we are falling a bit behind in our blogging due to both a decrease in the reliability of our internet connections and an increase in our activities and photography. after returning from kakamega and lake nakuru myself, kylie and her mother all promptly got sick. it was a weird sort of illness in that it seemed to affect all systems (yes, even that one) but it would somewhat retreat into the background during my workday, only to reappear with added vigour every evening. after a week of working through it i really thought i had it beat, but saturday morning it hit worse than ever! weird shift related fluctuating course. anyways, this blog post is not supposed to be about african viral patterns; suffice it to say that we were sick but not debilitated, and i seemed to get it the worst. we are mostly recovered now but still tired.
so, due to predictable kenyan bureaucratic slowdowns, my work permit did not come through, which meant that my extended work visa could not be processed, which meant that kylie and i had to make an appearance in nairobi to renew our visas and apply for permanent resident status. sounds sad except that it meant that we HAD to accompany cherri to nairobi to see her off and i HAD to take 4 days off work to allow for the aforementioned bureaucracy to grind along. aaaanyways, this blog post is not supposed to be about our trip to nairobi either, it is supposed to be about our time in lake nakuru (not actually in the lake mind you - schistosomiasis is NASTY). suffice it to say that despite all the awful stories we heard about the most dangerous city in africa, we actually quite enjoyed downtown nairobi. it is very clean and the people are incredibly diverse and quite friendly (some follow you for blocks in an effort to convince you how friendly they are)... man! here i go again; see what i mean about too much stuff happening?
soooo... lake nakuru was pretty amazing. the first night we arrived we were a bit put off by the amount of people and the buffet food and the slightly tawdry false adventure atmosphere of the lion hill sarova safari lodge where we chose to stay with kylie's mom. after a good night's sleep however we were able to put it in perspective and realize that not every place can be rondo retreat with virtual solitude in the jungle and gourmet food for every meal.
then we were further convinced that lake nakuru wasnt actually all that bad by hopping in an open topped minibus with our friendly and surprisingly humourous guide patrick. not only only did we see an incredible diversity of african wildlife but we saw it in enormous volume! i'm talking about the costco of wildlife parks. kylie and i had been on safari in uganda and seen a lot of cool things (and got invaded by army ants) but it was nothing like this! i'm talking about a MILLION flamingoes, hundreds of zebras and gazelles and impalas and water buffaloes, hundreds of baboons, twenty rhinos, fifteen giraffes etc. etc. seriously crazy.
this is me standing on the beach with the flamingoes (this blog is close captioned for the blind who have someone else reading the captions to them)
this is me wondering how on earth one lake could breed this many flamingoes. i know there have already been 3 flamingo pictures, but these guys were seriously crazy. lake nakuru is famous for its huge bird populations and on the beach you could actually feel the sussurations of hundreds of thousands of flamingoes making the odd cooing noise, stepping, feeding, flying etc. it filled the air with a soft throb of audible avian amplitude.
we saw a lot of ostriches up close and they looked grumpy. we decided that they must be pretty jealous of all the other birds that can fly. ostriches just get these useless wings that they cant even pick things up or defend themselves with.
like i said, a huge diversity of wild animals... this one was the one that put a chill in my spine. you wouldnt want to cross her by say, drinking too much of her milkshake, or insinuating that she consistently eats the best bites of your sandwiches.
here is a picture that proves beyond a doubt that baboons are truly evil. these little monsters eat calves and baby impalas! plus they moon unsuspecting bystanders whenever possible.
we saw a herd of giraffes that complacently grazed right beside the vehicle.
this young male lion was only mildly perturbed by our presence and after a while got up, stretched and ambled slowly through the underbrush alongside our vehicle. this is the only good picture i got of him, but i took some nice video as well.
as i mentioned, rhinos all over the place... these guys are huge!
i already put up a picture of this lizard ( i dont remember the name - red headed something) but he was just begging for more. he was totally working the camera, flitting from rock to rock, stopping to stretch his neck against the backdrop of the lake in several different poses.
after our exciting day we cooled down in the hotel pool and had a great talk with the pool attendant michael, a masaii man who can support his entire extended family back in transmara on his salary from sarova. after this picture was taken i took great pleasure in throwing cherri in the pool. michael informed us that in african culture i would be terribly cursed for showing this level of disrespect to my mother in law. cherri was elated. michael was also aghast that i had "acquired" kylie for free. if i was not able to provide her family with 20 cattle then i should have at least bought her a home. note the massage tent in the back left where kylie and i both had the massage of a lifetime in the evening to an aural backdrop of croaking frogs and twirping crickets.
finally, on day 3 in nakuru we left the sarova and moved to a much cheaper hotel in nakuru proper. we spent the afternoon on top of an incredible crater. i am really tired of typing now so i will let this picture say its 1000 words. hopefully we will post about our time in nairobi in the next couple days... we dont have much time, b/c our friend chris is coming in less than a week and after hanging out in kapsowar for a while, we will be off to explore uganda for a few weeks with him! dont worry, i will still be working at the hospital in between all these adventures, so there will still be adequate opportunity for more lovely medical stories.
Everyone here who talks about Nairobi talks about it as the awful dangerous, crime filled place and while I know that Nairobi is not the safest place in the world and that you should not go out at night, I was pleasantly surprised by the infrastructure downtown, all the parks and how clean it was!! Kapsowar is definitely not the cleanest city around with no system of garbage pickup there is garbage all over the town centre that occasionally gets burned. (Which tends to give off the most appealing smells! Last week I also saw some chickens eating some burning garbage, they didn't seem to notice it was hot. hmmmm) Anyways, that long run on sentence was there to inform you that Nairobi (at least downtown) is an extremely clean city. (Even cleaner that Paris!) There are garbage cans everywhere and absolutely no garbage on the street. In the parks there are many LARGE signs saying that if you litter you will immediately be arrested and prosecuted by the town officer. There's some motivation! Here are some pictures of our trip:
A flower in a lily pad pond in a park. There was a pond absolutely FULL of these flowers and there bees in a lot of them.
It's Marc's Driving School! I don't think Marc could teach anyone to drive in downtown Nairobi, it was so crazy! There are traffic lights but no one follows them. On a side note, recently a traffic light was put up in Eldoret (the nearest city to Kapsowar) but it lasted all of one day. Instead of creating order it created absolute havoc because no one knew what to do so now it just hangs lifeless on the main road.
Some very strange orbs on the main floor of our hotel. They look like they used to be lights but now they are there for crazy tourists like Marc to ride.
Oh the joy. Ice cream for the first time in many months, eaten at the Creamy Inn, located next to the Pizza Inn and the Chicken Inn.
On the grounds of the Kenyatta Conference Centre.
