucki Mutebi. Want to know more/purchase some? Drop me a line at gemma.sidney@gmail.com.

Lucki is the proud owner of a Russian ex-army Jeep. It’s more of a beast than a beauty but was perfect for all the rough roads we encountered. Our first big car journey was from Nairobi to Shimoni, a coastal village south of Mombasa. We didn’t plan to stay in Mombasa as even though it’s a must-see for most visitors to Kenya, we preferred to skip all the crowds. However, we arrived so late that we decided to spend the night in a Mombasa hotel, to freshen up and rest.

The hotel we stayed in was the most expensive of our entire trip at around 75€ between Jim and I for the night. In Kenya, hotels and national parks have different prices for Kenyan citizens (the cheapest), East African residents (cheap) and non-residents (the most expensive). While the difference in prices can sometimes be extreme – 200 Kenyan shillings (less than 2€) versus 2,500 Kenyan shillings (around 20€) – I understand their reasons for doing so. It makes activities more accessible for the local population while earning the country good money from tourism.

The next day we set out for Shimoni, where we met up with another family and friends of ours from France who happened to be in the same area. We planned a boat trip together to snorkel in the Kisite-Mpunguti Marine National Park. I have never snorkeled and am not particularly adventurous when it comes to sports, so this was yet another challenge for me. I panicked when I first went into the water and clung onto the life ring for the first 10 minutes or so. It was hard to get used to the idea of being able to breathe underwater, but when I did, I was off. There was a whole world of fish and coral just metres below me in the water. While it wasn’t as colourful as the underwater life I saw in Jim’s photos after he snorkeled off the coast of Western Australia, I found our expedition beautiful and fascinating. Some of those fish are biiiiiig. Snorkeling is something I will definitely be doing again in Australia.

We spent a couple of days in Shimoni, where we saw many strange monkeys calling to one another in the treetops, took a walk down to the mangroves, giggled at the itsy bitsy baby crabs with only one claw, visited the village, and watched the final of the rugby World Cup (go the All Blacks!). Then it was time to say goodbye to Claire and Lemayan, who had to return home to Uganda.

With Lucki, our next stop was Tsavo West National Park. All the Really Juicy Details of the animals and people we thus encountered will be posted here in the next couple of days…

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