Kenya – part 4

Wow! I can’t believe it has been over three weeks since I last wrote. The time just seems to fly by on this end so it always amazes me when I go in to do a post that so much time has gone by since the last one.

I am currently in Nairobi again – waiting for the next travel plans to come together hopefully for Madagascar, Mauritius, Seychelles and South Africa. That should take me up to the end of April.

In the last few weeks I have done a safari to Tanzania and the Serengeti, which I will write about as soon as I get this one done. I also did a trip to Western Kenya, which I’ll hopefully cover here, and of course I had a few more days in Nairobi between each of those. It seems to be a requirement that one spends time in Nairobi because everything takes so long to organize. The one group I have been working with just asked me to stay until the 14th or 15th so they could finish arrangements for the next portion of the trip. I finally said, no, I’ll do the arrangements some other way and leave on the 9th. I’ve already been in Kenya and Tanzania for about six weeks and every minute has been darn expensive. I figure it’s like four months worth of my budget so if anyone has any extra money around that they’d like to invest in the rest of my travel year, please just let me know. Any donations from my millionaire friends and family members would be greatly appreciated.

Western Kenya was yet another distinctly different part of Kenya. There are no major parks or herds of animals there but it is beautiful as it is, which is mainly an agricultural area. I was with Vintage Africa again and Jeff, who is from the Western Province, was once again my guide. That meant that I had some special visits to homes and farms included in my tour and that was also interesting.

We left early on February 28th and drove from Nairobi straight through to Kericho with only one quick stop in Nakuru. The highways were very rough in spots but very good in other spots and the scenery was beautiful. The Rift Valley was green and nice but the closer you got to Kericho, the more lush and green it became.

Kericho is at about 7,000 feet in elevation so has a wonderful climate that is not too hot in the day and is cool in the evenings. That was a real treat. The main crop in Kericho is tea and there are a lot of large tea estates along the countryside. I don’t think I’ve ever seen tea fields before so that on its own was interesting. The plants are about four feet high and laid out in perfectly straight rows. The tops of some of the plants had small, new leaves that were a bright, light green in colour. These are the tea leaves that get picked to make the best teas and there were people out in the fields working hard picking these delicate leaves.

The fields are on the sides of the rolling hills that seemed to stretch forever and created beautiful valleys as far as the eye could see. In some of the areas there were rows and rows of small white homes that were neatly lined up. These were the workers’ homes and there were hundreds of them in the area so the tea industry is definitely a big employer and contributor to the economy. We didn’t tour any of the tea factories or the actual estates but there is certainly a booming business around just the tea itself.

Kericho is a city of less than a million people and it is supposedly one of the best places to live in the Kenya. There are 4 and 5 storey buildings along the streets, mainly the banks and shopping centres. There are also lots of smaller shops and vendors on the streets. All along the roads, there are people selling delicious looking fresh vegetables which are all grown in the area – carrots, potatoes, peas, tomatoes, etc. The area is always green and the land is very fertile so I’m sure they can get several crops per year with some vegetables. There are also very beautiful high trees, many with colourful flowers. I particularly liked the mauve or purple or pink flowers (or whatever colour they were) of the jacaranda trees.

The Kericho Tea Hotel was small but nice. The rooms are either in two-storey buildings or in individual cottages and the tea fields are all around the complex. We had a late lunch at the hotel and in the afternoon walked around the estate and just enjoyed the scenery and birds. Dinner was also at the hotel, as was breakfast the next day.

The next day we left Kericho and drove to Kisumu on the shores of Lake Victoria. It was another bumpy and rough highway but still interesting scenery. We were going down almost all the time and quickly left the lush green hillsides and tea fields for flatter land and sugar cane and banana plantations. The area was definitely not as lush but it was still beautiful and definitely still agriculturally productive. As we got closer to Lake Victoria there were also rice paddies, which is something else I haven’t seen often.

We stopped at the Museum on our way into town. It had many facets and varied from live snakes and turtles to models and displays of the area’s development from the animal and human perspective to a life-size homestead that displayed the life of the Luo people. All of it was interesting and it was easy to see why the place was bustling with school students. It was a great learning environment for a school trip. It would have been better of course if the power had been on so we could have seen some of the exhibits more clearly.

