Safari, Part 2 and A Camel

The second day of the safari, last Saturday, we went out about 8 in the morning and stayed out on the game reserve until about 3:30. It was really awesome to spend the whole day out there. Everything was so beautiful out there. We got to see a lot of the same things that we did the first day, especially the zebras and wildebeests. We also got to see some more giraffes and elephants, some hyenas and warthogs (Pumba!). The best part of the day was when we found our first lions, a male and a female. It happens to be mating season for them, so we actually got to see them mate. We were all a little shocked to see that. They were so beautiful though, even though we didn’t get very close to them. We also caught a glimpse of a lioness hunting, but she went away from us as soon as the vans started getting close so we couldn’t watch for very long. We also saw a cheetah, which was really awesome. Again, we couldn’t get very close. We also found vultures, some more deer, and a rhino! It is apparently very, very rare to find a rhino, but Jenna ended up spotting one. The only animal of the Big 5 (rhino, lion, water buffalo, elephant and leopard) that we didn’t see was the leopard. It is also very rare to see leopards so we didn’t feel too bad about missing out on that. At one point, our van ended up getting stuck in the mud in the bottom of a crick. It was quite the ordeal to try and get it unstuck.

That afternoon after we got back from the park, we went into a Maasai village. This was really shocking to see. There were about 15 homes, set in a circle, with a fence around it. Every night, they bring their cows and goats home from grazing and put them in the middle of the circle so that they can protect them. The men take turns patrolling around the fence, watching for wild animals mostly. The homes were made of cow dung, mud, grass, and sticks. Each woman is required to make her own house and it usually takes about 4 months for them to do that. They took us into their homes and showed us how they live. They keep their baby animals inside the house. They also talked to us about how they live. They are polygamists and each man has about 4 wives. The men still have to pay to marry a girl and they pay about 10 cows. However, if they can jump the highest or if they kill a lion, they only have to pay 5 cows. Each age group of men has to kill one lion. It’s really strange. Also, jumping is a big thing to them, which I don’t understand. They also jumped and danced for us and sang songs in their language. The boys joined in with the men’s dance and the girls joined in the women’s dance. The boy’s dance was a lot harder than ours. They were both songs of welcome. It was shocking to hear how they live. They are nomadic people and move about every 9 years, because that is the longest that the houses will stand.

After we left the village, we just went back to the camp, ate, and went to bed early. We woke up about 5:30 the next morning because we wanted to get out to the park to watch the sunrise. It was very, very beautiful to watch the sunrise. I unfortunately couldn’t get very good pictures of it. We were trying to take pictures and then our driver told us we had to hurry because we had to get to the lions. We quickly sat back down and sped off. We got to the place where the lion was and pulled into the circle of vans around this lion. It was absolutely shocking how close the lioness was to us. She was probably 15 feet away from our van, eating a wildebeest. It was amazing how comfortable she was with the amount of people that were around. She just ignored us and did her own thing. We watched that for a long time and then just spent a lot of time driving around the park, looking for leopards or other animals and enjoying the views. We left the reserve at about 8:30 am and spent an hour at the camp getting breakfast and our stuff packed up. Then we were on the road again, that terrible awful road. Our driver then informed us that we had to lie for him and say that we had only been at Maasai Mara for 1 night so that he didn’t get in trouble and fined for driving on the grass when we found the rhino. It was actually a little frightening when we got questioned by some officials, but they were nice and apparently believed us so everything worked out fine. They take the grass on those game reserves very seriously. We got back to Nairobi around 3.

That night in Nairobi, we decided to go out to a restaurant called Carnivore. It was a very expensive, nice restaurant that is famous for what they do. We had a flag in the middle of our table and as soon as we sat down they started serving us every kind of meat that is legal to eat. We had pork ribs, ostrich meatballs, just ostrich meat, crocodile meat, ox testicles, frog legs, grilled chicken, just pork meat, beef meat, pork sausages, just turkey, and prime rib. When I say “just __ meat” that means that they had a giant slab of meat skewered on a sword that they set on your place and sawed you off a piece of the meat with a giant knife. It was really awesome and so filling! Everything was delicious and it was so hard to give up and stop eating. They literally kept bringing you meat until you surrendered and put the flag in the middle of the table down. Needless to say, we were all miserable when that was over. We just went back to the hostel and hung out again that night. We ended up really liking that place, which is funny because we were so appalled when we first saw it.

Just a side note, none of us ever has any idea what day it is here because time seems to pass so differently. Our weeks blend with our weekends and none of us can believe that we have been here over two weeks and that our trip will be over soon. That fact really hit us on the bus ride home when we were trying to plan our week so that we can get everything done that we want to. I’m going to be really sad to leave Kenya, especially knowing that I may not ever make it back here. However, I’m also pretty homesick at this point, and I am excited to be back home. I miss a lot of things that I really took for granted in the US. I also am missing everyone there an awful lot. Those are two very conflicting emotions that I am trying to deal with at this point.

The next morning, Monday, we again loaded onto a bus and spent 8 horrible hours driving back to Mombasa. This was especially horrible for me because I really didn’t feel good on Monday. We got back to the compound at about 6:30 last night and went to Café Mocha to use the free wifi. On our way there, we were very confused because there were at least 5 times as many people out as there usually is after dark. We asked our driver and he told us that Sunday was the last day of Ramadon, the Muslim holy month, and so almost every Muslim was out last night celebrating. It was pretty to see them all out and dressed up because most of the women had sparkles or shimmery outfits on (I’m not sure what their tradition dress is called, but that is what they were in).

So finally, today. Today at the hospital Angie, Jenna, Megan and I went to the Maternity ward right away because we hadn’t really been there yet. When we first got there, we walked around with the doctors checking on the women who were in labor and who had just given birth. One women has PPH (post partum hemorrhaging) and had to be taken up to surgery. Another woman was anemic when she had given birth and so was just getting blood until her hemoglobin counts were back up to normal. The last woman in the ward was in labor. She was dilated to 8 cm when we got there. She was an HIV positive mother and so they were taking extra precautions with the birth. We got to watch her deliver (slightly disturbing, I’m glad it will be awhile until I have to go through that myself) and they took a lot of care not to get any of the mother’s blood on the baby. It was a healthy boy! They will do an HIV test at 3 weeks to test if the baby is HIV positive or negative. That part of being in the maternity ward was pretty cool. However, I was also very sad and disturbed to be there because in the room where the babies go after they are born, there were just two dead babies, wrapped in totally in cloth with tape on the cloth with the babies’ information on them. It was so absolutely terrible to see that they just leave those babies in there, on a shelf, for however long. The two babies there today had died yesterday morning. It almost made me sick to see that. Anyways, after that we went to Minor and did some dressing changes. Nothing too exciting happened there. I also went into Casualty and followed along with a doctor there. He let me do some physical examinations and try to diagnose people. It was really cool to be put in that situation. I didn’t really know much, but he helped me along.

After the hospital, we spent the afternoon on the beach. It was a really nice day and the beach was beautiful. I am hopeful that I am at least as tan as I started out here, but I don’t think I’m any darker. It’s funny to me that I am even writing that, as it is such an unimportant fact to anyone who is reading this. Anyways, it was a very relaxing afternoon.

Oh, and I rode a camel. Fun fact. It was awesome!! Now I can cross that off of my bucket list. J

Tonight, we went and hung out at Cafesserie, another café that we like to spend our evenings at. It also has free wifi, which seems to be a must for us.

That’s all for now. Have a good night!