Advertisement
Published: February 28th 2007
Edit Blog Post
Samburu village
Only the men here are allowed to play mancala, and they have to be warriors or something. I was still pissed that I had to pay $20 to see them. Day 4 (continued)
Samburu
It was back on the road again this time to check out the Samburu people. I don’t remember being told that it would cost us $20 to see the Samburu sing and dance. I thought it was shitty that we had to pay to visit a village, but these people live so remote how else are they gonna make money. Mind you my ass was traveling broke, and the only money I had on me was to buy me beers and snacks along the way.
Later we were told that there reserve, or the zoo that they live in is owned by the government. And when we pay the park entrance fee it goes to fixing the roads and setting up a main street. So the tribe doesn’t really get a cut except for what they charge us.
Then the chiefs’ son came over to collect the cash and give us a brief history about their people and its warriors. And that’s where we learned that only the warrior men can play mancala and that the higher they jump the higher their ranking. The women do all the work while the men
Dancing, Dancing, Dancing
I really didnt want to dance, and I was taking pictures of others when a girl came and put a necklace on me, and I was like no, no, no. Next thing you know I was being dragged to dance with them. protect the land and their herds.
The men then start to jump and of course everyone pulls out there cameras, then it’s the women’s turn and they do a song and dance and try to get everyone to participate. Somehow I was dragged out to participate in the tourist song and dance when I got a necklace put around me. It was fucken hilarious though watching a bunch of while folks with no rhythm trying to dance.
Afterward they took us around the village to check out their homes and it was sad, because some of the people in our group were fucken idiots. They didn’t want to go inside the huts cuz they were made of shit, and they complained that they were small. Totally disrespectful with their comments and everything. At that point I so didn’t want to be a part of the group anymore.
Then they took us to the school yard, which was a tree that provided shade for all the children under 3. They all sat there with only t-shirts on reciting the alphabet and their numbers for the tourists. That was a hard one to swallow. They had to sit there
My dancing partner
She said her christian name was suzanne and then told me her African name that I cant even pronounce. all day and put on a show for the tourists.
Later we were all lured like cattle through their market, where all the women sat displaying there crafts and trying to get us all to buy stuff. It’s funny the way they set it up too. Because when you do the song and dance with the women in the beginning they purposely learn your name so that at the end they can guilt you into buying from them.
Of course after years of watching my mom bargain in markets I was harsh. And I had this guy follow me back to the van begging me to give him a better price or his wife would be upset on his bargaining skills. So after a long argument over a fucken necklace I didn’t want anymore I felt bad that I had paid nothing for it. After that we sat around for along time waiting to round up the group and head out to our campsite and actually go game driving to finally see some fucken animals.
On the way to our campsite we spotted some elephants taking a bath. Man we were so excited because they were the
Samburu huts
So this guide took us around to his place. As you can see it looks like midget people live here, but they do this so that the animals cant get in. first animal we saw. That would change quickly, give it a day or two and elephants would be everywhere.
After setting up and the drama with not finding our tents and lunch, they reminded us that there are baboons in the area. They know how to open our tents since they realized all they had to do was pull the zipper. So we were told to pad lock our tents every time we went anywhere even when we slept.
We were also warned that we were camping near the river bed and to be cautious of getting to close to the water since it was infested with crocodiles. And that every now and then it’s been a known that the crocodiles like to munch on the tents especially when people sleep.
Later that day we got to go around the park to see more animals and our driver was fucken cool. He kept getting us real close to the animals. Mind you we kept telling him that if he got us close to seeing the big 5 (Lion, Leopard, Elephant, Rhinoceros and Buffalo) we would get him drunk at night.
Shortly after that statement our van was
Inside a samburu hut
Yes, there made of cow shit and mud. And I was sitting on dry cow skin which was the childrens bed. labeled the Brewer group. Of course our van had the young, the rowdy and drunk. So our driver was more than willing to go out of his way to find us those animals.
We experienced this first hand that day when we spotted an elephant chilling on the side of the road. And he pulled up really close to it so that we could get some good pictures. All of a sudden the elephant started to back up, and next thing you know it was getting a running start. And our van stalled for a bit and we kept yelling for him to get us out cuz the elephant was charging our van. I got a picture of that moment before he charged us. After our get away he walked away while the other vans behind us backed up quick before he charged them too. That was fucken cool.
A lot the shit that happens on safari believe it or not is just driving around for hours and not finding a single animal. And everywhere we looked there was another elephant. So you can imagine how excited we got when we spotted a random animal.
Day 5
Samburu children at school
So the children went to school at few feet from the village and were posted up underneath a tree. The next day we drove fucken far on the other side of the park because we were told that by other vans roaming that there were lions fucking somewhere. On our way there we got excited that we had spotted a buffalo, but we didn’t have the time to stop. We had lions to go see.
As they explained to us the lions mate for 7 days straight. They take 15-18 breaks to rest in between their 2 second sessions. So we sat around and waited, and just like clock work the female lion didn’t even move. The male lion went behind her and licked her ass to make sure it was moist and mounted her for 2 seconds and growled in her ear and she never moved. And then he was done. It was the most hilarious shit I’ve ever seen.
Later on we found a natural pool. It was all icky and full of shit but we were fucken hot and we all jumped in with our clothes on. It felt so good.
After our swim we got back to the campsite and we were still hot so our guide said that we could
Married Samburu women
The difference between the married women from the single women was their earings and the multi colored beads around their necks. crash the resort up the road and jump in their pool. After that pool we headed for their bar and sat there all wet, and got all the people staying there complaining about us being rowdy.
Afterwards we took off again for another game drive and we finally saw a leopard. But this was no wild animal this fucker was small and so in order for it to survive someone would come every so often and feed it. Lame. It was like a trained monkey posing for the cameras and everything.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.174s; Tpl: 0.017s; cc: 13; qc: 49; dbt: 0.0532s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 2;
; mem: 1.2mb