The Sunset Hotel was on the shore of Lake Victoria but it was some distance from the shore. Lunch and dinner and breakfast were at the hotel so all meals were there. The power was out for some time in the evening so I had the experience of a very short cold and dark shower before dinner, something I have never experienced before.

In the afternoon we toured around the lakeshore and the town and went to Dunga Point or Hippo Point for a visit but there were no hippos in sight. Lake Victoria is the second largest fresh water lake in the world, second only to Lake Superior so that will give you an idea of its size. It is the boundary of Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania and Kenya has only about 6 % of the lake within its boundary. From the hotel room I could look over the treetops and see the lake and it certainly looked big even though the portion I saw was just a very small part of it.

The town tour was very interesting. Kisumu seems to be stretched along the shore of the lake and yet there is very little of the town that is actually on the lake. And the parts that are there are definitely not the new or modern parts of the town. I kept making Jeff turn down streets towards the lake but they never really went anywhere and I never really did fine a sandy beach or nice park lakeshore although some supposedly exist.

Despite the fact that there is a big lake right there, Kisumu has a water problem. There were carts for carrying containers of water. They looked like very heavy loads but individuals were pushing or pulling them everywhere. Also everywhere you looked were boda boda or bicycle taxis. There were hundreds and maybe even thousands of them and they were very busy. Over the back wheel of a simple old bicycle they have a padded seat. The “driver” rides the bike normally and takes passengers behind him on the padded seat. I saw all kinds of people riding these boda bodas: business men and women all dressed in their good office wear, casual people in all kinds of attire, children of all ages in their school uniforms, mothers and babies or young children, etc. It is definitely a popular mode of transportation for the young and the old and it certainly seems to work. Maybe we should try it to alleviate some of our traffic problems and pollution.

They also have matatus and I’m not sure if I have commented on those yet. They are the equivalent of our buses but they are really vans and they have both a driver and a conductor. The conductors job, as far as I can tell, is to collect the money, yell and holler at every stop to get customers, push and shove yet another person in if needed, and pack away any luggage. These matatus are everywhere and in some places there are dozens of them lined up and hundreds of people waiting for them. Supposedly the name comes from the fact that there is always room for one more, no problem or hakuna matata, which then became matatus. At least I think that’s the story.

As we were driving along at one point there was a very bitter smell. That apparently is busaa, the local beer that the locals think is a real delicacy. Luckily no one offered me any because it certainly didn’t smell very good to me. In former days and probably even now in some areas, everyone sat in a circle around one big vat or container of this beer and they all had long straws that appeared to be made from reeds, and they drank the evening away. And if you wanted out of the circle for any reason, you had to crawl under the straws until you got to a break in the circle. You weren’t allowed to disturb the straws.

Anyway, back to the city of Kisumu. It is a large city and it has some multi-storey buildings but most of the streets are lined with small buildings and shops. There are also large market areas with smaller stalls that sell everything. On several occasions on this trip I saw coffins sitting outside for sale. I don’t think I saw that anywhere else in Kenya so it must be just a Western Kenya thing. They were very nice looking coffins but they looked very out of place outside amongst the fruits and vegetables and clothes and charcoal and furniture and whatever else was being sold. Their coffins also appear to be much smaller than ours, especially in depth. Either Kenyan’s aren’t as big as we are or they just don’t figure they need as much space in their coffins.

We were up early the next morning and went for a sunrise eco-tourism boat ride on Lake Victoria. It was a beautiful calm morning and Titus, our guide, was very informative with all his information. We saw lots of birds and flowers as the two guys up front paddled along. We even saw a huge lizard up in one of the trees and also the hippos for which Hippo Point is named. They were already out in the water enjoying themselves so we didn’t get too close in our little boat.

We were lucky when we were there because the water hyacinths that are taking over the lake had been blown out to the centre of the lake by the recent winds. Apparently at times the whole bay is covered and motorboats can’t even get out into the water. Needless to say, that’s a bit of a problem in a fishing town so they are seriously trying to get rid of these unwanted but very pretty weeds.

Our one-hour boat ride turned into more than two so we rushed back to the hotel so we could get breakfast before it finished and then started our trek to Kakamega. Just outside of Kakamega we saw the Weeping Stone, which is very impressive even from the road. It is a huge boulder with a smaller boulder on top and water comes out between the two, which makes it look like it’s weeping. And at times when the wind is blowing in the right direction you can apparently hear a sound like weeping and there are lots of tribal stories about the real nature of the stone and the weeping.

