Nov 12-13 Weekend

"It was the best of times. It was the worst of times" Dickens was right! 

This weekend we took another trip into the Kenya countryside. Starting with a hike in the Ngong Hills, to Olorgesailie, to Lake Magadi, to Lake Natron on the border of Tanzania, to a tour of a masai village and back home on Sunday!    Action packed! 

Saturday: 

We stopped to buy our weekend supplies at the Ngong Market. Here's a picture of it - incredible chaos! Do you think that's why some of the team got sick? 

Hiking in the Ngong Hills was fabulous and windy.  Have you seen the movie Out of Africa or read the book? It starts with "I had a farm in Africa.... at the foot of the Ngong Hills. At the end, when Denys Finch Hatton is buried, his grave is on top of one of the hills.  The hike was tough since the "hills" are surprisingly steep but there was a surprise at the top.... Wind turbines! And right at the base of one of the turbines - a Masai 'manyatta' (hut) with a family living there. Talk about the past colliding with the future!  While we were enjoying the rewarding view at the top, our guide, using binoculars spotted a giraffe way in the distance. We laughed and asked him if we were going to go see it and he said yes. Little did we know he was telling the truth! So we started picking our way down the slopes.

On the way down we came across these
fellows heading up. 

 After about 5 kms of hiking on the plains away from the bottom of the hills, suddenly we were in a herd of giraffes! They were beautiful and there must have been twenty of them. It was breath-taking. As we got closer they realized we were there and they started to run.... it was like their movements were in slow motion, but the speed is amazingly fast.

The bull giraffe with the herd was huge and he was unusually dark as giraffes go. What a beauty he was! Here I am standing near him! I was holding my breath.

After we finished our hike, we went to Olorgesailie, which is where Louis Leakey and his wife Mary excavated in the 1940's. It is where they found many stone axes that were used by early hominids. It's an amazing place, and they have preserved the excavation sites exactly as they were, with the stone axes exactly where they were uncovered.


From Olorgesailie, we drove to lake Magadi which is widely known as the hottest place in Kenya. Our last stop for the day was at the Magadi Hot Springs, where the water comes flowing out of the ground at temperatures over 50 degrees Celsius. I couldn't even stay in with the water just up to my ankles - hot hot hot! You could literally feel the heat coming through the soil under your feet even when you were out of the water.


Sunday:

The heat kept me awake most of the night so I started Sunday feeling a bit drained of energy. We left  at 5:30 am and drove to the Shompole Conservancy for a game drive. By 8:30 am the temperature was well over 35 degrees so we stopped and had breakfast at a watering hole. The varied animal footprints in the mud told a story of a very busy meeting place. The baboon footprints were SO human!! 

After breakfast there wasn't much to see anymore,  because by then the heat was so intense all the animals were taking a siesta and hiding out in some cool spot we never found. This was when the first of our team started not feeling well.... General symptoms of stomach aches, head aches and an immediate need for a bathroom (or in our case, a bush!). Here is the team, standing in the middle of what felt like a desert. You can see the Shompole hills behind us.

We drove just over the border into Tanzania and then headed back for a visit to a masai community. We booked a masai guide to show us around his town. 

Our guide "John" is on the left  in this picture. He stopped to say hello to his two friends. 

John seemed not to notice the heat or the dust, but by noon when we were still walking, we 'muzungus' were all feeling a bit faint and needing shade, rest and water. None of the above to be found anywhere. We asked to be taken back to our van, and because we had walked so far, it took quite a few stops and asking for directions to make our way back.... even our guide was asking others which way! 
I was at the end of my rope.... not feeling as sick as other people, but just tired, hot and dusty.
The dust is incredible. It is a red colour, and it turns everything red. Your skin, your sweat, your saliva. and it gets everywhere! We looked quite a sight.

As we climbed into the safari van, the kids and women crowded around us. I was suddenly struck with this awful guilt. Here I was, lucky enough to be getting into a van with distant yet real prospects of a cool drink of clean water and a cleansing shower before the end of the day. And these people LIVE here. There is no exit for them. And they don't have fresh cold water coming out of taps. And they can't have a shower in a clean bathtub to rinse the dust off. Wow. It was a moment of clarity that hit me like a thunderbolt. It felt something like I imagine survivor's guilt must feel. Why me? Why am I so lucky? Why can't they have what I take for granted?

The ride home was long - about 6 hours and quite silent. We were all lost in our thoughts , remembering the day. We had to make a few emergency stops for people to be sick, so that was also quite a sobering aspect of the trip. I was lucky enough not to be ill, and I felt awful for my team mates that were. We got to our hotel at 9 pm and all raced for the showers. It took TWO full washes to get the dust out of my hair and the pores of my skin. I fell asleep very grateful for hot water, clean sheets and a comfy pillow. 

 

But my last thoughts were of the dusty children who sleep on the ground or on an animal hide in a dark, dung-constructed manyatta in the middle of the hottest place in Kenya......