Last Wednesday, we had a fieldtrip. We visited the industrial section of the city, lined with assembly plants where people come looking for work each day, leaving (if they’re lucky) with perhaps 100 shillings (around $1.00) to return home and buy a meal for their families (and where security come make your life a misery if they even glimpse a camera). We also visited the informal sector, where a community of people who hadn’t been able to find employment has basically taken over a section of the city. They manufacture, by hand and out of recycled materials, pretty much anything useful that anyone would ever need. They’re creative, too. They have tools, but a lot of what they use for shaping is actually railroad ties. Apparently they’re making some decent money, compared to those who live in the slums. This is a community where people don’t try to steal others’ business and anyone caught pick pocketing is likely to find themselves beaten to a pulp and left for dead, if they’re lucky. Really good setup and concept, except that when you walk in it’s actually kind of appalling: It’s dark. The guys sit absolutely everywhere, on the ground. They’re covered in grime; They pound away as they make goods, without stop, seven days a week, to be carted off in bulk. There’s so much noise you can’t hear yourself shout at the person next to you. And you really don’t know what to say, because their lives are so far disconnected from yours there is absolutely no way to connect. At all. There’s a giant chasm between you, and you’re standing just a couple feet away. Kind of like watching a movie.
I came home last Thursday afternoon to fine no less than four power poles laying across my street, lines strewn over absolutely everything. Including gates. And the street. And cars. People simply stepped over them and continues on their way.
On Friday, I hopped into a van heading to Masai Mara for the weekend. My company included:
• A girl born and raised in India before she moved to the US for college. She now works for Kaplan University, and sincerely believes that giraffes live naturally in Yellowstone.
• A Swedish girl who took out somewhere in the neighborhood of $500 from the ATM, then proceeded to count it out loud in front of the entire queue.
• Four Japanese and Korean tourists who shouted at the top of their lungs every time they saw something exciting and ran after the animals. And found the best use of their time to be exploiting the street kids by upending buckets of chips into their hands, laughing as they snapped photos in their faces.
• Oh yeah. And me.
Anyway. The Mara was stunning. Rolling hills gave way to flat grassland as far as we could see, overshadowed in the afternoon by deep, dark rain clouds that blotted out the scorching morning sun, which then dropped, crimson, beneath the clouds to hang over a silhouetted hill before disappearing. Yep, I know where The Lion King was based on. Speaking of which. There were lions everywhere. There was a pride of a young male, two females, and six cubs. Another couple large males roamed, squatting as they marked their territory. And a an enormous male lazed sleepily in the shade of a lone tree, African wind blowing through his colossal mane. Meerkats dug viciously for insects in the ground surrounding the head of a giraffe who had been killed a couple weeks earlier by a snakebite. Topi, hartebeest, and dik dik grazed contentedly. A couple of cheetahs panted in the shade of dense shrubbery. A leopard settled itself in the grass at the base of a ravine. Another sat straight on a log in the brilliant late afternoon light in front of a distant rainstorm before hopping down and disappearing after one of my dear companions decided to announce its presence to the world. A couple of families of elephants got into a noisy, messy fight around a watering hole after the first had covered themselves with dust and mud. There were wildebeest everywhere, gathering as they grazed on the last of the green grass north of the river, procrastinating their deadly crossing, accompanied in their grazing by numerous zebras. I sear, these animals are some of the stupidest on earth– scared of their own shadows. Quite literally. Also, aren’t baby wildebeest supposed to be cute? Apparently not so much.. They’re just parental miniatures. Which, for your information, are ugly. Shame. Getting back on topic: hippos sprawled on islands in the river and giant crocodiles waited along the banks. And a giant herd of hundreds of buffalo came streaming down the banks of a hill, turning the golden grass black with their numbers as they surrounded our car.
Saturday night, a lightning storm lit up the sky, noiselessly silhouetting hills in the distance.
Sunday we journeyed out onto a huge lake in the middle of the Rift Valley called Lake Naivasha in a tiny boat. We got crazy close to hippos. And managed to scare one up out of the water that we didn’t know was there, resulting in a rather rapid evasion. By us. From a big, angry hippo. There were fish eagles on an island, and water birds everywhere. Flocks of cormorants sunned themselves, storks picked their way through the much, and huge flocks of pelicans floated near the shoreline. And then we got caught in a downpour. Two of them, to be exact. In the middle of the lake. And, just so you know. Kenyan downpours aren’t like Oregonian downpours. They’re preceded by some wind, and then the big, fat, giant, colossal drops start falling. Everywhere. It’s like getting pooped on by a bird, except it’s water, and it happens a lot more than once.
Anyway, we got to get off on the island and walk around, getting (somewhat) up close and personal with wildebeest, zebras, and baby giraffes.
And then we headed back to reality, A.K.A. Nairobi, passing a pickup which had managed to drive itself over the cliff as the road winds down into the rift valley. Go Kenya.
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