"I have Giraffe on my hands!"

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On our final day at Brakenhurst the caravan met early to get out and about for another day amidst the life of the Kenyans, most notably with historical significance. We took a quick if not harrowing ride through the outskirts of Nairobi and headed east and north to the county of Karen, home to the Giraffe park and Karen Blixen, author of several books but most famous for Out of Africa, of which many of you may have seen the movie staring Robert Redford and Merill Streep.

The journey took us through some of the wealthiest areas that outer Nairobi had to offer, complete with armed guards at every glance. These homes ranged in size from mansion to palatial to compounds. Most had stables, chauffeurs, multiple Mercedes’, and a host of other amenities that your average Kenyan could only dream of, if their minds were set in the Western ways of wealth… Some of the loveliest trees were also on these grounds, all being tall and majestic with bright yellow or red flowers that bloomed the size of my head. The contrast between rich and poor were plainly obvious, but the grandeur of our surroundings surely couldn’t be denied either.

Our first stop was Karen Blixen’s home, a once wealthy aristocrat-type who owned some 6000 acres of land that butted up to the Gombo mountains, named in the native tongue for their knuckle shapes stemming from their beliefs that God was angry with them for celebrating a successful harvest a bit too well and punched down the once high and mighty range to what it is today, leaving his imprints on the land. The grounds are now owned mostly by the military (interestingly, there is a championship 18 hole golf course that now resides on the bulk of the coffee fields, also owned by the military) after the coffee plantation went bankrupt because the crops were so poor. The county was named after Karen because of her tremendous land holdings. The grounds themselves were relatively pretty with their large ferns and succulents growing to enormous size and girth, but really it was an entirely unimpressive stay for the price, merely a half hour stay for 800 shillings, about $20 to us, and basically just to see a woman’s legacy fall to pieces because she was anorexic, ridden with syphilis, and largely died due to lung cancer from a tremendous smoking habit.

The real fun came when we went to the Giraffe Park close by and got the chance to hand feed some very friendly and very hungry wildlife. The Giraffes themselves were wild and of varying ages and sizes, but certainly weren’t shy when it came to getting what the ground keepers called “Giraffe Candy.” Warthogs darted in and out of the brush and the Giraffes meandered as hordes of people flocked to pet and feed the animals. When it was my turn, I found they had very soft, short haired fur and large cow-like eyes complete with very long lashes. They were so tame they seemed as if they were going to follow us home. There were also some land tortoises that were pretty crazy looking; they had large bumps along the spine of their shell and really did move slow, but one did decide to snap at me, exposing his/her/it’s powerful jaw and potentially nasty disposition. I decided it better not to screw with it despite my ardent desire to touch it. The quote of the day came from Oma, surprisingly enough, as she was complaining after feeding the Giraffe… “I’ve got giraffe all over my hands!” That being said we headed out for our last night at Brakenhurst, to be followed by our trip to the Mt. Kenya Safari Club, a resort once owned by William Holden and deep into the Rift Valley and it’s wilds.

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