The only hotel in the area that is fit for tourists is the Kakamega Golf Hotel so that’s where I was staying. After lunch at the hotel we went on a drive to the Kakamega Forest and then went for a couple of hikes in the forest. The first was up to the viewpoint and it was quite a climb so the young guide had to wait a while for me to catch up with her. The view was spectacular and her talk was interesting, although I don’t remember much of it now. I do know that Kakamega is the only lowland tropical forest in Kenya and it has totally indigenous plants and animals, except for some Cedar trees that were planted in a rocky area to try and break up the rocks faster so the grass would grow in that area. Some of the plants and animals within the park are found nowhere else in the country and maybe the world. The only exciting animals that appeared while we were there were the black and white Colobus monkeys but they were moving too quickly for me to even see let alone get a picture of. It was a really good walk and very interesting.

Dinner was at the hotel as was breakfast the next morning. I had a rough night and spent a fair amount of time in the bathroom but I’ll spare you any other details. In the morning I really wasn’t looking forward to the drive to Kitale. However, I survived. We took a few side trips as Jeff had to show me where he went to school and college and where relatives live and other such highlights along the way.

At one point we stopped at Jeff’s aunts place but she was not in. She is a nurse and it was interesting to see her home, which looked like a traditional mud and stick brick house. She had vegetable gardens around the yard and an outdoor bathroom off to one side. Running water is not very common in the area so indoor plumbing is not common.

We went through Mumias, which has the Mumias sugar refinery as its main industry. We stopped in Bungoma for a break and there were six guys sitting in the hotel bar playing what I assumed were traditional percussion and string instruments, and at times singing. They were really good and it was interesting to hear the sounds the instruments made.

At one point we drove past a warehouse and there was a big truck backed up almost to the door. There was a ramp going from the ground to the truck and a solid line of men carrying heavy bundles from the warehouse, up the ramp and into the truck. It was quite impressive to see as they did work quickly and immediately went running back for another load after dumping their current loads. I don’t think we could have done it any faster with a forklift so the human factor worked just fine in this case.

The Golf Hotel in Kitale was very nice and the golf course also looked quite nice. I spent the first afternoon and evening in bed resting and felt much better the next day. After breakfast we drove to Saiwa Swamp and did a hike around the park to try and find a Sitatunga, the animal that Jeff’s van is named after. However, the illusive little antelope was not to be seen. There were many birds and some Colobus monkeys along the way and the walk itself was really nice.

We had lunch at Jeff’s sisters place or, as he refers to them, Lady Rose and Lord Anthony’s house. The home used to belong to Lord Hawkins from Britain and Rose and Anthony now own it so they automatically gained the nicknames of Lord and Lady. It is a really large house and has a lot of smaller buildings around it. It is old and definitely in need of a paint job and some sprucing up but it’s very nice. It is so big that they don’t use all the rooms in it and some of them just sit empty. We ate in the living room which has comfortable sofa and chair seating for about eight people in a circle around two large low tables. They have no electricity yet but the TV is at the open end of the seating and is run by three large batteries. One of the cell phone companies wants to put a tower on the property next year so the deal will include an annual payment and connection to electricity, which they are really looking forward to.

The lunch was delicious. There was chicken, rice, potatoes, sukuma wiki and ugali. The last two are hard to describe but I’ll try. The sukumu wiki is a vegetable much like spinach and it, or a variation of it, is eaten with almost every meal. The name means pushing a week or something close to that, which means holding on until pay day. The stuff is very cheap and people often have to live on just it, instead of meat, as money runs out near the end of the month. The ugali looks kind of like very stiff mashed potatoes but it’s more of a cake consistency. It is also available at almost every meal and it is used to eat your other food with your fingers. Most people, including some in Nairobi, do not use a knife and fork at home. They eat with their fingers and this thick ugali helps the process. Consider it like a piece of bread that you use to pick up your vegetables or stew and you’ll get the idea. In the western provinces particularly they eat a lot of chicken and fish so the meat is very easy to eat with your fingers. Other meats are cut into small pieces before they are cooked and served so that is easy to pick up too. Fruit and vegetables are no problem and they seldom have soups so that’s not a problem.

