Great animal lover that Barbara is, she booked us two nights at the Nairobi Tented Camp in the heart of Nairobi National Park. It was not cheap, but we were treated royally. There was always someone there with a flashlight to escort us from the dining tent to our sleeping tents, for example. We took two safari tours with a wonderful driver and guide whom they provided. We also visited the Baby Elephant Orphanage, which has rescued 190 baby elephants orphaned by poachers or natural causes over their 37 year existence. Barbara even adoped one of them ($50/year).
The great thrill of being in the Camp was the early morning safari we took the second day we were there. Leaving at 6:30 am, before the sunrise, we saw giraffe both close and far away, many zebra, buffalo, guinea fowl, crested cranes, and impalas, all against the misty background of the savannah. This is not the jungle. Kenya has rain forests, but they're elsewhere. This was woodland and savannah, the very combination of environments that provoked our human evolution.
When the earth cooled and the jungles receded, leaving large areas of grassland punctuated by woodland, it was advantageous to be able to walk on two legs. The great apes had done well in the jungle, where the trees are close together, evolving the opposing themb on both h ands and feet. But the savannahs made the opposing thumgb on the feet useless, and made walking and running more necessasry. In addition, there were now large ungulates, ruminants, who had evolved to turn the ow-nutrition cellulose of the grasses into their prime sources of food. Early man learned to hunt these fleet and often dangerous creatures, which increased his and her protein sources.
When I visited the Nenya National Museum later that day, I saw the discoveries of our hominid ancestors that had been made in Kenya--quite a few of them, displayed in an excellent exhibit, that included more history of the discoveries themselves than does our New York Museum of Natural History.
Later that day I got a taxi ride into Nairobi proper to take the Kibera Slum Tour. I anticipated that this would give me a sense of the real of a large portion of the Kenyan population, and it did that and more. Kibera, which extends over 4 square kilmeters and is home to 1.2 million people, was originally a forest land granted to people who had come to work in Nairobi. Over the decades the trees were cut down and shanties were erected, creating the sea of rusted corrugated iron that one sees today from above. The streets are dirt, mud and stone, but passable, slowly, by cars. The overwhelming impression, however, is of bustling commerce. People work their stalls and live in the back rooms, and they sell everything needed for their lives: vegetables, meets, piles of sardines, oceans of charcoal (their heating source, since there is no natural gas delivered and very little electricity), beauty products, cell phone products, small restaurants, beauty parlors, clothing of all sorts, toys, household goods, and even a photo studio. Philip my guide told me that many of Kibera's residents were offered public housing, but they refused, since it would take them away from their friends and require a commute--and an extra rent--to maintain their shops. He also brought me to a center for women with HIV, where I spoke to one of the residents. She told me she had contracted HIV from a dirty needle during childbirth, and her husband had then rejected both her and her baby, who was there and of course, delightful. The woman made crafts and jewelry to support the center, which got along on about $24,000 per year.
Philip also took me to bone factory, where jewelry and other decorative objects were made from the bones of cows, pigs, sheep and other available animals (not humans, they were at pains to tell me). It was a successful enterprise in the heart of the slum. My daughter Nora informs me that slums afford livelihoods, albeit difficult ones, to their residents that the rural poor do not have access to.
I made it back to the Park through horrendous Nairobi rush hour traffic--there are no highways as we know them in Nairobi. Infrastructure is terrible, and the city acquires more and more cars. Dinner was delicious, as usual, and the serving staff made a point of folding our cloth napkins into a different shape for each meal. One of the shapes was an open collared shirt.
We left for the airport at 5 the next morning for our flight to Antananarivo, Madagascar.
The Elephant Orphanage:
Barbara holding her certificate of adoption along with the director of the Orphanage.
A rhino from our afternoon safari, the first day.
An ostrich from the same safari.
Sunrise during our safari the second morning.
Scenes from Kibera slum, Nairobi, the largest slum in East Africa.
Note the makeshift swing made out of string.
When this lovely lady, who sells sardines, learned I was unmarried, she proposed to me herself!
Detail from a diorama at the Kenya National Museum.
