Kenya 1

---

How do you describe a country where its people are as beautiful as its landscape? You hear the children before you can see them. They scream out “jambo” and wave with the most heartfelt and true smiles, jumping up and down. Our arms are sore from waving continuously. Not sure if anyone could ever come to Africa and not fall in love with its people. Their lives are so simple, daily tasks that we would find redundant; sweeping the dirt from around their small mud huts, in there simple community villages. The villages that we have seen so far aren’t deep in poverty, far from it actually, each village has there own community gardens, serving there needs for vegetables, grains and farm goats for meat. The local markets run from sun up till sun down, each family has respect for each other, for what they have and to us they don’t seem to have anything. I think we have lost what life could be like. How simple perhaps it could all be, or how it is meant to be.

Anyway what have we done, what have we seen. Past the luggage misadventure and escaping from the bribing police we enter the hustle and bustle of Nairobi. Two lanes of traffic turns into four, the continuous echoes of car horns intertwined with bicycle bells and children’s laughter. Leaving Nairobi you are quite quickly bumping along on dirt roads weaving in and out through villages heading high into the mountains of mist lakes and off course animals. Who would have thought that on day one, on the same day as stealing my bag from the airport and picking up groceries we would also see monkeys and be camping at a hippo’s watering hole? Yep 11 tents, a big yellow truck and 19 excited little travelers from all over the globe surrounded by an electric fence and covered in deet.

On our first game drive we see giraffe, zebra, and all sorts of deer things flamingoes and more monkeys. In this game park we were able to walk through so this is obviously isn’t lion country. So bizarre to just stroll among giraffe and zebra, this day was topped off by going for a walk in the late afternoon to a small village where we played with children until the sun setting put an end to our fun. I don’t think I can describe the joy that playing with the kids gave to us and them. So simple, so easy.

We stepped beyond the electric fence and went for a boat trip to spot some hippos; they are so much bigger I feel when it’s just you in a small motor boat. Moving camp and adventures we find ourselves game driving in the truck and we start to watch for zebra, wildebeest and flamingoes. We notice a lioness and a cub teasing the dear in general. From here and the next 2 days it gets more and more amazing with monkeys, giraffes with babies, rhinos with babies and as we were heading towards our bush camp we find 2 lions sunning themselves by the road. With that in mind it was quite disconcerting when we set up camp about 1km from them. For this we set up or camp in a semi circle which apparently is meant to look like large rocks and animals won’t try and penetrate the ring, luckily this worked. We did have a buffalo that came a little to close for comfort. I think he thought the same thing and left quite quickly. With an amazing sunrise we bogged the truck in the mighty African red mud. Which caused a few dramas; it’s always good to follow a negative with a positive, which on this particular occasion was to spot a leopard sitting in a tree just beside the road. While I was snapping away at the leopard in the tree, I missed 2 leopards walking across the road in front of the truck…. Who would have thought? We also watched hyena tease flamingoes and swim with them.

---