My trip back from St. Louis last week was highlighted by the most wonderful coincidence I can think of-- I bumped into my old friend Sean Vicente at the airport. Sean and I went to college together at Earlham and, shortly before graduating in 1996, spent a semester abroad in Kenya. We were two of probably about 16 students on the trip, but we were really two of three because Sean, myself, and a wonderful third, Morgan Taggart, formed perhaps an unlikely but unified trio sometime relatively early on in the semester. Although we all did homestays with different families and had very different interests, when it came time to do something of any sort in a
group or team, it was always us three. At one point, we lived together in a tent for a month at Lake Naivasha during a field course in ornithology. For some reason, the triumvirate vowed not to shower for the whole month, and instead decided to bathe daily by rowing a dingy out into the middle of the lake and taking a swim (happily overlooking the dual threat of hippos-- the most dangerous animal in Africa-- and bilharzia-- a treatable but nasty schistosome parasite transmitted by snails). Double-wide optimism is not a recent thing.Among our many hijinx, there were two independent travel periods during the semester during which time we were required to travel in at least pairs. For our first expedition, we climbed Mt.
Kenya. We didn't have a tent, but for some reason I thought we could just buy a giant piece of plastic to camp in. Like a tent-- but with no doors, or poles, or openings, or closings, or floor. It was a giant, bright yellow sheet of plastic that I strung up between two trees with a rope to try and form a teepee-like structure. It sagged a lot in the middle, and so was christened the Big Banana. It was supposed to sleep all 6 of us (the trio was joined by 3 other intrepid souls), but we got so soaked the first night, that the Big Banana was cast aside and from thereon the expedition was somewhat doomed by the cold and wet. Even though we never summited, we did enjoy seeing hyraces and experiencing snow at the equator when we reached high elevation. Between the plants and the rocks, it was beautiful and other worldly up there. I wish I had a picture to share-- Sean, do you have any pictures from that trip to the mountain?The second travel opportunity came late in the semester, right before our last homestay with the Maasai. Sean, Morgan, and I decided we wanted to explore the northern part of Kenya-- a vast, largely unpopulated, desert region that was not really on the itinerary of our study abroad program. The guide book said there were decent roads going north all the way up to Lake Turkana if you approached on the west side of the lake. The eastern side was more difficult to traverse, but more scenic. We, of course, decided to go east. There were no intrepid souls interested in joining us after the Big Banana debacle, so we prepared the necessary items and set out on our own from Nairobi. Between the three of us we had a guidebook, the clothes on our back, 1 sleeping bag, about $10 in cash, a walkman, some snuff, and some chewing tobacco that appeared to be about 30% cow dung. We caught a bus in Nairobi that went all the way to the end of the paved road towards the northeast-- the bustling town of Isiolo. We were feeling great-- it was a beautiful sunny day and we easily hitched a ride further north to get to Maralal, where we were able to spend the night at a checkpoint along the road. Before leaving Maralal, we stopped at their version of the "Hard Rock Cafe" (the entrepreneurship in this part of the world is truly amazing), a shack restaurant almost certainly referring to rocks in the geological sense, not the musical sense, given the terrain. We got another ride easily, and this time the friendly fellow hitchhikers in our vehicle included Samburu warriors, business folks, and people visiting their families in remote villages. It was fascinating landscape-- almost lunar. So engrossing that, while I was peering out over the cab of the lorry at the setting sun and rising moon, I failed to notice a low-hanging yellow-barked acacia tree branch covered in 2 in. long spines. Gazing at the moon never hurt so bad. I caught sight of it just as it caught hold of my eye, ear and cheek, and as I turned away the spines sliced across my face. They weren't deep, but the head is highly vascularized, so it bled a fair amount, running down my shirt and soaking the bags of grain I had been standing on in order to have such a great view in the first place. Sean kept saying "It's bad! It's bad", but I thought he was saying "It's rad! It's rad!" It sealed up quickly, although many months later a boyfriend would pull away after gently nuzzling my ear to inform me he had come across what appeared to be a splinter, finally extruding itself from the long since healed slash.
