Tsavo West is green. Like, crazy-long-lush-grass-and-shrubbery-everywhere-you-look green, nestled in sprawling valleys between dramatic, clear cut uplifts and cliffs that stand decisively in front of the setting sun. Looking into the distance, the thousand shades of green shift subtly to deep, mellow blues before the hills fade into the ever-present African dust. Above the whole presides Mt. Kilimanjaro, silhouetted against the west, its snowcap extending far down the ravines of its rippled contour.
The rainy season is winding up and winter migrations are taking place. Songbirds rose in clouds of thousands from the brush as we passed through, flying a few meters to settle among the upper leaves and branches of a single tree. Wydas chased each other, paradise-inspired tails trailing behind. Raptors surveyed the scene below from every bare perch in sight. Flocks of guinea fowl scattered like chickens. Dik diks presented themselves absolutely everywhere, bounding into the brush in twos and threes.
So, we visited Tsavo West. Amazing Animal Acquaintances included a herd of bad-tempered buffalo (when have they ever got a mild disposition??), a herd of elephants that decided to pop up straight in front of Kili, another family of elephants that started trumpeting and charging at a jeep when the smoking tourists contained therein used camera flashes after sundown at close range, a family of hyenas (with a cub), and a pride of lions that appeared out of the bush and elected to sprawl across the road in front of us. Oh, and we passed this crazy awesome tree with a strangler fig establishing its roots and slowly, steadily and creepily cutting off its blood supply for all time.
Tuesday we checked out the Sheitani Lava Fields, a flow emerging from a nearby cluster of cones, known by Satan’s name due to its emission somewhere in the neighborhood of 400 years ago and the undoubted witnessing and subsequent superstition by local tribes. Deep fissures ran throughout the crisp, rock as heat rose in waves from its baking black surface.
Under the rock of the Sheitani flow runs a river which emerges at Mzima Springs, a haven filled with cool, clear water, lined by cluster upon cluster of papyrus, and home to a large number of basking Nile crocodiles. And a ridiculously excessive quantity of fish, who congregated on the bottom of the river and stared at us through the windows of a nifty little underwater house.
Wednesday, amid hills engulfed in morning fog, we departed Tsavo West for Mombassa. If I hadn’t spend a semester in the Galápagos and a subsequent month in the Amazon very nearly breathing water, I would probably claim that Mombassa is humid. As it stands, the city is hot. It is busy, bustling, and noisy. Matatus and tuk tuks (open Indian-style three-passenger, three-wheeled taxis) cram the streets. Beggars abound, even more so than in Nairobi. And they’re more persistent, but that might be due to the big white safari van that broadcasts MONEY to a five-block radius. The vast majority of the population is Muslim, ergo my long pants and frisbee jersey once again made an appearance. Nairobi’s omnipresent food carts that impart the appearance of a farmers’ market scattered by a tornado are accompanied by stalls hawking cassava chips, fried fish and popcorn. And coconuts. The prominence of English in Nairobi is replaced almost entirely by Swahili, kind of making me wish I had put some more effort into that class.
We visited Fort Jesus, originally erected by the Portuguese, who sailed under the Christian flag and built the structure in the shape of their savior floating in the water on his back. And then the Arabs took it over, and I’m not quite clear on what happened from there. But, there were some really cool super-old walls (with spiky things on top), a moat, a very old, very dead Portuguese skeleton, and some wall paintings of chameleons and plundering ships and sacred hearts. And an artillery room connected to a crazy arched passage out to the water.
We crossed to the mainland on the Likoni Ferry, cars and people crammed into every open nook and cranny, adorned by giant signs banning photography. Because blowing up would be bad. Or something. We ended up walking through a Swahili village, following a man who owned a kiosk, winding through houses constructed of stone glued together by mud and covered with vaulted thatched roofs and surrounded by garden plots and mango trees. (One of the kids who waved at us from an adjacent soccer field wore a Blazers’ jersey, which pretty much made my day.) We came to a house where a woman sat out front, tossing balls of chapati dough from hand to hand as she floured and stacked them in preparation for sale the next day. Her husband disappeared into a shack, returning with fresh chapati to pass around the group before we headed home.