When you arrive at a resort in Kenya they greet you at the front desk with a hot wet towel so you can wipe off the dust and dirt you accumulated on the road. At restaurants they often also bring you such a towel to wipe your hands. Even in the restaurant at the Hilton in Nairobi they bring you a towel. I am almost always eating by the time they get it to me but it’s the thought that counts, right? Anyway, in the west where the eating habits and the food are quite different a towel is not enough. They bring a big bowl and pitcher and soap to the table and you wash your hands in the basin with the soap provided and then they pour the water from the jug over your hands for the rinse. It’s really a very civilized practice and I quite enjoyed it. I forgot to ask Jeff if this is also done in all homes at meal times but Lady Rose certainly did it for us at our luncheon.

Now I can imagine some of you shaking your heads as you read this and wondering about how these people can possibly survive while eating with their fingers. I have to tell you that at the one restaurant there was a conference going on and the place was packed with businessmen and women in their business attire. As I looked around the room I realized that very few of them were using cutlery. They were all eating with their fingers and their eating was very civilized and polite and probably better than much of what I see in Canada. The ugali along with the diet of fish and chicken make it very easy to survive without the utensils and it really didn’t seem strange at all. I’m not sure I would have even noticed the people weren’t using utensils if it hadn’t been pointed out to me.

Okay, that was sure a long passage coming from Lady Rose’s delicious lunch. Oh, I should say that dessert was a banana and it was wonderful. Did you know there is such a thing as a red banana? Did you know you could have red oranges? This traveling is challenging everything I took as a given including the fact that bananas are yellow and oranges are orange! Our education is sorely lacking, my friends.

After lunch and a tour around the farm which includes bananas, vegetables, goats, cows, chickens, corn and other crops that I can’t now remember, we went over to Jeff’s family homestead where his Mom and Dad still live. His Mom was in Nairobi at the time so I only met his Dad and brother Eric and we had a long talk and Coke in the family living room. His Dad is 70 and was a career cop before retiring to the farm. He is very well read and easily talks about any subject from the economy and politics of Kenya to the African Union to world politics and education. And, just in case you’re wondering, every one speaks very good English. They speak it with a British accent so at times I find them hard to understand and they certainly found me hard to understand as well.

The family homestead has one main house where the parents live and several smaller homes that were the boys after they grew up. These are now used by the boys when they come home to visit. The main house is quite big and the living room area where we were sitting is certainly bigger than any living room I have ever had. There must have been enough seats around the outside to sit 16 people comfortably and that was just at one end of this big room. There were a number of other rooms that I didn’t see including the kitchen, bedrooms and bathroom, the latter used only at night or in emergencies. The outhouse takes most business. The house was again old and not modern by our standards but it was very cool and comfortable. And it really was a huge living room area where 30 or 40 people could have gathered quite easily.

Instead of taking wine or flowers or other such gifts when going to visit people in the country or on farms, you normally take money. They survive quite well on the farms but they always have a shortage of cash so the custom is to take small gifts of money when you visit. I thought Jeff was kidding at first when he suggested I give them some money but it made sense later when I compared it to a host gift which we would give and 1000 shillings is around $20 so the amount was pretty similar.

The farm is about 30 acres and their main crop is maize. They also have some cows and goats and chickens. They did have 50 acres but traded about 20 acres for a tractor which they now use themselves and rent out to others. The countryside is very fertile and green and the Cherangani hills in the background add a beautiful horizon to the setting. Eric now has a house just down the road from the main house and still works the farm with his dad.

I’ve said nothing about Kitale itself because I don't actually remember much about it, which is sad since it's Jeff's home town and he probably told me a lot about it. It has a population of about 600,000 and is considered the grainery of the country with the main focus being maize, beans and dairy products. It has some wide streets with boulevards and the streets are paved and there are sidewalks. There are many 5-6 storey buildings and a lot of smaller buildings as well, and of course there are the usual market stalls. And that is all I can remember.

Dinner that night was at the hotel as was breakfast the next day, and then we were on our way back to Nairobi on some of the roughest roads I have yet encountered in Kenya. They were awful but under repair so there is hope. We left at 8 a.m. and thought we’d be back in Nairobi by 3 p.m. Because of the roads and the traffic once we got to Nairobi it was after 6 p.m. when I got to the hotel. It was a very long, hot, bumpy, dusty day!

