WOW Kenya!

My second Africa chapter began last Friday, when, after a strange pneumonia combined with all sorts of weird fainting symptoms, I was finally in a good shape to leave Cluj. Just in time, apparently, as right now I am reading about blizzards and fog that have taken over Romania again, turning everything into chaos.

After a very smooth three flights, on Saturday morning I landed in Nairobi. It would have been a nice week-long vacation, but with my medical condition and last-minute flight postponing, I was going to have just one weekend instead. My friend Beth, with whom I work in Rwanda, was home for the holidays, and she turned into the best guide for my rushed, fantastic 36 hours in Kenya.

Now being Africa-savvy, I realized how completely relaxed I was there, even if Nairobi is far bigger than any other place I had seen on this continent, and even if its reputation is not exactly the best (some call it ‘Nairoberry’, and apparently for a good reason too). The first things I noticed, half-amused, were the green “city-hoppa” buses and the huge predator birds, hanging from trees everywhere on the Mombassa Road (the large avenue that connects the airport to the city). Well, backtracking a bit – I was actually shocked by something: when I had asked Beth to give me her address, so that I can fill it in on my visa request, I was stunned to get a long line of numbers, instead of a street name and house number. Now driving along the large Mombassa Road, I was curious as to why houses were not somehow linked to the name of the street. I was told things were so chaotic in terms of urban planning that no-one could keep track which building is placed on which street or path or plot of land or something, so getting a code is the only way to go (of course, there’s no way you can find such a place by yourself)…

After a quick drive through the city, we actually headed out for the rest of the day, to catch a glimpse of the majestic Rift Valley, the cone-shaped Fly-Over mountain (which I had actually flown over a few hours beforehand), and then to see a natural reserve, Elementaita, renowned for its splendid flamingo colonies. The taxi Beth hired for the day was rather dodgy, but still it kept going boldly on the “highway” – i.e. a two-lane street going all the way to the Ugandan border and then Kampala. I thought I had seen it all in terms of traffic in Africa before, but now, since the road was ‘good’ (i.e. paved), there were other challenges: when you try to overtake, at very high speeds, everyone else does it at the same time, so you have all these cars suddenly jumping from the queue, one in front of the other. The two lane-street instantly turns into a four-five lane (each car finds its own course), and, well, it is quite scary. No wonder accidents are so commonplace (a big and a small bus had collided frightfully just in front of us), but since the flamingos were calling, there was no other way but forward.

Once we left the highway, some guys selling ‘nyama choma’ (roasted meat) sent us looking for flying pigs – i.e. a dirt road, where the only directions were provided by huge stones on the ground. The scenery was surreal (not very different from the stone-desert in Morocco): completely dried up, with huge cactuses with incredible white flowers everywhere, and the lake at the horizon. We drove around for some half an hour, but since it was clear we were completely lost, and Beth was fearing robbery, we turned and took instead the civilized way: paying an entrance fee to a fancy lodge that administers the reserve, getting an imposing Masai guide, and driving on a better-shaped dirt road.

All of a sudden, the colors around me blew up: the deep red of the Masai garment (‘assorted’ with knee-high NBA socks!) and the suave, yet striking pink of the flamingos on the lake (we were lucky to see up close the nicer of the two subspecies, the lesser flamingo, whose pink is way more intense, especially under the wings). In a few minutes, I also received a crash-course on these incredible birds: they fly only at night, up to 500 kms in one stretch; they breed only in Tanzania; their flocks can number up to 1 million individuals; they feed on some algae in the lakes, which eventually gives them the color of the plumage; they are not hunted, as their meat is poisonous.

Mesmerized, but remembering the clock-ticking fast, I had to agree to leave the lake and return to Nairobi. After one police hold-up on the road, a bribe of $15, and a lunch-on-the-go (sausages, fries, and fresh mango-papaya-banana-carrot juice), we finally made it back, right in time for a crazy shopping spree. After the most beautiful African skirt-top duo I got in a store, we headed out to the mind-blowing Masai market, where I had my craves fixated on three kinds of things: bead-embroidered leather shoes (lots of them), bead jewels, and pole-pole T-shirts. (“pole-pole” means ‘slowly-slowly’ and is my favorite expression in Swahili. From the airport in December, I had bough a T-shirt with a tortoise and ‘pole-pole’ for a friend in Cluj, and since then I had been yearning for one myself :-)).

A couple of hours and hundred of dollars later, I could hardly move anymore, and yet I could not stop the bargaining. Shopping addiction it’s called, I believe. I could have spent a week in that market for sure, and still not be satisfied. In fact, once I got home and unpacked, and saw all those beauties in my bags, I knew I had to go back for more, so the next day I quickly returned for more bead work. Luckily I had anticipated all this and left enough space in my bags that were going on my next flight to Kigali.

As if the day had not been already overwhelming, the evening came with the most extravagant culinary experience EVER. The famed restaurant in called ‘Carnivore’ and it borders the Nairobi Natl Park. Traditionally, you could eat here every possible game meat, but since 2004 this has been illegal in Kenya. Not to worry, though, meat lovers! The choice and quantities here are INSANE and everything goes by the rule of the flag. You receive a small ‘carnivore’ flag and you fly it on your table until your own feast is done. The set menu goes for abut $25, which includes soup and desert, while in the middle you have the Beast of a Feast. Or the Feast of a Beast. On your plate, the first thing that appears are bull balls, to prepare your sensitive mouth for what is to follow. Basically by the entrance they have this massive fire place/grill, where they cook everything on very long sticks. Whatever is ready (turkey, crocodile, chicken, ostrich, goat, beef, etc, etc) is taken around the restaurant and shared on everyone’s plates. Then again and again and again and again. The waiters (dressed in traditional animal-skin patterns) just do these rounds the whole night and tempt you with one delicacy after another, until you are DONE. When you feel like you cannot take ostrich meatballs any longer, you let them know by putting the flag down. And maybe calling an ambulance. And starting the meat lent for the next few months…

At that point, after almost two full days of flying and going strong, I was ready to collapse. Luckily my body had cooperated very well, so a good night’s sleep was going to do the trick. The next morning we visited the all-in-one Nairobi Museum (the first museum I ever saw in Africa), and learnt so much about this part of the world: the amazing, unique flora and fauna they have; the mind-blowing discoveries of early hominoid skeletons (the largest, most precious collection in the world); plus a well-crafted presentation about the composition of the Kenyan society (with their fascinating 42 tribes), as well as the history of the common fight for independence of East African countries in the 50s and 60s. Wow. Lots to take in, but so so interesting (really, the first structured, comprehensive institution in East Africa that has given me the bigger picture). Above everything else, though, I found out that I weigh as much as the hideous warthog, on the comparative scale of man-to-Kenyan wildlife. I would have probably preferred to be like a zebra at 120 kilos rather than be forever tied at 60 to the warthog, but what do you do… Eat more meat at Carnivore, probably, and expand accordingly…

The last few hours were out in the wild of the city – a lunch in the National Park, with the same ugly warthogs and hysterical baboons running around. I also immediately bonded with the on-duty Masai dancing group, and I learnt how to jump around and wear beads with dignity and boldness at the same time.

All in all – WOW Kenya!!!