The Circle of Life

Well, I’m officially in a depression coma now that our safari adventure is over. To say that the trip was awesome would be the understatement of the century – it was truly a once in a lifetime experience that I will remember forever. I posted some pictures on facebook, so I urge you all to check them out! The pictures tell most of the story, but I suppose I’ll recap some of the highs and lows for all my faithful readers (basically, my mom).

Highs:

1. Our driver – Our amazing driver and guide, Elijad, deserves a million thanks for dealing with us for three days. I think he is officially the wisest Kenyan man I’ve met thus far. Not only did he know everything there was to know about the animals we saw, but he was also a skilled driver (I’m still shocked that they exist in Kenya) and a good conversationalist. The road from Narok (a small town in the Rift Valley where we stopped for a picnic lunch on our way to Maasai Mara – about the half way point) to Masaai Mara might be the worst stretch of road I have ever driven on. In fact, calling it a road is an overstatement. It looks like someone plowed through a field and dropped some rocks in their wake. It should probably only be about a 1.5 hour drive from Narok to Maasai, but it takes closer to 3 or 4 hours. We must have passed 4 cars with flat tires/broken axels on the way (Elijad stopped to help everyone we saw – another reason he’s an angel) – all of this due to the fact that the road is just full of holes and rocks and most drivers tend to drive with two tires off the road completely so as to minimize the shock to the vehicle. While it took us a while to get to Maasai Mara, Elijad’s slow and steady method definitely won the race; we didn’t have one tire or car incident the entire three days. In addition to his awesome driving skills, Elijad knew the park like the back of his hand. He often took us off the main trails to areas he where he knew we would find some cools animals or sights.

2. Our campsite (and our personal Maasai guard) – I’ll be the first to admit that we were not exacting “roughing it” on this trip. I had assumed (thanks to my one previous camping experience) that we were going to be doing some hard core camping– I was convinced (and managed to convince the others) that we weren’t going to be able to shower for three days and that we would definitely be going to the bathroom in the woods. I think I scared the crap out of Jamee when I told her that she would probably have to take her midnight pee breaks in a dark forest filled with lions. For whatever reason, it never occurred to me that most of the people who go on these safaris are incredibly rich Westerner’s and that they probably required more refined settings. As it turned out, our campsite was lovely! I mean we were sleeping in tents, but we each had our own mattress and blankets, and the tens themselves were like industrial strength. I searched my entire tent the first night and found that there was not a speck of dirt or a bug in site. Moreover, our campsite had a hot shower and a flush toilet that worked better than the one in our apartment. Thanks to me, none of us had even considered bringing towels or shower stuff so we weren’t able to take advantage of the hot shower, but it was just nice to know that it was there. The campsite also had a large building where our meals were prepared and where we could sit inside to eat/play cards. There was no electricity but plenty of lanterns. The best part of our campsite though was our guard, a Maasai man named Armala… aka John. John reminded me a lot of Eric in that I think he made up 95% of the stories he told us, but nonetheless we enjoyed his company every night when we were sitting around the campfire. John job’s was to stay awake all night and make sure no animals came into the camp. Apparently lions are “afraid” of the Maasai, so that’s why most safari companies employ Maasai men to be guards. It was really cool getting to talk to John and learn more about the Maasai tribe and their traditions. One of the cooler (or grosser?) ones is that the Maasai often drink a mixture of milk & cows blood. Apparently they shoot the cow in the jugular with an arrow, take blood, and then somehow the cow lives. By the end of the trip, we had been invited to John’s future wedding, where he told us that he would slaughter a cow in our honor and that we would drink lots of Tusker together. One more word about the campsite – we were staying directly outside of the gates to the park and therefore the prospect that animals would show up in our camp was actually a legitimate concern. While we never had any lion visits, we did have a family of baboons that hung out around our bathroom in the morning.

3. The food – Just a quick word on this, but the food we had on our safari was AMAZING! I cannot even begin to explain to you how tired I am of eating RICE. We currently have it at least once a day and it makes me sad every time I see it. On our safari, however, we had amazing new foods, including a buffalo bolognese and a guinea fowl stew (tasted like chicken). Perhaps the high point on the food front was breakfast, where we were spoiled with actual toast, sausage, and omelets! This may not seem like a big deal but when you eat “butter bread” (aka shitty cold white bread with shitty butter) every morning it’s a REALLY nice change of pace.