Original caption for this 1954 photograph of a Samburu:Although this lad wears braids, cosmetics, and a serene expression, he's really a fierce warrior and can hurl a spear 100 yards with deadly accuracy.
Late that night, when we arrived in the town of South Horr, we didn't worry too much about being led down a sand path in the complete darkness to a private compound (that is the word often used to refer to the collection of small buildings that make up a home in the villages in this part of the world) in order to find a place to bed down for the night. We had chatted at length with folks in the car and, as they all disappeared into the darkness, we were just grateful one of our new friends was willing to help us find a place to lay our heads down. The next morning when we woke up, we were subjected to the near-asphyxiating hospitality of our now-visible hosts. The patriarch of the family knew very little english-- only swear words, in fact. He took me on a walk towards what turned out to be some sort of matrimonial hut and tried to make his hopes evident via a hilarious, nonsensical stream of naughty words that probably weren't all that far off from what he was actually proposing. I squirmed out of the situation, and we left the compound and headed for the center of town confident that, with the trip going so well this far, we would be on our way north towards Lake Turkana in no time. The center of town in South Horr was two rows of largely empty buildings, about 6 on each side of the road. We plopped down in the middle to wait for the first car heading in our direction.
The Village of South Horr
Twenty-four hours later, when no car had passed, we lowered our requirements. We were waiting for a car to pass-- either direction would be fine. Another 24 hours later-- hungry, thirsty, and somewhat worried about the possibility of getting back to Nairobi in time to rejoin the group at all, we struck gold. I had read in the guidebook that a guy named Joe ran a tour company that took people up to Lake Turkana via the eastern side once per week from Nairobi. That blessed day of the week (Thursday, I believe) had finally arrived and I was ready for it. My face was healed up ok, but I was still covered dry blood. When the truck came rambling down the road, I ran up to the driver's side and yelled "Joe!" (it is a great thing to have a guidebook that gives proprietor's full names-- it has come in handy more than once for me) and acted like we knew each other from the past. He figured out pretty quickly that we did not, so I switched to plan B. I told him I had been beaten by a man in the town, which was, of course, a lie-- but I was covered in dry blood and that guy did swear a lot in the marriage hut. It was close enough to true, and the tourists in the vehicle-- one of those massive, posh safari trucks with the huge amphibious wheels-- took pity on us and assured Joe they wouldn't mind at all if he gave some grubby college kids a lift for free. And so he did! All the way to Lake Turkana-- our destination which just a few hours earlier seemed unreachable. When we arrived, we were fed meatloaf and cold Budweiser, which I swear never tasted so good before or since. We thanked our saviors, and walked from their camp to the lake. Somehow, in that 1/2 mile, a gaggle of children emerged from the parched earth-- I have no idea where they came from. The city of Loyangalani (a small collection of whitewashed buildings and a post office) was a ways off, and there were very few huts near this lakeshore formed of cracked, dry mud. But by the time we got to the water, there were about 25 kids with us, all of whose eyes practically came out of their head when we proceeded to strip down and jump in the lake. They looked at each other and at us silently with equal parts disbelief and curiosity. You could almost hear them say-- "These white people must be nuts" right before they, too, stripped down and jumped in. I forgot to mention, Lake Turkana is one of the chain of lakes that dot the famous Rift Valley and is the largest freshwater desert lake in the world. It is also home to the Nile crocodile, known to reach lengths of up 19ft and up to 2200 pounds. People in Kenya don't typically go swimming in Lake Turkana because they see it more as the crocodile's domain. But we figured-- it's hot, we came a long way, we have gotten accustomed to bathing exclusively in lakes anyway, and now we've got 25 kids in here with us so our chances of getting eaten by a crocodile just went way down!
The Jade Sea (Lake Turkana)
Needless to say, after our triumphant swim we had to get back to the fairly serious business of figuring out how we were going to get back to Nairobi by Saturday given that it has taken us nearly 5 days to travel 380 miles despite constant effort. As I mentioned, we were supposed to reunite with the rest of the group to head to Maasailand, the second most remote region of the country, for the last portion of the program. Did we make it in time? More to come....
The Jade Sea (Lake Turkana)
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