to the Great Rift Valley and beyond to Emori Joi

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August 5th, 2008

Jambo! Today we left Rosslyn and headed south from Nairobi toward the Great Rift Valley, Narok and the Masai Mara. The paved busy roads of Nairobi soon became dirt roads. Everyone we passed on the side of the road souted out greetings of Jambo! Some of the Maasai people we passed were in traditional dress with beautiful clothes and blankets as well as beaded jewellery and others were in clothes similar to what we wear. The children were dressed in their school uniforms, usually with coloured dress shirts, sweaters and sandals or bare feet. We saws lots of herds of cows, goats and sheep also all along the side of the road.

As we drove along, I couldn't help but feel that we were like a travelling zoo. We were the ones being watched by people on the road in the same way that we were checking out the people on the road. As we continued to head south we saw some impala, and sadly a few dead zebra. The excitement of the journey was at full force however when I shouted out "Oh my God! there are 4 giraffes!" These were awesome maasai giraffes with non-geometric sports. What a highlight that was to see the giraffes in the wild! We snapped photos as keepsakes and headed on our way.

As we drove along we passed through the Great Rift Valley- the cradle of civilization, that in fact stretches over 6,000km from Turkey, south to Israel and then south to South Africa while also travelling out through Kenya to Tanzania and out to the Indian Ocean. This area is where some of the world's oldest archaeological finds have been located--like the famous Luacy--homo erectus (small-like skeleton with human and ape characteristics, found a few years ago).

The rift valley we now see was called by a split in tectonic plates and it is now a huge, expansive valley with yellow soil, many acacia trees and ressembles a canyon of sorts. We got some beautiful photographs of the landscape there. You can also see Mt. Longonot, which is a volcano that we are going to climb later on in the trip. Where we stopped at the look out point we were at 2,140m in altitude. Incredible.

We stopped at the souvenir handicraft shop that had a beautiful display of East African masks, batik, chess sets, bracelets and other jewellery and such. Each of has a salesperson following us around. Having bargained in other parts of the world I figured it would be a bit challenging--it is amazing to me how observant the salespeople are--they almost instinctively knew what we were looking for. I had seen a few masks that I liked and they said that they would give us a fair deal. I recognized that the salesperson was doing a good job encouraging me to buy, i realized that I didn't want to spend all my money in one place. I almost walked away with nothing as we couldn't settle on a price. The man kept going back and forth to his boss to see if a deal could be settled. I finally walked away and just as our bus was leaving, he came after me and we settled on a deal for a beautiful handcarved giraffe mask and a yellow, orange and green batik of people in a market place. We were both happy in the end --me with my purchases and he with his sale!

We continued again on our 9 hour or so journey and saw many more zebras and impalas. We had a roadside stop for lunch and ate some delicious samosas, mandazi-African fried bread and fresh fruit. While we were eating we saw two kids running toward us-we greeted them yelling Jambo. One of them was about 6 or so and the other 11. Santai offered them all some mandazi food.

Meanwhile back on the lorry we taught ourselves some swahili including the words to head and shoulders , knees and toes that we needed to know for our teaching. It goes like this-kichwa, bega, goti, mguu... macho, sikio, mdomo, pua. We played humzinger and kept watch out for animals.

Other highlights of the journey include: a corn storm in the field, many children running alongside our lorry to try and outrun it, beautiful maasai clothing hanging from the clotheslines, donkeys carrying water and some of the mamas carrying 20l of water on their heads or with cloth around their foreheads.

We arrived at the centre at Emori Joi after quite a bumpy road in. The centre is like an oasis in the middle of nowhere--just on the periphery of the Emori Joi community. There is a huge kijiji dining hall with a fireplace, long tables, great benches with cushions. We were welcomed with chai tea and Adam introduced us to our food server whose name is Richard- we came to love Richard very much while we were there. We were shown to our accommodation which were large canvas tents with bunkbeds and cement floors on raise platforms and equipped with mosquito nets for sleeping at night. I am staying with Jess, Marcia, Dianne and Janice in the Twiga tent.

We had a wonderful welcome meal and then settled off to bed. Our tent soon became known as the Starlight Nightclub because in the middle of the night, all five of us had to visit the facilities and were initially afraid of going alone; but when we were out in the middle of the night, the stars were spectacular. I wished I had had a star map of the southern hemisphere. It felt like we were in a planetarium.

So ends our journey to get to Emori Joi... Many more stories to tell.

Ninakupenda.

love Katy

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