Day 31 - Nairobi, Kenya

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Woke at 7am and read some of my notes on Nairobi until 8am. I tried to have a shower but the water is rationed and it had all been used. I met Albert at reception, who organises trips and spoke to hom about the various things that they offered. I looked to go to the David Sheldrick Orphanage Centre and the Langata Giraffe Centre tomorow with my own driver and car. He also showed me how to get to the Musuem and the Central Buiness District and where I could get a new suitcase from, the bits of town not to go into and hints and tips for Nairobi survival!

Apparently there is a common scam here that a man will come and say Jambo to you and you answer and then this friends, pretending to be policemen, will surround you and say that he is a criminal and that you are suspected of dealing with him. They have fake police cards and say that they want to check your money or travellers cheques. They say that they wil take you to a police station and will take your money (if you are silly enough to give it to them) and say to come back in an hour. Of course they aren't there. It's better to be forewarned about these things, but it did make me jumpy about saying Jambo to people, even if they were innocent!

I set out at about 10am and walked down the Ralph Bunche road onto Valley Road and Kenyatta Avenue. It's mostly shaded by trees but even at this time of the morning it was hot. I turned onto Uhuru highway past the park (which was very green and full of flowers and people relaxing - it was Jamhuri Day, a public holiday). All together the walk was 6.5 km and I arrived at the Museum glad to be inside and in the cool.

The first room was the Hall of Kenya, which contained a sculpture of calabash jars, a collection of the butterflies in Kenya, pinned onto a map of Kenya, some ceremonial dress from some of Kenya's 42 tribes and some fabulous pictures of Kenya. They were in a huge hall that I would have guessed as being a colonial building, which I was later proved correct in the next room which contained a history of the musuem. It started out as the East African Wildlife Society in the 1900s and grew from there. It was very interesting and contained historical exhibits and transcipts of the first meetings. Dr Louis Leakey (from Olduvai Gorge) wasa curator as well as his son Richard.

The hominid call was next, containing an interesting discussion on whether humans are still evolving and comparing a human skeleton to that of a chimp. Another side of the room was devoted to the evolution of humans (homo sapiens) and contained Lucy (skeleton of an early hominid Australopithcine, thats 3.18 million years old). This is thought to be the same species that left the footprints that Mary Leakey discovered in Olduvai Gorge. Australopithecines and Homo habilis (another ealy hominid that was first to use stone tools - found by Louis Leakey) co-existed for a while, but it was from Homo habilis that we were thought to descend from. However a discovery in Java showed that Homo erectus and Homo habilis co-existed and that the Homo erectus man left Africa and formed colnies of four distint types (including Neaderthals and Homo sapiens). Homo sapiens somehow displaced the others and begin to show in the fossil record in Israel from 100,000 yearsago. These are modern humans. Of course this is all theory and my take on what I understood, so I could have got it wrong! But as you can probably tell I found it absorbing! It was fascinating to see the actual skulls that have formed these theories and it is like looking directly into the face of history.

Next it was the mammal gallery, which described the characteristics of mammals from food, weaponry, ways of moving to evolution. I finally saw a pangolin, albeit a stuffed one and it was much bigger than I had expected - about 1.5 meters long! I also saw a stuffed aardvark (cute), so in a way I did get to see what I had wanted. Also there was an elephant shre which was guinea pig sized - I was expecting something the size of a mouse!

In the centre was the skeleton of a huge elephant called Abid (I think) that has such huge tusks (2.5m long which brushed the ground) that he was guarded when alive 24 hours a day in the wild by two rangers, the only animal ever to have such treatment. He came from a part of Africa known for big tusks and it was thought that his might be the biggest. As it turnd out they werent but his huge skeleton is on display, clearly showing his tusks, broken 9th left rib (a bad fall) and broken tow on his left foot. He did die of old age, not by poachers. It's quite a touching story really!

Next was a gallery containing hundreds of stuffed birds, which I browsed trying to find some birds which I couldn't identify in the bush (including a shrike) and one's which has eluded me (sunbirds). Some looked a little tatty around the edges and it was a shame to think that they were all caught for this purpose, sat stiffly in "lifelike" poses staring forever with glassy eyes.

On the first floor was an exhibition on cave painting and rock art, which was very wordy, so I just looked at the pictures, a series pf photograhs on Kenya's wildlife and 24 hours of Nairobi life. The best exhibition was the Cycle of Life, showing birthm childhood, adolescence, adulthood, old age and death in various different cultures from traditional to modern. It was very well laid out and though about.

Aferwards I went to the shop and purchased a K'Swahili phrasebook and as I was peckish, to a coffee shop where I had a fruit juice, chicken strips and a hot fudge sundae! Delicious or "ilikuwa tamu" in K'Swahili. After a good rest I walked to the CBD (central business district) to go to the city market. Unfortunately because of Jamhuri Day it was closed, but I had a wander and found the Nairobi Cathedral - Basilica of the Holy Family. It was very concrete but had a lovely modern stone glass window (about 40m high) that somehow twinkled in the sunshine. A separate chapel contained the Blessed Sacrement for Adoration. A sign reminded people not to fall asleep, which I found amusing, as if you were asleep you couldn't be reminded by the sign!

I walked back near the Parliament Buildings and saw the mausoleum of Jomo Kenyatta - Kenya's first president. From the musuem to the hostel was 9.5km, so when I arrived and found a Java coffee shop just across from the hostel, I couldn't resist. I had an iced tea and tried out some K'Swahili on the staff, who have made it their mission to teach me!

I did my washing on the rooftop later on and hung it to dry in the cool breeze. I wrote my diary for a bit and went for dinner at a Chinese restaurant just around the corner. My sweet and sour pork was great, the whole meal being 660 bob (or 5 pounds). When I came back I went on the internet to update my blog and then bed. Slept very soundly, depite my nocturnal roommate!

Sally
xxx

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