Blogs from Africa - page 2734

I have to admit that for a very long time I thought of Rwanda solely in terms of the genocide of 1994. I have read several books about it, including Shake Hand With The Devil by Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Romeo Dallaire, whom I had the chance to meet and talk with in January 2006, so I thought that I knew what Rwanda was about. I thought I knew what I was getting into when I flew here in April, though I knew that it wouldn't be as bad as it is described in Skake Hands, since it has been 13 years since the world watched in horror for three months while the genocide unfolded. I quickly discovered that I did not know anything about what Rwanda is like, and that the people here have a ... read more

Yes, its a little messy, and yes that is a cow eating a tree, and geese and chickens drinking out of the clothes hamper, and yes goats run rampent throughout the night, but its home sweet home...... read more

The cheetah park is basically an enclosure where some german family grows cheetahs.. it is pretty cool to see cheetahs walking freely in the owner's house like house cats.. you can go up to them and pat them and touch them.. sometimes.. they would come up to you to lick you.. maybe tasting to see if you need some more seasonings before you are worthy for them to bite into you.. the cheetahs at the home gets aggrevated at times.. and the owner had to calm them down before we can approach them again.. After that it's back to the campsite bar.. where you wait till evening time to go out on the truck to feed the cheeetahs in the 'sanctuary'... so until then, you have nothing to do, so you buy some beer from them.. ... read more

Started the safari yesterday with an eventful morning - at the time we thought a suicide bomber had blown up part of Nairobi, so we had to get out of Nairobi pretty quickly! It turned out in the end to be a local gang member trying to kill police whose grenade went off in his pocket in a cafe by accident. Still pretty scary though! It was only a couple of streets away from my hotel (I didn't hear anything though). Travelled most of the day yesterday in the safari truck (an enormous yellow beast!) to get to a campsite close to the lake nakuru national park, with one short stop at nakuru town. The journey was really bumpy - much worse than a rough sea for about 2 hours, i thought the truck was actually ... read more

Determined to send home the extra baggage that we accumulated along the way, Gene and I determined once again to make a visit to the post office a must. We deduced from prior experiences with the postal services throughout Africa that boxes would not be readily available and decided to head straight to the main square to barter with the vendors for a used box. Our first attempt was a failed one, but I was able to pick up on the Arabic word for “box,” which would prove handy as we bartered with other souq owners for packing materials. After paying the equivalent of $0.50 USD for a beat-up and broken down box, Gene and I headed back over to the post office with the hope that they could provide newspaper or bubble wrap to secure ... read more