Thursday we drove north along the mainland until we arrived at a track leading off the road alongside a quarry, where a group of oryx had decided their day was best spent chilling out in front of the administrative buildings. And then we arrived at Haller Park, and realized that the oryx were actually part of a much larger contingent that made its residence in an expansive tract of marshes, ponds, rivers and woods reclaimed from aforementioned quarry. Oryx were everywhere. So were waterbuck, submerged to their stomachs in the mire, and vervet monkeys, who sat in a bush and placidly stared as a kid walked straight up and roared in their faces. There was a crocodile breeding program (behind fences or in sunken enclosures), a reptile exhibition (with green mambas and spitting cobras), hippos hiding in shaded sludge and giraffes who once again eagerly removed grass-and-honey pellets from our outstretched hands.
Following Haller Park we hit up Kenyatta Public Beach, a stretch of pristine white sand leading down to the turquoise water of the Indian Ocean, lined by rows of ramshackle vending stalls. Men and boys leading camels with super sketchy saddles wove between people sprawled absolutely everywhere, lounging or wading in rented swimsuits and tires. On the way back to the car a palm frond crashed down in front of us, missing our heads by approximately two meters.
Later in the afternoon we wound our way into a market, navigating narrow, twisting aisles of new and used clothing and emerging in an alley lined by boatloads (literally) of fresh watermelons, pineapples, mangoes, apples and oranges piled head-high. Fruit gave way to women selling fresh veggies laid out on cloths spread in front of them. Finally, we stepped into a shop lined in row upon row of sacks of beans, maize and rice. Swahilis busily weighed, packaged and priced little paper bags of saffron, paprika, pilaf mix, curry powders, tea spices, lemon salts and tomato powder that adorned shelves on the back wall. It smelled wonderful.
In the evening we wandered the streets of a secluded neighborhood, searching for an acquaintance of our local guide who did henna. A few phone calls, several U-turns and some rapid Kiswahili swapped with passers-by later, we stood at the front door of a mud-and-brick home. She was praying, so we waited. When she returned, she found herself occupied with other clients, so we waited some more. “It is a busy day,” they told us. “She is busy on Thursdays, because weddings begin on Friday. She is too busy.” And so we wandered the streets again, searching for her back-up. Eventually we arrived at the feet of an old, wrinkled woman sitting in front of the door to a bleak concrete building. “Yes, this is the place. My granddaughter is here, but she is busy. You will have to wait.” And so we waited. And then her granddaughter invited us in, squeezed henna into a tube, and covered our arms in intricate floral Swahili designs.
Friday, we drove northward to Malindi. The small city is situated along a stunning coastline, characterized by a large Italian population and culture and absurdly excessive numbers of guys hanging out on the beach, looking for hookups and money and preying on unsuspecting white tourists.
We detoured into the Gede Ruins- the remnants of a Swahili town abandoned in the 1600s that remained undiscovered until the late 1800s. Most noteworthy was the king’s palace, which contained his tomb and those of his four wives and as his own private bathroom (with two stalls). There were also baobabs, strangler figs and a new kind of monkey, who quite literally came up to us demanding bananas.
Yesterday I dove the barrier reef just off of Watamu. It wasn’t as dramatic as the Galápagos, but it was still pretty freaking awesome. The water was for all intents and purposes a salty, tepid bath. Rocks were graced by four-ft. sea anemones (Like insane giant aliens! I didn’t even realize what they were until I backed up a ways…) and crazy corals growing everywhere. Lionfish lurked below overhangs, while mottled yellow and green leaf scorpionfish waited among beds of sea weed. Deep, brilliant indigo triggerfish wandered past, as did an unflappable puffer. Nudibranchs clung to the coral, backs striped vivid violet, orange, and black or bright blue. Bright violet feather coral swayed in the current. Blue-spotted stingrays darted away as we disturbed the water around them, and we wrote our names in the sediment layered on the back of a giant sea cucumber. Also, I managed to lose a fin, sending it wafting down to 25 meters, fully convincing my divemaster that I was, in fact, the world’s biggest idiot.
And then we all came back together as a big, happy family and visited a community woodcarving co-op, where (local) people have come together to make lots and lots and lots of pretty stuff that sits in a showroom, waiting for unsuspecting outsiders (that would be me) to wander in and amble aimlessly through the aisles and gawk and leave with a little less money.
This morning before departing, we cussed away the swarming boys and wandered down the beach and out into the sea grass exposed by the low tide, discovering bright orange coral, sea urchins, neon-blue fish, brittle stars and tubeworms.
And now I find myself in Lamu, but that is a story for another day.
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