4. The park and animals – By far the best part of the trip was getting to see all of the animals at the Maasai Mara National Reserve. Over the course of the weekend we did 5 “game drives” – basically 2-3 hour drives through the park. Our first day there we arrived in time to do a game drive around 4 pm, which ended with a beautiful sunset. As soon as we got into the park, we popped the top on our matatu and got to stand up for the rest of the ride. Within the first five minutes of our first game drive we basically drove right into a huge herd of elephants. They were on both sides of the dirt road we were driving on and were at most 15 feet away. We got amazing pictures of the elephants, including some of the adorable (and numerous) babies! At one point most of the elephants crossed the road right in front of our car. It was unbelievable to see them in person. During that first game drive we also got to see zebras (which are EVERYWHERE – there are a billion of them), impalas, buffalo, wildebeest, topi, gazelles, warthogs, lions, giraffes, and a rhino! It was an amazing first drive – got to see four out of five of the “big five” (elephants, lions, rhino, leopards, buffalo). The three game drives on Sunday were also amazing – I especially loved the one at 6:30 am. There was something so incredibly peaceful about being out for a drive as the sun was coming up, surrounded by animals and beautiful scenery. The park was so green and vibrant and the air was so clean - I seriously could have stayed there forever. Some of the highlights from our game drives on Sunday included getting to see two lions mating (this was hilarious actually as the female lion was TOTALLY asking for it), and also finding the mama cheetah and her babies that everyone had been searching for all day. Max was actually the one to spot the cheetahs taking a nap in a bush! We also got to see lion cubs on Sunday… it’s really amazing how playful they look, despite the fact that they could eat your face in about 2 seconds. The lions were by far the most beautiful and impressive animals we saw the whole time. We stumbled upon groups of them probably 4 or 5 different times and I never got sick of seeing them. In the end, the only animal we didn’t see was a leopard, but I can’t even be disappointed because we saw so many other animals. I’m really glad I bought a new camera before I left, as I was able to get some incredible pictures. I actually found myself feeling sad during our last game drive on Monday morning – I didn’t want the safari to end. It was such a surreal experience, and I know that if I ever have the resources to come back to Africa I would do it again in a heartbeat. It was an experience I would recommend to anyone who has the opportunity to do it! Forget Mexico or Europe – go on safari in Africa!

5. The Maasai village – We had the awesome opportunity to visit a Maasai village on Sunday afternoon. While I can’t say that it was a genuine cultural experience, I will say that it was fun. It seems to me that the Maasai make a lot of money off of tourists coming to the park (and why shouldn’t they?) and that much of the visit was well rehearsed. Nonetheless, the experience was still really cool. After paying the village chief $20 each we were welcomed with a traditional Maasai ceremony. For the boys, this meant jumping and singing with some of the young Maasai men, who were all dressed in red and decorated with the traditional beaded Maasai jewelry (which is stunning). The jumping ceremony was amazing – I do not understand how these tall, skinny Africans can jump SO high. It looked like they were jumping on some sort of spring board, when in reality they were just hitting the hard ground each time. Max and Elliot were a sight to see alongside those guys! Next came the women’s ceremony, which involved a lot of chanting/singing and weird neck movements. At one point Jamee and the head Maasai lady had some sort of strange dance off, while Emily and I laughed hysterically. After the ceremonies, we got to see the inside of a Maasai house. One note on this topic – the Maasai women are actually responsible for building the houses in Maasai villages. They build them using cow poop and wood, and each house has a similar structure. Also, the Maasai practice polygamy, so most of the village men have several wives, all of whom have to build their own house. After the visit, we were ushered into a field where all the ladies had set up shop with their traditional jewelry and carvings. It was a total tourist trap but to be honest, I was glad to pay. The Maasai jewelry is incredibly beautiful, and the village uses the proceeds to pay for their local school, which we were able to see.

Lows:

1. BUGS – It’s almost hard to even consider this a low but I definitely did not enjoy the creepy crawlers that were all over our campsite. I got my first wasp bite/sting ever on Sunday and I still have a weird red mark on my leg. I wasn’t even provoking the wasp! The worst bugs by far though were the dung beetles. I have NEVER in my life seen beetles as big as these things – they looked like birds. To make matters worse, they hissed! What kind of beetle hisses?!

Whew, so that’s a brief recap of our amazing trip. We got back to Nairobi Monday evening and have spent the last few days diving back into work. We are officially done with all of our home visits and have written all of the kid’s bios. Most of the website content is written, and now we are just waiting for Matt to finish building the website’s foundation so that we can start adding content. We are also waiting for our logo to be finalized so we can start working on branding. Overall, we’ve made incredible progress and I feel good about where we are!

Given that we’ve gotten so much done in the last 6 weeks, it seems a perfect time for vacation. We are headed to Tanzania on Saturday (after a minor setback, thank you mom for coming to the rescue!) and will move on to Mombasa and the beach from there! I am really looking forward to some down time. I’m not sure I’ll have a chance to write while I’m gone, but I promise to update everyone on our vacation and adventures as soon as we return.