During the day we went through the Northern Rift Valley again and it was very green and beautiful. We also went through Eldoret, which is one of the larger towns in the area. It looked like a more modern town with several high rises of up to 12 storeys, many modern buildings and some industry. Of course there were also many small businesses and shops and local markets. The main streets had paved sidewalks so that was definitely nice to cut down on the dust. Moi University had modern-looking buildings and there was a local hospital. It definitely helps if you have the president of the country living in your area for a while. Politics doesn’t change much no matter what country you are in!

Well, I think that is just about it for Kenya and after four long postings, you are probably glad of that. Okay, I just reread this and I thought of something else. The Luo tribe that lives around Lake Victoria is one of the richest in Kenya. They live in very fertile land so make their living mainly from agriculture and fishing. They are also some of the brightest people in Kenya and many of the country's scientists and doctors come from the area. The reason for their genius is apparently not their great schooling but rather their eating habits. All of the fish they eat make them smart, and I should rewrite that to say they eat all of the fish. I've heard several different versions of the story so I'll just give them all to you. They eat the whole fish and it is the fish head, which most of us don't eat, that makes them so smart. Some thought eating it cooked did the trick while others thought you had to eat it raw. And yet others thought it had to be the pregnant mother who ate the fish head and then the baby's brain would be more advanced. Whatever it is, they seem to have a lot of smart people from the area. And no, just in case you're wondering, I did not eat and fish heads while there.

Jeff is not a Luo but a Luhya of the Bantu tribe but he's pretty smart too, especially when it comes to Kenya's parks and animals and birds and trees and ....... Of course some of you would say that he could likely tell us tourists anything and we wouldn't know the difference, which indeed might be true at times. However, I know he's smart because I had the pleasure of torturing him with hundreds of question on this western trip. He had an exam scheduled for the day after we returned and he had his books with him to study. One of them had about a thousand multiple choice questions in it and I confess that the teacher in me took over. We didn't get through the whole book but we did about 600 of the questions and it certainly helped me pass the time on the long drives. I know Jeff appreciated the review but I'm also sure that he was ready to throw both me and the book out of the van at times. However, it paid off and he let me know that he passed the exam with distinction so now has his bronze level certification as a safari guide. This is some new certification system that has just been introduced and in three years he gets to try for the silver and then three years later for the gold. It helps ensure the guides are all qualified and current and, assuming they pass the exams, I think there is more pay in it for them so everyone benefits.

So what else can I say? I haven’t told you any more Swahili words this time because it's just getting too complicated. They use a lot of Ms and Ks and Ws and Vs at the start of their words and these indicate singular or plural and masculine or feminine so it gets very confusing. Just when you think you know that a toilet is a "choo", you find out that toilets are "vyoo" so you have to keep looking for two different words! And they combine words too. For example, their one word "nimekisoma" means "I have read it". It's all too confusing for me.

Okay, that's enough. I have now been in Kenya for over 6 weeks, which is much longer than I planned to be here. And yet I have enjoyed every minute, except for the cost. The country is beautiful and the animals are fascinating and while I've always said I wanted to go to Africa, I now know that what I really meant was I wanted to go to Kenya. I think I'll end this blog with a couple of quotes from our safari book which sum it up well.

"Kenya, is without doubt, a stunningly beautiful country. From the bleached sands of the eastern coast lapped by the aquamarine waters of the Indian Ocean to the primitive aridity of little-visited Turkana, Kenya offers a wonderful variety of landscape, a people that are utterly charming and friendly, a rich and fascinating culture and, of course, fabulous wildlife."

"The picture many have of Africa, that of golden savannah dotted with game and studded with flat-topped umbrella acacias is actually the landscape of Kenya. It has featured in so many Hollywood movies and wildlife films that it is embedded in our psyches as the real Africa. This is the land of the classic safari and luxurious lodges, the land of wide blue skies and the land of enchantment."

So as you can probably tell, I am enchanted by Kenya. I've seen about 80% of the country and it is all beautiful. I'm sad to be leaving but happy to be moving on to new exciting places - and my bank account is very happy I'm moving on!

That's all for now. Tanzania and Egypt are both almost ready to go. If I find a good internet cafe in one of my beach resorts where I don't have a hectic touring schedule for a couple of days, I'll hopefully get them both posted.

Bye or kwaheri, as they say in Swahili.

Jayne