Featured artist (center) and his family members from the Masai tribe who came out in support of his show at the Museum.
The great thrill of being in the Camp was the early morning safari we took the second day we were there. Leaving at 6:30 am, before the sunrise, we saw giraffe both close and far away, many zebra, buffalo, guinea fowl, crested cranes, and impalas, all against the misty background of the savannah. This is not the jungle. Kenya has rain forests, but they're elsewhere. This was woodland and savannah, the very combination of environments that provoked our human evolution.
When the earth cooled and the jungles receded, leaving large areas of grassland punctuated by woodland, it was advantageous to be able to walk on two legs. The great apes had done well in the jungle, where the trees are close together, evolving the opposing themb on both h ands and feet. But the savannahs made the opposing thumgb on the feet useless, and made walking and running more necessasry. In addition, there were now large ungulates, ruminants, who had evolved to turn the ow-nutrition cellulose of the grasses into their prime sources of food. Early man learned to hunt these fleet and often dangerous creatures, which increased his and her protein sources.
When I visited the Nenya National Museum later that day, I saw the discoveries of our hominid ancestors that had been made in Kenya--quite a few of them, displayed in an excellent exhibit, that included more history of the discoveries themselves than does our New York Museum of Natural History.
Later that day I got a taxi ride into Nairobi proper to take the Kibera Slum Tour. I anticipated that this would give me a sense of the real of a large portion of the Kenyan population, and it did that and more. Kibera, which extends over 4 square kilmeters and is home to 1.2 million people, was originally a forest land granted to people who had come to work in Nairobi. Over the decades the trees were cut down and shanties were erected, creating the sea of rusted corrugated iron that one sees today from above. The streets are dirt, mud and stone, but passable, slowly, by cars. The overwhelming impression, however, is of bustling commerce. People work their stalls and live in the back rooms, and they sell everything needed for their lives: vegetables, meets, piles of sardines, oceans of charcoal (their heating source, since there is no natural gas delivered and very little electricity), beauty products, cell phone products, small restaurants, beauty parlors, clothing of all sorts, toys, household goods, and even a photo studio. Philip my guide told me that many of Kibera's residents were offered public housing, but they refused, since it would take them away from their friends and require a commute--and an extra rent--to maintain their shops. He also brought me to a center for women with HIV, where I spoke to one of the residents. She told me she had contracted HIV from a dirty needle during childbirth, and her husband had then rejected both her and her baby, who was there and of course, delightful. The woman made crafts and jewelry to support the center, which got along on about $24,000 per year.
Philip also took me to bone factory, where jewelry and other decorative objects were made from the bones of cows, pigs, sheep and other available animals (not humans, they were at pains to tell me). It was a successful enterprise in the heart of the slum. My daughter Nora informs me that slums afford livelihoods, albeit difficult ones, to their residents that the rural poor do not have access to.
I made it back to the Park through horrendous Nairobi rush hour traffic--there are no highways as we know them in Nairobi. Infrastructure is terrible, and the city acquires more and more cars. Dinner was delicious, as usual, and the serving staff made a point of folding our cloth napkins into a different shape for each meal. One of the shapes was an open collared shirt.
We left for the airport at 5 the next morning for our flight to Antananarivo, Madagascar.
The Elephant Orphanage:
Barbara holding her certificate of adoption along with the director of the Orphanage.
A rhino from our afternoon safari, the first day.
An ostrich from the same safari.
A male wart hog. Two of them came into the camp while we were there.
Sunrise during our safari the second morning.
Scenes from Kibera slum, Nairobi, the largest slum in East Africa.
Note the makeshift swing made out of string.
When this lovely lady, who sells sardines, learned I was unmarried, she proposed to me herself!
The HIV positive son of the woman who contracted HIV through a dirty hospital needle.
Products from the bone factory.
Detail from a diorama at the Kenya National Museum.
Featured artist (center) and his family members from the Masai tribe who came out in support of his show at the Museum.
I, too, was proposed to in Egypt! They offered me many camels to marry them. I figured that I didn't really have the room in my tiny college apartment for the camels so I had to turn down the suitors... Too bad. :P
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